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Diabetic retinopathy is the leading cause of blindness among 20- to 64-year-olds with diabetes, according to background information in the article. The condition occurs when diabetes-related changes to the body damage the blood vessels of the retina. Proliferative retinopathy (involving the growth of new blood vessels in the retina) and macular edema (when fluid leaks into the macula, the part of the eye responsible for sharp vision) — collectively called vision-threatening diabetic retinopathy — are the two main causes of vision loss in patients with diabetes.
Monique S. Roy, M.D., of New Jersey Medical School, University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey, Newark, and Malvin N. Janal, Ph.D., of the New York University College of Dentistry, assessed 469 African American patients with type 1 diabetes who originally enrolled in the study between 1993 and 1998. Then and after a six-year follow-up (between 1999 and 2004), participants completed a food frequency questionnaire, had a complete eye examination, underwent blood testing and had photographs of the retina taken to determine progression of diabetic retinopathy.
Individuals with the highest caloric intake at the beginning of the study were more likely to develop vision-threatening retinopathy by the end of the six-year period. In addition, high sodium intake at the initial examination was associated with the development of macular edema.
“In African American patients with type 1 diabetes, high caloric and sodium intakes are significant and independent risk factors for progression to severe forms of diabetic retinopathy,” the authors conclude. “These results suggest that low caloric and sodium intakes in African American individuals with type 1 diabetes mellitus may have a beneficial effect on the progression of diabetic retinopathy and thus might be part of dietary recommendations for this population.”
This work was supported by grants from the National Eye Institute, Bethesda, Md., and a Lew Wasserman Merit Award from Research to Prevent Blindness, Inc., New York.
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Thirty-four percent of new male HIV infections are in the 40-plus age range and 36 percent of new female HIV infections are in the 40-plus age range. Yet according to the Black AIDS Institute, there have been very few campaigns targeting this population.
“Last year Washington D.C. reported that one in 10 residents between the ages of 40 and 49 had the virus,” says Black AIDS Institute Founder and CEO Phill Wilson. “That is an epidemic that rivals the worst AIDS epidemics in the poorest countries on the planet.”
The Black AIDS Institute has found an innovative way to help Black people ages 40 and up become more aware of HIV/AIDS while raising money to fight the disease in Black communities. The campaign is called Trump AIDS. The campaign uses the traditional Black pastime of bid whist, popular with Black Americans aged 40-plus, as a unique way to target this often overlooked HIV/AIDS demographic. The Martin Luther King Jr. weekend kick-off event in Atlanta, GA includes a Bid Whist Qualifying Tournament and Health Fair in partnership with local Atlanta organizations Sister Love and AID Atlanta.
“We are proud to partner with the Black AIDS Institute on this new and innovative awareness campaign to reach Black Americans,” says Sister Love Founder and President Dazon Dixon. “When two-thirds of the new HIV/AIDS cases among women in the US are Black, now more than ever it’s important to educate and reach every demographic of the Black community.”
The Health Fair includes free onsite HIV testing for all Tournament attendees, players and guests. All are welcome to attend.
“Rates of HIV in persons over 50 years of age are 12 times higher among African Americans than among whites,” according to Achieve Quarterly’s article on HIV Prevention by Timothy G. Heckman, Ph.D. “Older people do not consider themselves at risk. Physicians rarely talk to older patients about sex or other risk behaviors.”
“Trump AIDS is an unprecedented event that will provide Black people who are not actively engaged in the HIV battle with access to important health information,” says Black AIDS Institute COO Aron Myers. “This is a tremendous opportunity for the Atlanta community and good citizenship for all.”
“There’s no way to end the AIDS epidemic in Black communities without targeting this population,” adds Wilson. “The Black AIDS Institute has spent the last decade meeting Black folks where they are. Trump AIDS is a perfect example of identifying an indigenous past time in our community and using it to deliver culturally effective messaging. Everything about this effort, from the date and city where we launch the campaign to celebrity co-chairs—Danny Glover and Jackee Harry—celebrate Black culture.”
“I’m proud to be a Co-Chair of the TrumpAIDS campaign,” says Actor and AIDS Activist Danny Glover. “AIDS does not only affect a select demographic such as youth, women, or gays. It affects all groups of people. That is why Trump AIDS is such an important campaign for Black people to support and participate in. We must unite as a community — for the sake of our community. To do nothing is to be part of the problem.”
Trump AIDS launches in Atlanta, GA in partnership with the 7NO! Players.
“The 7NO! Players are excited to host the kick-off event in Atlanta, GA Martin Luther King Jr. weekend,’ says Montez Collins, President, 7NO! Players. “We look forward to welcoming all of our regular bid whist players and any new comers who are interested in learning more about the game.”
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As the economic downturn grows longer and more severe, it’s hard to find any proposals to cut costs that can be taken completely off the table. Programs that were recently considered untouchable have now been placed under the budgetary microscope.
In a couple of states — Mississippi and Georgia — government officials have even started questioning the status of public HBCUs — historically black colleges and universities. By doing so, however, those officials might only be speeding up a process of HBCUs becoming mainstream that is complete in West Virginia and is well under way in North Carolina.
HBCU is an official designation given by the federal government in the Education Act of 1965 to all institutions of higher education that had been created primarily to educate African-Americans. Such schools are eligible to receive special types of federal funding. Colleges that were either founded after 1964 or had a predominantly white student body at that time are not considered HBCUs.
HBCUs do not discriminate in admissions. They are open to everybody who meets their admissions criteria, and most public HBCUs have significant non-black populations.
In Mississippi, Gov. Haley Barbour recently proposed that the state’s three HBCUs be combined into one. His intent was to save money by eliminating duplicate programs and administrative positions. The idea was met with a loud outcry by the schools’ supporters. An Inside Higher Ed article quoted one black educator, Julius Chambers (the former president of North Carolina Central University) as saying the move “is obviously a slap at black colleges.”
Barbour’s plan is not likely to produce the savings he anticipates without a serious reduction in the services provided. Because the three schools are geographically dispersed, combining programs to cut costs will mean that many courses and majors previously offered will simply unavailable on some of the campuses.
Earlier in the year, Georgia state Sen. Seth Harp suggested that two public HBCUs join with two non-HBCUs in the same cities: Savannah State with Armstrong Atlantic State and Albany State with Darton College. His proposal was greeted immediately with an adverse reaction as well.
Yet his proposal would likely result in considerable savings (although no action has been taken on it thus far). By combining schools in the same city, the mergers would allow the schools to eliminate many duplicate positions in the administrations, some of them with six-figure salaries. And there would be no reason to get rid of academic programs if departments are combined.
Although any proposal negatively affecting HBCUs is likely to encounter some political resistance, major changes might be inevitable. For instance, in West Virginia, the state’s two public HBCUs have gradually become predominantly white. Bluefield State College is now only 12 percent black, and West Virginia State University is only 17 percent black.
In North Carolina, which has the most four-year HBCUs in the country, there have been no such proposals — yet. But at all five of the state HBCUs, the proportion of non-black students has risen above 10 percent. In some specific programs, such as N.C. Central University’s law school, African-Americans are now a minority.
These changes are likely to affect two UNC schools the most. The percentage of black undergraduate students at Elizabeth City State University has dropped to 79.7 for the 2009-10 school year, while at Fayetteville State University, it has fallen to only 72.1 percent.
These two schools share an important difference from the other three HBCUs in North Carolina. While the other three universities are in either the Triangle or Triad, where there are multiple UNC campuses, ECSU and FSU are the only public universities within a reasonable commuting distance in their regions of the state.
The Fayetteville area also has several military bases, which may explain why FSU is the most racially diverse of the five UNC HBCUs. Cooperation between the UNC system and the military is growing, and the high probability of future joint endeavors suggests there will be a greater military presence on campus.
ECSU has also added a couple of programs that should increase the non-black campus population. One is a branch of UNC-Chapel Hill’s pharmacy program. The other is an aviation school.
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Comcast Corporation, one of the nation’s leading provider of entertainment, information and communications services, has promoted Hank Fore to Regional Vice President of the Oregon/SW Washington region. Fore will report directly to Comcast West Division President Steve White and will oversee all aspects of Comcast’s video, high-speed Internet and telephone operations from Longview, WA to Eugene, OR, serving more than 600,000 customers and managing about 2,100 employees. Fore begins his new role immediately and will be based in the company’s Beaverton, Oregon office.
Fore joins Oregon from Comcast’s East Bay Area market in California, where he most recently served as Area Vice President. In this position, he held management responsibilities for about 500,000 customers and 1,100 employees. Under Fore’s leadership, he immediately focused on improving the customer experience, dramatically improving the local technical operations metrics, including on time arrival of technicians and repeat trouble calls. He successfully launched a number of advanced services to his customers, adding Comcast Digital Voice, expanding HD and VOD options, and increasing high-speed internet speeds. In addition, Fore’s employees helped vote Comcast as a “Best Place to Work” for three consecutive years in The San Francisco Business Times, East Bay Business Times and the Silicon Valley/San Jose Business Journal.
“I’m honored to join such a customer-focused and technologically innovative team,” Fore said. “I look forward to working with Comcast’s outstanding employees in Oregon & Southwest Washington to further improve Comcast’s relationship with our customers, and bring them even more exciting technologies and entertainment.”
Fore is a West Point graduate and began his distinguished career with the United States Armed Forces, holding numerous positions. Ultimately he achieved the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in the U.S. Army before deciding to retire to pursue a career in the private sector, serving as an executive in technology roles at Times Mirror and International Network Services. Prior to joining Comcast, Fore served as a Regional Vice President at Lucent Technologies, where he oversaw technical support services.
In making the announcement, White stated, “Hank’s leadership skills and innovation are a perfect match for the dynamic Oregon/SW Washington market, and his customer focus will deliver great results in all aspects of the business.”
Fore earned a bachelor’s degree in Engineering from West Point and a master’s degree in Computer Science and Engineering from the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California.
Pictured: Hank Fore, Regional Vice President, Comcast Oregon/SW Washington. (PRNewsFoto/Comcast Corporation).
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Despite being hit especially hard by the bad economy, job losses and the high rate of foreclosures, African Americans' assessment of race relations and prospects for the future has surged more dramatically during the past two years than at any time in the past quarter-century, according to a new poll.
In a survey of American racial attitudes released Tuesday, researchers reported that the feeling of progress is driven in large part by the election of President Obama, along with a greater sense of local community satisfaction and a more positive outlook. The majority of African Americans say they are better off now than they were five years ago.
"These are dramatic findings," said Andrew Kohut, president of the Pew Research Center, which conducted the study. "We expected that there may be an Obama effect, and it was really quite dramatic -- which isn't to say that this era as measured in this survey means that all is fine between blacks and whites."
Large majorities of blacks continue to say that the country needs to make more changes and that the problems rooted in the country's history of slavery and segregation haven't disappeared. But there are many indications that African Americans feel there has been significant advancement.
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Thirty-nine percent of blacks -- nearly twice as many as in 2007 -- say that the "situation of black people in this country" is better than it was five years earlier. That view holds among blacks of all age groups and income levels. Similarly, 56 percent of blacks and nearly two-thirds of whites say the standard-of-living gap between whites and blacks has narrowed in the past decade. Still, when asked about the problems facing black families, a majority said there were not enough jobs and there were too many problems with drugs and alcoholism, crime and poor public education.
The 112-page report is based on a telephone survey conducted in November among a nationally representative sample of 2,884 adults, including 812 African Americans. Pollsters attempted to root out Obama's role in the changed attitudes and also look at the role race has played in how he is viewed.
For example, about half of voters interviewed by Pew just after the 2008 election said they expected that Obama's election would lead to improved race relations, but fewer people today think it has. Among all adults, 36 percent now say the election made race relations better, while 13 percent said it made them worse and 43 percent say it has made no difference.
A majority of the African Americans who responded to the survey said they believe Obama's election has improved race relations, although that number too has shrunk since the heady days just after the election. Fifty-four percent of blacks say Obama being in the White House has helped, compared with 74 percent who believed it would help a year ago. Thirty-two percent of whites and 42 percent of Hispanics think race relations have improved since the election.
It is possible that the high expectations for racial conciliation did not hold in part because the first year of Obama's presidency has unearthed both racial frictions and difficult conversations that might otherwise have gone unspoken. One example is this week's revelation of a private exchange between Senate Majority Leader Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.) and the authors of the new book "Game Changer," where the senator spoke well of Obama's chances for election because he was "light-skinned" and had no "Negro dialect." Reid apologized. Obama accepted the apology. Both of their responses were parsed in the media, dissected on blogs and discussed among friends and colleagues.
The online conversation reflects the view in the Pew survey that the broadly held hope for racial unity felt during the campaign has begun to fade.
Don Scoggins, president of Republicans for Black Empowerment, asked, "Where do we go from here?" on the blog Booker Rising. "Skin color aside, which within the Black community has perennially been a controversial topic, Senator Reid's apology . . . only confirms the unsaid feeling among many liberals who think they own everything related to civil rights and that the black community should be forever grateful yet [they] appear incredulous that an African American can speak proper English and actually embody what are regarded as white attributes even better than some of 'them'. "
Jill Tubman, a blogger on the liberal African American political site Jack and Jill Politics, said Reid's comments won't get a full airing because it is not a topic Obama wants to discuss. "I don't know what serenity prayer Obama says each day or what zen meditation allows him to breathe deeply with confronted with this kind of thing but he's going to need to share it with the rest of us African-Americans if he expects us to go along to get along like he does," wrote Tubman, who pronounced herself "deeply disappointed" by Reid.
As for Obama himself, the Pew survey found little to indicate that most Americans see race dominating the first year of his presidency. Only 13 percent of whites said Obama is paying too much attention to the concerns of blacks, and most blacks said Obama was paying the right amount of attention to their concerns. The president also remains personally popular with 65 percent of Americans, even though his job approval ratings have declined during his first year in office.
Still, support for Obama among African Americans is even higher: 95 percent view him favorably. Among whites, 56 percent have a favorable view of the president and 38 percent of whites say their opinion of him is unfavorable, including 21 percent with a very unfavorable view. Last year at this time, 76 percent of whites gave Obama positive ratings. Pew's study attributed Obama's downward slide among whites to partisanship. Among white Democrats, nearly nine in 10 have a favorable view of Obama.
Whites with racially intolerant views -- which are measured by their answers to questions about interracial marriages and perceptions about racial discrimination and other factors -- have a much more negative opinion of Obama than do other whites, Kohut said. But, the study also found that a number of whites with more tolerant views on race have an unfavorable opinion of the president.
"If you look at the downward trend in Obama's approval ratings, there's no sense that this has been driven by the issue of race," Kohut said. "The people who had trouble with his race didn't vote for him and were disapproving of him from the get-go and the broader trend of disapproval has occurred among a wider spectrum of people with regard to racial attitudes. Many of the people who are critical of him have liberal racial views."
The study also found that Americans tend to construct their own view of the president's race based on their backgrounds. In response to a question about Obama's racial identity, 55 percent of black respondents said Obama is black, while about a third said he is mixed race. Among whites, the pattern reversed. Fifty-three percent said he is mixed race, while just a quarter said he is black. Hispanics were even more inclined than whites to see him as mixed race; 61 percent identified him that way.
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The survivors of the earthquake in Haiti face deadly outbreaks of diarrhea, measles and malaria after the country’s already fragile clean water and health-care systems were destroyed.
Health officials say that even before the bodies of the dead have been removed from the rubble, it is important in the coming few days that massive containers of water be set up throughout the capital of Port-au-Prince.
In addition to this several temporary treatment centers need to be set up along with tons of antibiotics and basic medical supplies delivered.
Haiti has been suffering from high rates of malnutrition and lack of access to health services in the Western Hemisphere, as per the World Health Organization (WHO).
The health infrastructure has not been spared by this crisis for aid workers to build upon. Thomas Kirsch, director of operations at John Hopkins School of Medicine’s department of emergency medicine in Baltimore, said that the disease outbreaks could be worse than in the aftermaths of comparable natural disasters.
Margaret Aguirre, a spokeswoman for the emergency response team of International Medical Corp., said “The health system has been eliminated, water and sanitation entirely knocked out. The chance of them recovering even to the low level that they were before is almost zero.”
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January 16, 2010
After six years in prison on a sexual battery and extortion charge, Mystikal has been released and is home. The rapper, whose career reached the mainstream with his hit “Shake Ya Ass,” phoned in to Louisiana radio station Q93 and spoke with jock Wild Wayne.
“My feet back is on the ground,” Mystikal exclaimed. “It’s been a long time.” He said he was on his way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, to see his family.
Mystikal (real name: Michael Tyler) was sentenced to six years in prison in January of 2004. He was arrested in July of 2002 along with two of his bodyguards for threatening to turn his former hairstylist in to police for cashing $80,000 worth of unauthorized checks from his bank account. The stylist said that she was forced to have sex with all three men in exchange for their silence. As part of a plea bargain, all three pleaded guilty. Under the terms of the agreement, Mystikal has five years of probation upon his release and has to be registered as a sex offender in Louisiana.
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Ciara Green:
"@BLACK WOMEN People live in boxes and get easily offended when they see others trying to explore things outside of the box....you know like the real live ignorance and nonsense that goes on in the world....and for someone anyone to call you ignorant for posting the things that other people do just makes them look like closed minded asses. How do ... See Morepeople expect things to be brought to their attention if its not put in their face? Yet they have the audacity to cop a tude and turn their head because in reality they don't want to know so that way they can cling to the huge piece of IGNORANCE in their life.......I digress"
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