Morning Report: Seattle, regional and national health stories in the news

Fighting hunger and obesity at the same time

The Obama administration intends to use federal food assistance programs to improve the nutrition of the poor, the Washington Post reports.

Obesity is a growing health problem with one in four Americans now being dangerously overweight and one in three children being either overweight or obese.

Research, including work being done at the University of Washington in Seattle, has linked poverty and obesity. 

But there are skeptics, the Post’s Jane Black reports, “Public health advocates have long hoped to link food assistance to good nutrition. To the anti-hunger lobby, however, mandating what kind of food needy people should eat is impractical and smacks of paternalism. It would be impossible, they say, to determine which of the 50,000-plus products in the grocery store should be classified as healthful.”

To learn more: 

• Read Jane Black’s article “Targeting Obesity Alongside Hunger“.
• Read an op-ed piece that links poverty and obesity by UW Professor Adam Drewnowski’s in the Seattle Post-Intelligencer.
• Visit the UW Center for Obesity Research and the UW Center for Public Health Nutrition.
• Visit Partners in Action, the Washington State program to reduce obesity and chronic disease by promoting physical activity and better nutrition.

Sunnyside teen honored posthumously for organ donation

A Sunnyside teen whose tissues and organs were donated after he died in an automobile accident last October is one of 34 organ donors who will be honored in the Rose Parade this New Year’s Day in Pasadena, California, writes Yakima Herald Republic reporter Ross Courtney in an AP story appearing in the  Seattle Post-Intelligencer.

To learn more: 

• Read Courtney’s article: Donor a start in life, death
• Visit the Web site of LifeCenter Northwest: www.lcnw.org, a non-profit that promotes organ donation in the Northwest.

How a team of firefighters that wouldn’t quit saved a man’s life

In today’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer, reporter Casey McNerthney tells how a team of North Highline Fire District firefighters worked for more than an hour to restart a man’s heart after he had a cardiac arrest. 

“Rescuers took turns at CPR until their arms burned,” McNerthney writes. “The man suffering cardiac arrest on the kitchen floor was clinically dead….”

To learn more:

• Read McNerthney’s article: “The gift of life took time – and 11 shocks.“

Tags: Medic One, Obesity, Organ Donation, Seattle Health News

Category: Diet & Nutrition, Emergency Medicine, Heart & Circulation, Transplantation & Donation