When talking about insurance coverage for substance abuse and mental illnesses, people often assume that the problem is limited to the poor. That assumption is way off the mark. Even for those families with “good” health insurance, coverage is far from easy to obtain. In my own experience, when trying to obtain coverage for residential […]
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Open schools/lifelong learning
Monday, November 02, 2009America has two kinds of schools: the first are well-equipped private and suburban public institutions or magnet/charter schools with inviting facilities where kids feel at home, feel known, and can grow in a nurturing environment. Having invested in their infrastructure, these “beacon” schools have a vested interest in staying open long after the school day […]
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When talking of health care, don’t forget that we are talking about people, not just about money
Monday, October 26, 2009Editor’s note: Following National Alcohol and Drug Addiction Recovery Month, we’ve asked several individuals to share their ideas about addiction issues and the war on drugs. This week, Kimá Joy Taylor, Director of OSI-Baltimore’s Tackling Drug Addiction Initiative, closes the Recovery Month series with her thoughts. *** The recession and other health care changes have […]
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A fresh new alternative
Tuesday, July 07, 2009Everyone has an opinion about school food. That’s because everyone who has attended school is a subject matter expert—those who finished high school have been exposed to approximately 2,400 lunches that were either eaten, ignored, or trashed. Our consciousness of the nutritional value and quality of ingredients of these meals heightens when we send our […]
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Ride your bike to work
Monday, May 04, 2009With spring here, my audacious idea is to ride your bike to work. I know this sounds crazy when you think of the narrow streets of Baltimore but, this city has the potential to become a great bike city. For its size, 630,000 residents, it is very compact, making many of its neighborhoods easy to […]
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We are the experts we seek
Monday, June 23, 2008Our society teaches us to seek out “experts”— to fix our cars, heal our bodies, manage our relationships, resolve our conflicts. You’d think we can’t do much for ourselves. We’ve created a “nation of clients.” Remember the commercial that shows a big-bellied man sitting at the lunch counter with massive indigestion? The message of the […]
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Protect our children
Monday, June 16, 2008My audacious idea is that we all commit to protecting and nurturing our children. Protecting our children requires responsible parenting. It is unacceptable that any child lives in a home where he or she is not wanted and cared for. It is up to us as a community to show all children that they have […]
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Operation Pawpaw: a (food) security plan for Baltimore
Monday, November 26, 2007According to farmers and environmental activists, both the supply and the demand for locally sourced food have increased exponentially each year. The benefits of this movement are many, from the preservation of farmland (and the slowing of sprawl) to the reduced carbon load (grocery store produce travels an average of 1,500 miles to your table). […]
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Getting the data on health
Monday, October 01, 2007The first time I attended a community meeting with Mayor Sheila Dixon, I was intimidated by the set-up: Mayor in front, those of us in her cabinet sitting across on a stage behind her. Like sitting ducks. When the meeting started, my anxiety rose further. An elderly woman came forward to ask a question. The […]
