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Posted by in Podwalk — No Comments
28
Feb 14

Podwalk: Gowanus Canal

Section I: Union Street part 1

Three things that support health in this neighborhood: proximity to Prospect Park, various types of medical centers and places associated with health (e.g. yoga), options for healthy food.

Section II: Union Street part 2

Proximity to Prospect Park is significantly decreased; no more medical or health centers that I noticed; only specifically “healthy” food option is Juice Haven, which is (a) closed and (b) debatably healthy. There’s a large billboard advertising alcohol.

I was surprised by the number of auto repair shops on this section of Union Street. As I walked down the street, the brownstones and health-centric places gave way to auto repair shops, warehouse-type buildings, and parking lots with razor wire around tall fences. Despite the colorful murals by 4th Ave., it feels less friendly.

Section III: Union Street Bridge

The Gowanus Canal doesn’t smell as bad as I had expected it to (or maybe my sense of smell was diminished from being out in the cold and consequently having a runny nose). However, it’s clearly an industry-oriented place from the signage, buildings, trash in the canal, and the smell. I also noticed a parking lot full of buses, which probably deteriorates air quality further from exhaust pollution.

Section IV: Carroll Street Bridge

When I walked over the bridge, it looked like it was between mid- and high tide. The water line is visible on the metal retaining wall between the two bridges. If high tide were three feet higher, it looks like the dirt banks (to the right of the brick pipe, from my vantage point) would come dangerously close to overflowing. With a storm, I think they definitely would overflow, exposing residents to the toxins in the water.

Posted by in 02/21 / R&R — No Comments
21
Feb 14

Ch. 2 & 3 reflection

Reading the chapters on structural approaches to public health reminded me of a discussion that recently took place in another one of my classes. Even though the class is called Writing for the Social Sciences, we got into a little debate yesterday about health care and obesity because two essays in our handbook-thing focused on them. One of them, by David Zinczenko, made sense to me and lines up (though less radically) with the chapters we read for today: it’s called Don’t Blame the Eater, and explores factors that make it difficult for people to make healthy choices. The other one, though, was a bit of an adventure (ahem) to read. It was written by Radley Balko (a pretty hardcore libertarian, I think) who was going on about “personal responsibility” and how he doesn’t want other people’s “choices” to affect the cost of his healthcare. I put those in scare quotes because I find them to be inaccurate and incomplete understandings of the real situation. Balko repeatedly used scary rhetoric and made lots of sociological errors (mostly, failing to account for factors besides “personal choice” in food decisions).

On the note of obesity, though, here’s an interesting (short) article that presents the other side of the issue, namely that fat stigma is more of a problem than fat itself: http://healthateverysizeblog.org/2011/08/19/the-haes-files-fat-stigma-not-fat-%E2%80%93-is-the-real-enemy/. Definitely worth some thought if we’re going to be continuing our conversations about obesity.

Posted by in 02/07 / R&R — No Comments
06
Feb 14

What’s most fatal in a society?

(by Cameron M-W)

The cholera outbreak described in The Ghost Map, in addition to more recent and ongoing health crises like HIV/AIDS, illustrates the role of hierarchical power structures in determining the large-scale path of disease. People at the bottom of a social structure are at the highest risk of contracting disease, developing health problems, and dying prematurely because social status determines who gets priority in prevention and treatment efforts (or if any prevention or treatment efforts even occur).

In this instance, the tenants of the Broad Street/Golden Square neighborhood were marginalized due to their low class status. Accordingly, their living conditions (i.e. overflowing cesspools) led to a cholera outbreak because the safety and comfort of this population were not priorities for people who held the power to affect them. The cholera outbreak wasn’t even reported in newspapers for four days. I see parallels to the beginning of the HIV/AIDS crisis that we discussed in class last week: though there could not have been any prevention efforts for a disease no one knew existed at the time, the first cases of “junkie pneumonia” went unreported because of injection drug users’ low social status and the related lack of concern about their deaths.

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