Written by: United States Department of Agriculture
WASHINGTON, DC – The U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that a group of Cooperative Extension partners will have the opportunity to apply for grants from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, or HHS, to help communities combat opioid use disorders.
HHS intends to build on successful 2017 and 2018 National Institute of Food and Agriculture, or NIFA, Rural Health and Safety Education projects that focus on opioid abuse.
“With the impact opioid misuse is having on rural America, we cannot build strong, prosperous communities without addressing this crisis,” said Assistant to the Secretary for Rural Development Anne Hazlett. “USDA is committed to working hand-in-hand with rural leaders and fellow mission-driven organizations – including other members of the federal family – to be a strong partner in this battle.”
HHS’s Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) is engaging with the Cooperative Extension System, or CES, to bring opioid prevention, treatment and recovery activities to rural America more efficiently.
CES is a federal, state and local partnership. It operates out of the nation’s land-grant universities, empowering communities of all sizes to address challenges they face, from nutrition and food safety to responding to emergencies.
SAMHSA is accepting applications for fiscal year 2018. Eligible applicants are existing NIFA Cooperative Extension grantees that focus on opioid issues affecting rural communities.
The grants HHS is offering through the Rural Opioid Technical Assistance (ROTA) program must be used to develop and implement robust collaborations with the CES system to improve the health and vitality of rural communities across the nation.
ROTA will help communities develop and disseminate training and technical assistance to address opioid use disorder.
There is $8,250,000 in available funding for the ROTA program. Proposed projects cannot exceed $550,000 in total costs (direct and indirect).
At the direction of President Trump, USDA has been keenly focused on addressing the opioid crisis in rural communities.
So far, the department has convened regional roundtables to hear firsthand accounts of the impact of the crisis and effective strategies for response in rural communities; launched an interactive webpage on opioid misuse in rural America, featuring resources for rural communities and individuals facing the crisis; and prioritized investments in two key grant programs to address the crisis in rural places.
For more information about these efforts, visit the USDA rural opioid misuse webpage at www.usda.gov/opioids .
NIFA invests in and advances agricultural research, education, and extension and promotes transformative discoveries that solve societal challenges.
NIFA’s integrated research, education and extension programs support the best and brightest scientists and extension personnel whose work results in user-inspired, groundbreaking discoveries that combat childhood obesity, improve and sustain rural economic growth, address water availability issues, increase food production, find new sources of energy, mitigate climate variability and ensure food safety.
To learn more about NIFA’s impact on agricultural science, visit www.nifa.usda.gov/impacts, sign up for email updates or follow us on Twitter @USDA_NIFA, #NIFAimpacts.
SACRAMENTO – More information about California's health care districts will soon be one mouse-click away under AB 2019, authored by Assemblymember Cecilia Aguiar-Curry (D-Winters) and signed into law yesterday by Gov. Jerry Brown.
The bill strengthens legislation last year that first established basic website postings and other requirements for these special districts that had sometimes fallen under the radar.
"As the chair of the Assembly Local Government Committee, one of my goals has been to ensure that health care districts are providing the essential health services they were created to deliver and to enable constituents to access information about them," stated Aguiar-Curry. "My Committee held an oversight hearing in 2017 that highlighted some areas where health care districts could be communicating better – especially using the internet – and we wrote a measure last year that put into action some very modest website requirements. AB 2019 advances our efforts to ensure the public can easily access information about these important public agencies."
Created near the end of World War II to address California's severe shortage of hospital beds, health care districts evolved over the years as they adapted to changing demographics and the delivery of health care services outside hospital settings.
More than one-third of California's 79 health care districts closed or sold their hospitals, moving away from their original purpose and towards services such as clinics, ambulances, preventive care, and health education.
Approximately one-fifth of health care districts no longer provide direct health care services, instead awarding grants as their sole activity.
“In a world of limited resources, the public has every right to know how their money is being spent. The vast majority of health care districts are providing valuable programs to address wellness and healthy lives from cradle to advanced age. But, we can always do better,” argued Aguiar-Curry. “Not only will transparency make funding opportunities more accessible to a larger health services community, but in the rare instances when money is not being used to its most productive purpose, the public will have the information to demand better performance.”
AB 2019 requires health care district websites to include information about the district's budget, current board members, public meetings, and specified audits and financial reports. The bill also requires health care districts to include additional components in their grant policies and to post these policies online.
The measure also requires health care districts to make available online any reviews by Local Agency Formation Commissions (LAFCO) – public agencies that provide an oversight function for health care districts – and to notify their LAFCO when filing for bankruptcy.
"At least 14 health care districts have filed for bankruptcy since 1994, and a small handful have filed more than once," Aguiar-Curry explained. "This requirement is designed to ensure appropriate oversight and accountability by local government agencies when a health care district initiates bankruptcy proceedings."
AB 2019 additionally requires health care districts that use the design-build procurement process when constructing housing to set aside at least 20% of the units for low income households, consistent with the state's affordable housing policies and goals.
"Last year, two of the state's health care districts gained a broader authority than any other local agency to use design-build – including the use of design-build for the construction of market-rate housing," Aguiar-Curry noted. "AB 2019 ensures that these districts, and any other health care districts that gain this authority in the future, must dedicate a reasonable percentage to affordable housing when exercising this relatively broad power."
The majority of AB 2019 becomes effective Jan. 1, 2019, with a delayed implementation date of January 1, 2020, for some of the grant policy requirements in order to allow health care districts adequate time to revise their policies.
Aguiar-Curry represents the Fourth Assembly District, which includes all of Lake and Napa Counties, parts of Colusa, Solano and Sonoma counties, and all of Yolo County except West Sacramento.
BERKELEY, Calif. – Poor sleep can literally kill your social life.
Researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, have found that sleep-deprived people feel lonelier and less inclined to engage with others, avoiding close contact in much the same way as people with social anxiety.
Worse still, that alienating vibe makes sleep-deprived individuals more socially unattractive to others. Moreover, well-rested people feel lonely after just a brief encounter with a sleep-deprived person, potentially triggering a viral contagion of social isolation.
The findings published today in the online journal Nature Communications, are the first to show a two-way relationship between sleep loss and becoming socially isolated, shedding new light on a global loneliness epidemic.
“We humans are a social species. Yet sleep deprivation can turn us into social lepers,” said study senior author Matthew Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience.
Notably, researchers found that brain scans of sleep-deprived people as they viewed video clips of strangers walking toward them showed powerful social repulsion activity in neural networks that are typically activated when humans feel their personal space is being invaded. Sleep loss also blunted activity in brain regions that normally encourage social engagement.
“The less sleep you get, the less you want to socially interact. In turn, other people perceive you as more socially repulsive, further increasing the grave social-isolation impact of sleep loss,” Walker added. “That vicious cycle may be a significant contributing factor to the public health crisis that is loneliness.”
National surveys suggest that nearly half of Americans report feeling lonely or left out. Furthermore, loneliness has been found to increase one’s risk of mortality by more than 45 percent – double the mortality risk associated with obesity.
“It’s perhaps no coincidence that the past few decades have seen a marked increase in loneliness and an equally dramatic decrease in sleep duration,” said study lead author Eti Ben Simon, a postdoctoral fellow in Walker’s Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley. “Without sufficient sleep we become a social turn-off, and loneliness soon kicks in.”
From an evolutionary standpoint, the study challenges the assumption that humans are programmed to nurture socially vulnerable members of their tribe for the survival of the species. Walker, author of the bestseller, Why We Sleep, has a theory for why that protective instinct may be lacking in the case of sleep deprivation.
“There’s no biological or social safety net for sleep deprivation as there is for, say, starvation. That's why our physical and mental health implode so quickly even after the loss of just one or two hours of sleep,” Walker said.
HOW THEY CONDUCTED THE STUDY
To gauge the social effects of poor sleep, Walker and Ben Simon conducted a series of intricate experiments using such tools as fMRI brain imaging, standardized loneliness measures, videotaped simulations and surveys via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk online marketplace.
First, researchers tested the social and neural responses of 18 healthy young adults following a normal night’s sleep and a sleepless night. The participants viewed video clips of individuals with neutral expressions walking toward them. When the person on the video got too close, they pushed a button to stop the video, which recorded how close they allowed the person to get.
As predicted, sleep-deprived participants kept the approaching person at a significantly greater distance away – between 18 and 60 percent further back – than when they had been well-rested.
Participants also had their brains scanned as they watched the videos of individuals approaching them. In sleep-deprived brains, researchers found heightened activity in a neural circuit known as the “near space network,” which is activated when the brain perceives potential incoming human threats.
In contrast, another circuit of the brain that encourages social interaction, called the “theory of mind” network, was shut down by sleep deprivation, worsening the problem.
For the online section of the study, more than 1,000 observers recruited via Amazon’s Mechanical Turk marketplace viewed videotapes of study participants discussing commonplace opinions and activities.
The observers were unaware that the subjects had been deprived of sleep and rated each of them based on how lonely they appeared, and whether they would want to interact socially with them. Time and again, they rated study participants in the sleep-deprived state as lonelier and less socially desirable.
To test whether sleep-loss-induced alienation is contagious, researchers asked observers to rate their own levels of loneliness after watching videos of study participants. They were surprised to find that otherwise healthy observers felt alienated after viewing just a 60-second clip of a lonely person.
Finally, researchers looked at whether just one night of good or bad sleep could influence one’s sense of loneliness the next day. Each person’s state of loneliness was tracked via a standardized survey that asked such questions as, “How often do you feel isolated from others” and “Do you feel you don’t have anyone to talk to?”
Notably, researchers found that the amount of sleep a person got from one night to the next accurately predicted how lonely and unsociable they would feel from one day to the next.
“This all bodes well if you sleep the necessary seven to nine hours a night, but not so well if you continue to short-change your sleep,” Walker said.
“On a positive note, just one night of good sleep makes you feel more outgoing and socially confident, and furthermore, will attract others to you.” Walker said.
Yasmin Anwar writes for the UC Berkeley News Center.
Written by: California Department of Public Health
SACRAMENTO – As students return to school, the California Department of Public Health urges parents and guardians to ensure immunizations are on their back-to-school checklist.
Many vaccine-preventable diseases, such as whooping cough and measles, can easily spread in child care and school settings.
“Immunization can help keep our children healthy, in school and ready to learn,” said Dr. Karen Smith, CDPH director and state public health officer. “If you haven’t done so already, check with your child’s doctor to find out what vaccines your child needs. Vaccinations are the best way to ensure that students are protected against serious and preventable diseases.”
When children are not vaccinated, they are at increased risk for getting sick and spreading diseases to students in their classrooms, and children and adults within their communities.
Babies who are too young to be fully vaccinated, and people with weakened immune systems due to cancer or other health conditions are especially susceptible.
California law requires students to receive certain immunizations in order to attend public and private elementary and secondary schools as well as licensed childcare centers.
Schools and licensed childcare centers are required to enforce immunization requirements, maintain immunization records of all children enrolled, and report students’ immunization statuses to CDPH.
Families that are having difficulty obtaining required immunizations prior to the start of school can contact their local health department for assistance in finding other local immunization providers.
Visit www.ShotsforSchool.org for more information on immunization laws and required vaccinations for students in California.