Thursday, May 24, 2012

TMP proposal



Childhood Obesity Among Minorities in America 
There is a growing childhood obesity epidemic, which leads to the development of other health outcomes such as high cholesterol, cardiac problems, along with mental and emotional health and well-being. Childhood obesity increases the chance of chronic illnesses into adulthood by 80%, with regard to the population that does make it into adulthood. A large part of the cause for childhood obesity can be attributed to the media. The media, prominently television, has impacted the way families eat, bombarding them with commercials packed with attention-grabbing music, images, and sweet treats that children swarm to. These commercials specifically affect minorities, who have less access to healthier food and more access to junk food because of its lower costs and accessibility. The majority of neighborhoods in whcih minorities reside heavily lack social capital, where there are more unhealthy resources, and less opportunities to counteract that unhealthy eating pattern. Typically, the lack of interest in what this particular population eats relates to their lack of interest in other challenging areas of life- they are satisfied with the bare minimum, where healthier food becomes more of a luxury and privilege than a right. 
Knowing that the media inadvertently harms our youth of today, shouldn't there be some sort of media intervention?? Is media regulation even a possibility at this day and age? Is the media to blame or are the parents of these overweight children at fault for a decline in their youth's short and long term health?

Childhood Obesity-Tactical Media Project


Childhood Obesity Among Minorities in America 


There is a growing childhood obesity epidemic, which leads to the development of other health outcomes such as high cholesterol, cardiac problems, along with mental and emotional health and well-being. Childhood obesity increases the chance of chronic illnesses into adulthood by 80%, with regard to the population that does make it into adulthood. A large part of the cause for childhood obesity can be attributed to the media. The media, prominently television, has impacted the way families eat, bombarding them with commercials packed with attention-grabbing music, images, and sweet treats that children swarm to. These commercials specifically affect minorities, who have less access to healthier food and more access to junk food because of its lower costs and accessibility. The majority of neighborhoods in whcih minorities reside heavily lack social capital, where there are more unhealthy resources, and less opportunities to counteract that unhealthy eating pattern. Typically, the lack of interest in what this particular population eats relates to their lack of interest in other challenging areas of life- they are satisfied with the bare minimum, where healthier food becomes more of a luxury and privilege than a right. 

Knowing that the media inadvertently harms our youth of today, shouldn't there be some sort of media intervention?? Is media regulation even a possibility at this day and age? Is the media to blame or are the parents of these overweight children at fault for a decline in their youth's short and long term health?



·      Descriptive epidemiology and biological basis
o   Characterize the health issue in biomedical/physiological terms.
§  For example, if you’re focusing on obesity, what is obesity and how is it practically defined?
·      The terms "overweight" and "obesity" refer to a person's overall body weight and whether it's too high in relation to a person’s height. Overweight is having extra body weight from muscle, bone, fat, and/or water. Obesity is having a high amount of extra body fat.

·      Overweight and obesity are the result of “caloric imbalance”—too few calories expended for the amount of calories consumed—and are affected by various genetic, behavioral, and environmental factors.5,6 (CDC)

o   What are the negative health outcomes of the issue?
·      Obesity is highly linked to diabetes, coronary heart disease, high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, Gallstones, Breathing problems, Certain cancers

o   Describe the target population
§  Who is affected?  Anyone with poor dieting, but in my case:
§  African American Children, both male and female, under the age of 18
§  Geographic location – southern states in America, historically predominantly African American     
o   Include incidence and prevalence information.  How common is the disease?
o   In 2007, Mississippi had the highest prevalence of childhood obesity (21.9 percent); Mississippi also had the highest proportion of children who were overweight (44.5 percent)

o   Does incidence differ by race?  Have geographical patterns of the disease been identified?  Does the risk of disease increase with age?  Decrease?  Etc.
o   “In general, children in the Southeast had higher prevalence of childhood obesity.”  http://abcnews.go.com/Health/Wellness/child-obesity-best-worst-states/story?id=10577364

The risk of child obesity decreases with age, as it becomes regular obesity. The disease becomes chronic though, and the earlier it is caught, the higher likelihood of it developing associated diseases in adulthood. Cultural and socioeconomic factors determine that minority groups are at higher risk of exposure.



http://0-search.ebscohost.com.sculib.scu.edu/login.aspx?direct=true&db=a9h&AN=16783723&site=ehost-live

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health/health-topics/topics/obe/

http://www.cdc.gov/healthyyouth/obesity/facts.htm


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8wwYUO0gpug&feature=related
  1. Risk factors and social/political/cultural/environmental context
    • What factors have been associated with increased (and/or decreased) risk of disease? 
§  Birth weight;
§  Obesity in one or both parents; via genetics or same eating patterns/dietary habits
§  More than eight hours spent watching TV a week at the age of three;
§  A short amount of sleep - less than 10.5 hours a night at the age of three;
§  Size in early life - measured at eight and 18 months;
§  Rapid weight gain in the first year of life;
§  Rapid catch-up growth between birth and two years of age;
§  Early development of body fatness in pre-school years - before the age at which body fat should be increasing (at the age of 5-6).

    • At what level do these risk factors operate?  Include risk factors at multiple levels!
INDIVIDUAL- genetics, ethnicity, age predispose to obesity culturally also
RELATIONSHIPS- eating habits of family or friends, or other social groups
COMMUNITY- school lunch programs that offer poor food choices, low social capital neighborhoods, no available or safe areas for outdoor activity and exercise
SOCIETY- Physical Environment- Natural and Built Environment- no parks, only urbanized cities, Health Care System, Economic System, Judicial policies (which neglect to improve neighborhood resources)

    • How strong is the evidence?  Do we know what causes the disease/health problem?
KEEP IN MIND: *“Despite numerous prevalence studies, the complex relationship between the environment and the development of obesity is poorly understood in the paediatric age group. The interactions between the environment, genetic predisposition and growth in children and adolescents have not been studied as they have been in adults.”

    • What is the social context in which your disease/condition and associated risk factors occur?
·      Lack of access to nutritious food- poor socioeconomic status linked to high stress and poor living conditions. Neighborhoods with low social capital and feelings of trust among neighbors have fewer resources, more fast food restaurants, no fresh food stores, and more liquor stores.
·      Phenomena such as redlining and other historically ostracizing events have taken place to seclude certain ethnic groups to one concentrated area of a city. Not much usually happens to remove those barriers and reintegrate those people into the rest of society after legal barriers have been taken down.

    • What is the cultural and political context in which your disease occurs?
                                               i.     Local level policy affects childhood obesity more than state or national level
·      Culture defines what one eats, and minority groups are more exposed to higher fat foods and poor eating habits
·      Culture also predicts one’s feelings about western medicine and the need to visit the hospital for regular check-ups and for check-ups specific to heart disease or problems being overweight. From experience, minorities tend to feel invincible to disease and therefore take less initiative to take hospital visits. Along those lines, minorities also have less access to better health care, and some may even resort to emergency visits rather than taking preventative measures.


Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Crowdsourcing, Remixing, and Creative Commons

  • relate crowd sourcing remixing & relationship of creator to creative commons
  • compare authors views on sharing, intellectual property, originality


Crowd-sourcing
The act of outsourcing tasks, traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, to an undefined, large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.

Crowd sourcing is a method of pooling information for the purpose of gearing that information toward a product or creation, which can either occur online on blogs or entertainment websites or offline, on bulletin boards or a classroom/workplace environment. According to Wikipedia, crowd sourcing is a distributed problem-solving and production model. Crowd sourcing is used to present problems and enable submission of ideas that suggest a solution to the problem. These "problems" or prompts are presented to an unknown audience, a "group of solvers in the form of an open call for solutions". This audience thus takes part in this participatory culture by submitting solutions. The presenter of the problem then becomes owner of that solution, compensating the participant either monetarily, with prizes, or with recognition.
Notice the “Submit a Tip” button on the bottom left corner on the BroTips website
The teeny, tiny legal print states: By uploading, submitting or otherwise disclosing or distributing content for display or inclusion on this site, you give this site unlimited license in perpetuity to the content and the information therein.”

re·mix
 tr.v. re·mixed, re·mix·ing, re·mix·es 
To recombine (audio tracks or channels from a recording) to produce a new or modified audio recording:

Remixing is taking someone else’s original work, usually an audio clip, and adding personal spins on them as a form of criticizing the piece of work the clip is dubbed with. Originally, the term applied to remixing musical tracks by changing their speed or adding different lyrics over an original beat. Of course with innovation came the expansion of the term to apply to visual clips and even literary texts. Because remixing involves taking an original art source for the purpose of altering it to one’s own form, the question of property and creativity comes in. Some see it as a form of theft, stealing intellectual property, and others see it as a medium for participatory culture to flourish. For this reason, much of the remixing goes unrecognized, for their creators choose to stay on the down low to avoid copyright infringement. Collaboration can be made on remixing. Ideas on how to do so can be pooled through crowd-sourcing.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWgO9-AIROI

Creative Commons gives creators or remixers the legal liberty to use original artwork and alter it to any degree with which the original creator of the original work approves of. This, of course, includes licensing which entitles the borrower of the original piece to use it, allowing them to communicate which rights they reserve, and which rights they waive for the benefit of recipients or other creators.