State is striving to help mothers
(Baltimore Sun)
Howard
officials seek more participants for health plan
(Baltimore Sun)
Regulate your salt intake
for better health
(Baltimore Sun)
Teens near liquor
stores have more drinking issues
(Baltimore Sun)
Smoking ban may have cut heart
attacks
(Baltimore Sun)
Magic in the water
(Baltimore Sun)
Review emergency plans with kids
(Baltimore Sun)
For Privacy’s Sake,
Taking Risks to End Pregnancy
(New York Times)
Baltimore County offering
free Pap tests
(Baltimore Examiner)
State is striving to help mothers
Baltimore Sun
Letter to the Editor
Monday, January
5, 2009
The editorial
"Help for young mothers" (Dec. 22) highlights a critical health issue. But it
should be noted that the O'Malley administration has expanded medical coverage
and increased primary prevention services, providing Medicaid coverage to an
additional 30,000 parents this year and allowing more women to be enrolled in
health care coverage before a pregnancy.
All 24 of
Maryland's local health departments are also now actively involved in enrolling
women eligible for these services to ensure prenatal care is available as early
as possible.
Many have
private-public partnerships under way to ensure access to prenatal care for
women who are not eligible for Medicaid.
In the last two
years, the administration has also significantly increased funding for the
Babies Born Healthy initiative.
This program,
under way in Baltimore, Prince George's County and several other jurisdictions,
supports services for women and strengthens the capacity of care providers to
deal with high-risk pregnancies through tele-medicine consultations and a
training partnership with our academic medical institutions.
Such projects
focus on promoting women's wellness, improving the health of women before and
between pregnancies and ensuring access to family planning.
John M. Colmers
Baltimore
The writer is
secretary of the Maryland Department of Health and Mental Health Hygiene.
Copyright ©
2009, The Baltimore Sun.
Howard
officials seek more participants for health plan
A county
councilman had criticized low first month enrollment
Baltimore Sun
Monday, January
5, 2009
Stung by
criticism from a County Council member that Howard County's new health access
plan has enrolled too few residents, officials are refocusing their efforts to
find more people who qualify.
County health officer Dr. Peter L. Beilenson said today that to ensure continued
political support for the Healthy Howard Plan, he's now specifically seeking
county residents without health insurance who don't qualify for any existing
insurance program.
The plan is seeking to provide access to health care to all of the estimated
20,000 limited-income residents who have no insurance, but in the first month's
enrollments in October, all but 66 of the 1,100 who applied qualified for
existing insurance programs. That drew criticism from County Councilman Greg
Fox, a Fulton Republican, who suggested Beilenson didn't do enough research on
the need before launching the program, which is partially funded with $500,000
in county money.
But with economic problems nationally and government revenues ailing, Beilenson
said he wants to forestall criticism.
"I don't want to be concerned about people questioning using $500,000," he said.
Beilenson said he is now seeking Howard Community College students, residents of
county subsidized housing, contractual county and state employees, and others
who have incomes too high for existing programs but too low to afford insurance.
Healthy Howard provides access to doctors and specialists for a nominal monthly
fee but is not insurance.
The goal was to enroll up to 2,200 people the first year, though Beilenson said
1,500 would be "defensible."
People not likely eligible for Healthy Howard will be placed on a waiting list,
he said.
"The sad thing about the quotes raised by councilman Fox is that we're solely
focusing on Healthy Howard for the next two months, and not on other programs,"
Beilenson said. He is proud, he said, that 7 percent of the county's uninsured
people now have insurance because they applied to the new program.
"We want to make sure we get our enrollment numbers up," he said, adding that by
June there aren't more than a few hundred enrolled, that could signal a problem.
Fox criticized Beilenson's latest move, too.
"The reality is, if there were that many people who need this program, they
should have been lined up. He's got 66," Fox said.
Copyright
2008 Baltimore Sun.
Regulate your salt intake
for better health
Expert advice
By Holly Selby
Baltimore Sun
Monday, January 5, 2009
We all know that salt is an essential ingredient of
life. It helps maintain the electrolyte balance of our cells. It helps transmit
nerve impulses. It aides muscle contraction and relaxation. Our blood is 0.9
percent salt.
But as with most anything, says Dr. Mahmoud Alikhan,
cardiologist with the St. Joseph Medical Center, moderation is the key - and too
much salt can be unhealthy.
How much salt does a typical healthy adult need?
The average American eats about 5 to 10 grams of
sodium chloride in his daily diet, and that is too much. What we need is just
about 2 to 4 grams of salt.
On the other hand, we have to be careful: In our
society, salt is a source of iodine, and if people become too drastic in their
cutting back of salt, it could become problematic.
What happens when your diet includes too much
salt?
There is an intricate interdependence in the body and
with salt. Like anything else, too much or too little is bad. Too much salt and
the blood pressure goes up, and heart disease comes along. When you have too
much salt, it goes out in the urine, and when it goes out in the urine, it takes
along calcium, and when calcium drops, the body compensates by taking it from
and weakening the bone, so it is important to keep salt intake low. People with
osteoporosis - who have weakened bones anyway - should, in particular, eat a
low-salt diet.
What is the link between salt and high blood
pressure?
It is a pretty complex interaction, but the practical
part is that sodium increases water retention, which increases the pressure.
As people grow older, they have weaker hearts and all
that sodium-laden blood is harder to keep pumping. Somebody with very good heart
compensation may go out to eat with their families and will come back having
eaten all that salt and they will have swollen feet and fluid in the lungs. It's
the salt.
Are there certain populations for which a
high-salt diet is particularly risky?
Those who have hypertension or heart conditions.
Aside from not salting your food, are there other
ways to cut back on salt in our daily diets?
Avoiding salt means more than not simply salting your
food. It also means avoiding foods that already have high amounts of salt. For
example, Chinese food with monosodium glutamate is high in salt. Salted, pickled
fish, canned goods and many soups are problematic. Eating out generally has its
own disadvantages, because you can't control the amount of salt in the cooking.
Check labels: If any food label says it contains more
than 300 milligrams per serving, that is a high-salt food and anything with 300
grams of salt per serving is something to avoid.
Are there any foods in particular you would avoid?
I would learn about the salt content of anything you
love to eat. Some people are surprised to discover that their favorite foods are
high in salt. Camembert cheese is not low in salt. Even milk has sodium in it:
eight ounces of milk have about 100 milligrams of sodium, which is about 220
milligrams of salt. Gatorade has 110 milligrams of sodium.
How do you personally make sure you are eating
moderate amounts of salt in your daily diet?
We make sure to use more pepper than salt at the
table, and we avoid pickled foods, bouillon cubes, salty chips and nuts, lunch
or cured meats (there is no such thing as low-salt ham).
When we were tilling the soil, perhaps eating salt
was necessary, but with current technological advances, it is no longer
necessary to eat so much salt. And after awhile, people get used to a low-salt
diet, and they don't even miss it.
Holly Selby is a former reporter for The Baltimore
Sun.
Copyright
2008 Baltimore Sun.
Teens near liquor
stores have more drinking issues
Baltimore Sun
Monday, January
5, 2009
The closer teens
live to where alcohol is sold, the greater the seeming risk of binge drinking
and driving under the influence.
Researchers from
the Pardee Rand Graduate School in Santa Monica, Calif., researched the
relationship between proximity to alcohol retailers in zones around homes in
California and drinking in children ages 12 to 17. They found an association
among homes within walking distance (about half a mile) of places selling
alcohol and evidence of binge drinking and driving after drinking.
The study,
published online in the American Journal of Public Health, also noted that
alcohol is more readily available in minority and lower-income areas. In
predominantly white neighborhoods, within a half-mile there are an average 5.5
locations with active alcohol licenses. In predominantly African-American
neighborhoods, it's 6.4 locations; in predominantly Latino, 8.6; and in
predominantly Asian, 9.5.
Researchers
point out that living in areas with higher alcohol sales could also mean more
exposure to violent crime and drunken driving.
Los Angeles
Times
Copyright
2008 Baltimore Sun.
Smoking ban may have cut heart
attacks
Associated Press
Baltimore Sun
Monday, January 5, 2009
A smoking ban in one Colorado city led to a dramatic
drop in heart attack hospitalizations, according to a new study that is
considered the best and longest-term research to show such a link.
The rate of hospitalized cases dropped 41 percent
three years after the ban of workplace smoking in Pueblo, Colo., took effect.
There was no such drop in two neighboring areas, and researchers believe it's a
clear sign the ban was responsible.
The study suggests that secondhand smoke may be a
terrible and under-recognized cause of heart attack deaths in this country, said
one of its authors, Terry Pechacek of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and
Prevention.
At least eight earlier studies have linked smoking
bans to decreased heart attacks, but none ran as long as three years. Some
critics had questioned whether a ban could have such an immediate impact, and
suggested other factors could have driven the declines.
Copyright
2008 Baltimore Sun.
Magic in the water
Trips to the National Aquarium are key to a Kennedy
Krieger program that helps autistic youngsters master social skills
By Kelly Brewington
Baltimore Sun
Monday, January 5, 2009
Tyquelle Washington is a wiry 8-year-old with an
infectious smile, boundless energy - but not a single friend. During board
games, he interrupts his cousins and won't take turns. At school, he rarely
listens to other children's interests, choosing instead to chatter about his
own.
Like many autistic children, Tyquelle doesn't seem to
know how to interact with people or form relationships. But he's learning skills
that often come naturally to others through an experimental therapy in an
unconventional setting - during trips to the National Aquarium in Baltimore.
The 16-week program designed by therapists at
Baltimore's Kennedy Krieger Institute's Center for Autism and Related Disorders
uses the entertaining backdrop of the aquarium to engage high-functioning
autistic children and lay the foundations of essential social behaviors.
As the youngsters hold lizards and gaze at sea
urchins, two psychologists provide intensive behavior therapy that teaches
children how to read visual cues, understand emotions and take an interest in
others. The therapists work with a group of children ages 6 through 8 and
another ages 10 through 12, stages that are considered critical for building
social interaction. While many autism treatments emphasize one-on-one contact,
this one brings together groups of four children to create, clinicians hope,
bonds that last.
"For children with high-functioning autism, social
skills deficits can present barriers to participating in school and community
life as they get older," said Dr. Rebecca Landa, director of the autism center.
"Addressing these challenges in a structured way can offer school-age children
with high-functioning autism the potential to have more of the same experiences
as their typically developing peers, from having a friend to going on a field
trip."
The very nature of autism is perplexing. One in 150
children nationwide is affected by a range of related disabilities known as
autism spectrum disorders, which vary widely and are different in every child.
Doctors are not sure what causes autism, there is no cure and the field is
crowded with new research theories and therapies.
Kennedy Krieger has found that constant repetition
and prompting are key to therapies that help autistic children understand how to
relate to others.
Tyquelle's program is called BUDS, for Building Up
Development of Socialization. The staff works with the children once a week,
alternating between classroom therapy and trips to the aquarium. Using a
colorful flow chart, the kids learn to describe their emotions and recognize the
consequences of their behavior. They are taught how to make eye contact, when to
approach a playmate and even how to e-mail them. Before going to the aquarium,
they get homework outlining exactly what they should expect during the visit.
Parents are invited to watch the classroom therapies
through a one-way mirror and are encouraged to join the aquarium trips. At the
aquarium, they dole out positive reinforcement with points when their child
follows directions, communicates his needs or offers to help someone. The more
points, the bigger the prize at the end of the visit.
A few weeks ago, Tyquelle and his grandmother Lettuce
Clark joined the group for their first visit to the aquarium for a 1 1/2 -hour
scavenger hunt.
The boys are all full of adrenaline as they approach
the aquarium entrance, rushing to the exhibits and leaving their families, two
teachers and three aquarium educators trailing behind.
The youngsters move from tank to tank, searching for
animal life listed in their homework. The goal is not only to check off as many
bullfrogs and electric eels as they can find, but also to share the encounter
with others.
Through much of the visit, therapists Elizabeth
Stripling and Brian Freedman prompt the boys: "Show your friends!" and "What do
you see?" But a couple of times, Tyquelle initiates discussions on his own.
"Come look, it's a flounder!" Tyquelle squeals to the
others. "It's down there - it's concealed in the sand. He looks like he's
looking at you."
Cameron Langkam, 8, comes rushing over and is
immediately mesmerized by the tank. But he doesn't respond to Tyquelle, and
after a moment runs to the next exhibit. He's still chattering about the
sturgeon from three tanks ago, which he calls the "seduction fish," to the
amusement of the adults.
Stripling and Freedman offer Tyquelle an emphatic
round of "good job!" for trying to engage Cameron.
For much of the visit, the boys have a blast, weaving
through the meandering exhibits, giggling and peppering the aquarium staff and
even passers-by with questions.
Still, there are moments of intense frustration.
Cameron's mechanical pencil becomes dull and he plops down on the floor, shouts
that it's broken and refuses to continue the assignment. Freedman squats to his
level, and calmly instructs him to ask for help. Cameron does. And the pencil
incident is over as quickly as it started.
Near the end of the visit, Tyquelle pouts, shouts to
no one in particular "I'm starving," and declares he wants to go home that
instant. He did not have an after-school snack today, explains Clark, with the
knowing look of a caregiver who understands this craving for routine. A peanut
butter and jelly sandwich is the first thing Tyquelle asks for after school, but
on this day, she and her grandson were running late.
Clark tries to refocus Tyquelle on the work. "We're
almost done," she says steadily, grabbing hold of his assignment. "OK, what's
next?"
She says later that when she first became his
guardian, she was often impatient. "But one day I said to myself, 'Why are you
doing this?' I had to go into my inner self and remind myself that I needed to
have a lot of patience." Parents and guardians of autistic children often worry
that taking their child into the community will result in an embarrassing
meltdown, said Stripling. The program tries to instill confidence that they can
enjoy an outing like any other family.
Still, after a while, the children become exhausted.
"What we are asking these kids to do is really
tough," said Freedman, clinical director for autism at Kennedy Krieger. "We are
asking them to focus and use these social interaction skills that, while
intuitive for most individuals, are not for these kids. We are working on
muscles that need a lot of work to grow. And afterward, their social muscles are
sore."
Cameron's mother, Victoria Langkam, said her son
nonetheless looks forward to the program. He is a triplet and his two brothers
are also autistic. One is nonverbal. While the trio is close, Langkam says they
are not playmates in the typical sense.
At home, Tyquelle doesn't talk about Cameron or the
other boys in the program, but once he arrives at the classroom or the aquarium
and gets a glimpse of the others, he becomes excited, Clark said.
It's a far cry from Tyquelle's behavior when Clark,
66, gained custody of him four years ago. Clark, a retired examiner at the
Social Security Administration, volunteered to become his guardian after
worrying that her son and his girlfriend weren't giving him enough attention.
Back then, Tyquelle couldn't talk and would scream or
cry at the slightest touch. Child care centers refused to take him. But one
provider suggested that he could have autism and recommended Kennedy Krieger to
Clark.
Since his diagnosis, Tyquelle has participated in a
host of speech and behavior therapies. Clark reinforces the work at home with a
behavior chart, rewarding Tyquelle with a blue, silver or gold star. A blue star
means he receives a dollar, $2 for a silver and $3 for gold.
Today, he's a third-grader at the Chatsworth School
in Reisterstown for children with disabilities. Clark was beaming when she
shared the results of Tyquelle's latest report card - all A's and B's and
glowing comments about his progress.
"I am proud he has come so far," Clark said. "His
teachers are always saying how bright he is. I just try to make him independent.
I want him to do as much for himself as he can."
Freedman and Stripling are still evaluating the
success of the BUDS program. So far, they have used parent questionnaires to
gauge the children's progress and most have reported improvements. Freedman said
they hope to tweak the program, fine-tune how they measure progress and develop
it into a model that could be used by others.
Clark thinks Tyquelle is beginning to learn the
concept of friendship. She says that before he joined BUDS, a therapist asked
him if he had any friends. "No," he replied flatly.
When the therapist followed up by asking did he want
friends, he burst into a wide grin and said, "Yes!"
Copyright
2008 Baltimore Sun.
Review emergency plans with kids
Charm City Moms
By Kate Shatzkin
Baltimore Sun
Monday, January 5, 2009
The fresh start of a new year is a good opportunity
to review your family's emergency plans. What should your kids be expected to do
in a disaster? How do you prepare them without scaring them?
The American Academy of Pediatrics has an excellent
family-friendly guide to preparing for disasters. You can find the full menu of
resources, including lists of emergency supplies to keep on hand, at aap.org/healthtopics/disasters.cfm.
Meanwhile, here are some pointers on how to prepare your child for emergencies:
•"Tell children that a disaster is something that
could hurt people or cause damage," the organization's site says. "Explain that
nature sometimes provides 'too much of a good thing'- fire, rain, and wind."
•Teach kids how to call for help and when to use each
emergency number.
•Designate a family contact who lives outside your
town and instruct your child to call that person if you're separated.
•Teach children to keep personal identification with
them at all times.
•Every six months, go over your family disaster plan
(including two escape routes from each room) and quiz children on it.
Copyright
2008 Baltimore Sun.
For Privacy’s Sake,
Taking Risks to End Pregnancy
By Jennifer Lee and Cara Buckley
New York Times
Monday, January 5, 2009
Amalia Dominguez was 18 and desperate and knew
exactly what to ask for at the small, family-run pharmacy in the heart of
Washington Heights, the thriving Dominican enclave in northern Manhattan. “I
need to bring down my period,” she recalled saying in Spanish, using a euphemism
that the pharmacist understood instantly.
It was 12 years ago, but the memory remains vivid:
She was handed a packet of pills. They were small and white, $30 for 12. Ms.
Dominguez, two or three months pregnant, went to a friend’s apartment and
swallowed the pills one by one, washing them down with malta, a molasseslike
extract sold in nearly every bodega in the neighborhood.
The cramps began several hours later, doubling Ms.
Dominguez over, building and building until, eight and a half hours later, she
locked herself in the bathroom and passed a lifeless fetus, which she flushed.
The pills were misoprostol, a prescription drug that
is approved by the Food and Drug Administration for reducing gastric ulcers and
that researchers say is commonly, though illegally, used within the Dominican
community to induce abortion. Two new studies by reproductive-health providers
suggest that improper use of such drugs is one of myriad methods, including
questionable homemade potions, frequently employed in attempts to end
pregnancies by women from fervently anti-abortion cultures despite the
widespread availability of safe, legal and inexpensive abortions in clinics and
hospitals.
One study surveyed 1,200 women, mostly Latinas, in
New York, Boston and San Francisco and is expected to be released in the spring;
the other, by Planned Parenthood, involved a series of focus groups with 32
Dominican women in New York and Santo Domingo. Together, they found reports of
women mixing malted beverages with aspirin, salt or nutmeg; throwing themselves
down stairs or having people punch them in the stomach; and drinking teas of
avocado leaf, pine wood, oak bark and mamon fruit peel.
Interviews with several community leaders and
individual women in Washington Heights echoed the findings, and revealed even
more unconventional methods like “juice de jeans,” a noxious brew made by
boiling denim hems.
“Some women prefer to have a more private experience
with their abortion, which is certainly understandable,” said Dr. Daniel
Grossman, an obstetrician with Ibis Reproductive Health in San Francisco, which
joined Gynuity Health Projects in New York in conducting the larger study. “The
things they mention are, ‘It is easier.’ It was recommended to them by a friend
or a family member.”
Dr. Carolyn Westhoff, an obstetrician at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia
University Medical Center, said the trend fits into a larger context of
Dominicans seeking home remedies rather than the care of doctors or hospitals,
partly because of a lack of insurance but mostly because of a lack of trust in
the health care system. “This is not just a culture of self-inducted abortion,”
she said. “This is a culture of going to the pharmacy and getting the medicine
you need.”
Physicians say that women can obtain the pills either
through pharmacies that are willing to bend the rules and provide the medicine
without a prescription or by having the drugs shipped from overseas.
It is impossible to know how many women in New York
or nationwide try to end their pregnancies themselves, but in the vibrant,
socially conservative Dominican neighborhoods of Upper Manhattan, the various
methods are passed like ancient cultural secrets. In a study of 610 women at
three New York clinics in largely Dominican neighborhoods conducted eight years
ago, 5 percent said they had taken misoprostol themselves, and 37 percent said
they knew it was an abortion-inducing drug. Doctors and community leaders say
they have not seen any signs of the phenomenon disappearing, which they find
worrisome because of concerns about the drug’s effectiveness and potential side
effects.
Sold under the brand name Cytotec, misoprostol is
approved to induce abortion when taken with mifepristone, or RU-486; doctors
also sometimes use it to induce labor, though it is not approved for that use. A
spokesman for Pfizer, which manufacturers Cytotec, declined to comment beyond
saying that the company does not support the off-label use of its products and
noting that the label includes “F.D.A.’s strongest warning against use in women
who are pregnant.”
That warning, in capital letters, also notes that the
drug “can cause abortion.”
But it does not always do so, not least because
notions of how best to use it vary from inserting several pills into the vagina
to letting them dissolve under the tongue. The side effects can be serious, and
include rupture of the uterus, severe bleeding and shock.
“We do worry because we don’t know where women are
getting the instructions from,” said Jessica Gonzalez-Rojas of the National
Latina Institute for Reproductive Health, which was also a partner on the Ibis
study. “We imagine that there is misinformation on how to take it, which is why
it could be hit or miss.”
In 2007 in Massachusetts, an 18-year-old Dominican
immigrant named Amber Abreu took misoprostol in her 25th week of pregnancy and
gave birth to a 1-pound baby girl who died four days later; a judge sentenced
her in June to probation and ordered her into therapy. In South Carolina in
February, a Mexican migrant farm worker, Gabriela Flores, pleaded guilty to
illegally performing an abortion and was sentenced to 90 days in jail for taking
misoprostol while four months pregnant in 2004. A Virginia man, Daniel Riase, is
serving a five-year prison sentence after pleading guilty in 2007 to slipping
the pills into his pregnant girlfriend’s glass of milk.
Researchers studying the phenomenon cite several
factors that lead Dominican and other immigrant women to experiment with
abortifacients: mistrust of the health-care system, fear of surgery, worry about
deportation, concern about clinic protesters, cost and shame.
“It turns an abortion into a natural process and
makes it look like a miscarriage,” said Dr. Mark Rosing, an obstetrician at St.
Barnabas Hospital in the Bronx who led the 2000 study, which was published in
the Journal of the American Medical Women’s Association. “For people who don’t
have access to abortion for social reasons, financial reasons or immigration
reasons, it doesn’t seem like this horrible thing.”
Ms. Dominguez, for her part, said she had no
insurance or money to pay for an abortion, and could not fathom getting one for
fear her mother would find out. One of her friends had spent $1,200 on an
abortion that left her with a uterine infection, and another friend endured the
procedure without anesthesia, she said. In addition, Washington Heights is a
tightknit community where abortion — as well as birth control — is shunned; if
Ms. Dominguez were spotted entering a clinic, rumors could fly.
“There are scary moments, and you got to have a
friend right next to you,” said Ms. Dominguez, now 30 and a mother of four.
“It’s cheap but dangerous. Certain people are more delicate than others. But
afterwards, I felt relief.”
A friend of Ms. Dominguez’s said her stepsister took
the pills last year because she was in the country illegally, and worried that a
doctor might turn her in. “She was just scared,” the woman said, speaking on the
condition that her name not be published to protect the stepsister’s privacy.
“She had no papers, no insurance, no nothing.”
The woman went to a free clinic afterward to make
sure the pills had worked (they had). Health care workers and other community
leaders say such visits are how they discovered widespread illicit use of the
drug as well as homemade potions.
Dr. Rosing said he learned about Cytotec during his
residency at NewYork-Presbyterian/Columbia hospital in Washington Heights, where
he saw a lot of Dominican immigrants with incomplete abortions in the emergency
room. They spoke of taking the “star pill,” a nickname for the hexagonal shape
of one form of misoprostol. He suspected “that has to be the tip of the
iceberg,” he said, “and it was.”
The pills allow pregnant women a degree of denial
over what is taking place. Like Ms. Dominguez, many women in the neighborhood
talk about the need to bring on — or “down” — their periods, not abortion.
Afterward, they might tell doctors or relatives they had lost the baby.
The Planned Parenthood study concluded that women in
both nations “seemed to see inducing the termination of pregnancy, or abortions,
as a part of the reality of their lives,” in a community where, as one interview
subject put it, “we are all doctors.” The report noted that in a culture steeped
in machismo, birth control is generally seen as the woman’s responsibility.
“If I introduce the condom into a relationship, I’m
basically saying I’ve had somebody else, and I’ve not been faithful to you,”
said Haydee Morales, a vice president at Planned Parenthood of New York.
Debralee Santos, program director at Casa Duarte, a
community arts organization in Washington Heights, said that while she had never
had reason to distrust medical professionals, she understood the apprehensions
that kept other women from seeking them out. “I get it, I really do,” she said.
“It’s a community that, even as it comes of age,
always relies on itself first,” explained Ms. Santos, who was born in the United
States to immigrant parents. “Women, in particular, continue to help each other
in ways that speak to tradition and solidarity.”
Ms. Dominguez, who volunteers at Casa Duarte and is
known as Flaca, Spanish for skinny, did not want her name or photograph
published at first. But after some thought, she decided to allow it so more
people would learn about the trap many pregnant Dominican women feel they are
in.
“It’s a health risk,” she said. “There’s a lot of
girls in situations like that, and they’re overwhelmed.”
Copyright
2008 New York Times.
Baltimore County offering
free Pap tests
Baltimore Examiner
Monday, January 5, 2008
In honor of January being Cervical Cancer Awareness
Month, the Baltimore County Health Department is offering free Pap tests,
mammograms and breast exams for eligible women between 18 and 65.
The department also screens for eligibility,
schedules appointments and manages the cases of women with abnormal test
results.
About 11,000 women in the United States are diagnosed
with cervical cancer each year, and more than 3,500 women will die from the
disease. A Pap test, which is recommended annually, is one of the most effective
ways to detect cervical cancer, health officials said.
For more information on these free tests, call
410-887-3432 or visit baltimorecountymd.gov/go/cancerprogram.
Copyright
2008 Baltimore Examiner.
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