Public policy on health issues is always something that will touch each and every one of us directly. Here in New York City the population is stuffed into a dense metropolis causing normal health problems to be magnified and others to arise where they might not have in less dense areas. Since the list of health issues is so immense, it is out of the realm of possibility to write on them all in a mere post, so I will be focusing on three: AIDS, vaccinations, and school lunches.
Bringing up again the fact that New York City is so dense allows us to better understand the first problem, AIDS. In New York State as a whole, there are about 129,000 people diagnosed with HIV/AIDS. Out of that 129,000, 80% of them live in NYC. On average, there are about 15 out of 100,000 with HIV/AIDS in the United States. In New York City, 60.4 out or ever 100,000 are living with HIV/AIDS literally making the city the epicenter of the AIDS epidemic not just in the state, but the whole country. Our dense population allows easily for the spread of this virus, that paired with the fact that many in the city are not properly educated on the topic of safe sex causes this to be a huge concern.
Our next issue is on the topic of vaccinations. Currently a few vaccinations are required when entering different years of the New York City school system, but parents have the right to refuse some or all of the vaccinations. Although this topic requires a much larger argument to be fully discussed, vaccinations need to be required, no matter what the parent’s desire. Science is not an inhibitor; vaccinations that are developed now prevent diseases that are life threatening, and not one person should be without them. The issue here lies with our legislation and the allowance of some to refuse vaccinations.
The last issue is something that at first glance may not seem too bad, but upon closer inspection can be a major worry. School lunches are just flat out unhealthy. Our youth are being thrown into a school system where they are required to spend most of their day, for most of the year. The lunches that we are offering for them whilst they are in school are not providing nutrition for a healthy lifestyle, causing many of our youth to be obese and sick.
For a solution I will focus on the school lunches problem. In order for us to fix this issue it is simple, we need healthier lunches. Yes, this has been tried, but has not really succeeded. I propose that a partnership be set up. The public school system in NYC should partner with New York farmers as a way to bring in healthy options for our kids. Contracts will be formed on the premise that we consistently buy bulk from local farms and they offer affordable prices, as we will be allowing them to consistently have a consumer for their goods. This partnership can then be paired with a campaign educating the importance of healthy options in our school systems. All this would hopefully cause for parents to want to see healthier options and healthier options to be sought after by our education officials.
Your statistics on HIV/AIDS in New York City were shocking, and although we were limited to one solution, I think a really important compenent to reducing the number of new cases would be a more thorough curriculum of sexual education in the New York City Public school. You did, however, choose a solution that focused within the New York City Public school system. As you mentioned in your post, and as many of us have experienced growing up through the New York City public school system, school lunches have hardly any nutritional value to them. I think it speaks for itself that they are able to classify pizza as a vegetable. The nutritional habits that are developed during these early years could set many young adults up for an unhealthy life, and I agree that something must be done.
My question for your solution, is what would entice the NYC DOE to buy local farm-fresh foods to supply their schools with? As we discussed with food deserts, buying fresh food at, say, farmers markets can be overwhelmingly expensive. For the DOE in particular, which has to serve hundreds of thousands of school lunches each and every day, the cost would be offputting from a financial standpoint. Although we would like to think that it is all in the interest of the students, I wonder how this solution would be received by school officials.