87 gazette English

Hamaspik Gazette
December
2005. •Issue
Issue
August
2011
No.No.
87 24
News of Hamaspik Agencies and General Health
HamaspikCare’s Teamwork Marks First Anniversary
One phone number, one agency, one year of 24/7 care
For
PACE
Coordinator
Menachem Stein, a typical day looks
like a lot of paperwork and peopledelegating—a task the friendly
HamaspikCare office staffer handles
with diplomacy and poise.
Hamaspik’s PACE (Personal
Aide Consumer Empowerment)
Program was for years the agency’s
spin on New York State’s CDPAP
(Consumer Directed Personal Aide
Program) initiative until it was
incorporated into HamaspikCare.
The PACE program, really nothing more than CDPAP under a different name, enables individuals on
Medicaid to receive a self-explanatory consumer directed personal
assistant to help with personal
hygiene, eating and food preparation, and even housekeeping, shopping or outdoor strolling.
Personal assistants provided by
PACE must also adhere rigorously to
strict state and county compliance
rules, primarily fraud- and abuseprevention regulations. Providers
must fill out daily sign-in/sign-out
time sheets to accurately record
payable time units, and until recent-
ly, use a phone-based login/logout
system to affirm their claimed work
hours.
Mr. Stein, most importantly, also
capably matches available dates with
available personnel, ensuring that
patients have the care they need
when they need it.
All this personnel management,
A SHORE THING Summertime is marked by a multitude of outdoor outings
across Hamaspik, like this Rockland County Men’s Day Hab lakefront visit
and more, is deftly handled by Mr.
Stein on a daily basis. Thanks to his
diligence, dozens of seniors, disabled individuals and worthy others
are supplied with the home-based
care that they need (and their caregivers receive steady paychecks
too).
But before one can be dispatched for HamaspikCare PACE
work, one needs to be hired. Enter
Shaya Brach.
As HamaspikCare’s Director of
Human Resources, the hardworking
Hamaspik employee oversees a
growing cadre of Home Health
Aides (HHAs), Personal Care Aides
(PCAs), nurses and other professionals, ensuring that all are duly qualified to provide the services they
do—and that HamaspikCare’s
employees are the best at what they
do.
Mr. Brach is assisted by Mrs.
Yitty Leidner, who together with the
HR Director serves as the face of
HamaspikCare to the many agency
employees (and potential employ-
Continued on Page E4
At OPWDD, One Year
of Change and Counting
I N S I D E
*
First ann’y of state agency’s new name reflects national, societal progress
Called Life — E2
Well before New Yorkers ever
heard of America’s most prominent
Chicagoan, calls for change came
from all quarters of the Empire
State.
Though it may be no surprise
that the Barack Obama era was
marked by the New York State
Office of Mental Retardation and
Developmental
Disabilities’
HAMASPIK GAZETTE
Published and © Copyright August 2011 by:
H A M A S P I K 58 Rt. 59 Suite 1 Monsey NY 10952
Telephone: (845) 503-0212 / Fax (845) 503-1212
Non Profit Org.
US Postage
PAID
PTEX GROUP
(OMRDD’s) name change to the
Office
of
People
With
Developmental Disabilities, it was a
change long in coming.
And with July 13, 2011 marking
one year since “OPWDD” became
official, that change has squarely
arrived.
Different times,
different vibes
The OMRDD’s title was coined
in a time when the phrases “retard,”
“retarded” or “retardation” were not
perceived as distasteful and hurtful
as they are today by many.
New York State’s services for
the intellectually disabled goes back
as far as 1806, when the Legislature
granted funding to the New York
Hospital to house poor individuals
suffering from insanity.
Fast-forward to 1976, when the
Albany Legislature overhauled the
State Laws to split the New York
State Dept. of Mental Hygiene
(DMH) into three autonomous bodies: the Office of Alcohol and
Substance Abuse, the Office of
Mental Health (OMH), and the
Office of Mental Retardation and
Developmental
Disability
(OMRDD).
In that zeitgeist, or perhaps
despite it, the OMRDD was born as
Continued on Page E5
This Dance
*
Graduating with
Uncle Moishy — E3
*
Letchworth Turns
100 — E6
*
More Summer
Safety Tips — E12
*
Answering the Call
agency’s hotline doubled in the last
year, according to Yoel Bernath.
The agency’s Director of Operations
explains that the 100-percent call
increase
is
attributable
to
HamaspikCare nurses and other
caregivers calling with urgent situations, like patients who need immediate hospitalization, or patients calling with problems that need immediate attention.
To take their calls, Hamaspik
keeps a team of professional operators on call 24 hours a day, seven
days a week—backed by a team of
eight AODs.
Messrs. Yoel Bernath, Joel
Brecher, Joel Freund, Joel Friedman,
Zishe Lowy, Shloime Reichman,
Joel Weiser and Shaye Wercberger,
Hamaspik veterans all, each take a
weeklong shift from 1:00 p.m.
Friday to 9:00 a.m. the following
Friday.
A call to the hotline follows a
rigorous, professional and almost
militaristic routine.
Because
Hamaspik,
and
HamaspikCare, services a number of
New York State counties, callers are
first asked which county they are
calling from. They are then queried
on the nature of the emergency, if
any. Basic details are recorded.
The operator next attempts to
Now in fifth year, Hamaspik hotline
gives HamaspikCare, agency live support 24/7
The call can come at any hour of
the day or night.
Sometimes it’s a distraught new
parent of a special-needs newborn
having no one to talk to.
Sometimes it’s a Hamaspik
Direct Support staffer alerting the
agency at those rare medical emergencies involving Hamaspik individuals—ones that involve emergencyservices responders like EMTs,
police officer or firefighters.
And conversely, if and when
said emergency responders (and,
most recently, nurses) have to speak
to someone at Hamaspik “now,” the
hotline is there.
In short, Hamaspik has one single number, and a helpfully toll-free
one at that, to answer the call. (It’s
877-928-9000.)
Responding to growth
About a decade ago, Hamaspik
was qualitatively the same—effectively meeting the increasingly
diverse social-services needs of an
increasingly diverse community—
but wasn’t quite the size that it is
today.
That relatively small quantity of
employees and programs allowed
any staff member to be reached
should there have risen any miscellaneous urgency or emergency.
But with Hamaspik’s growth
from that point on, the agency’s new
array of staffers and providers—all
manning an array of programs and
services and providing direct care to
individuals with special needs—
needed a centralized after-hours
response system.
Essentially, five years ago,
Hamaspik had gotten big enough to
need a 24-hour hotline, with operators on call after hours and indeed,
around the clock—ready to alert
Hamaspik Administrators on Duty,
or AODs, of any problem needing
immediate resolution.
Today, all Hamaspik staff, from
Direct Support Professionals on up,
are trained to immediately call 9-1-1
the moment any serious (or even
possibly serious) incident occurs
involving an individual with special
needs—and to call the hotline right
after calling 9-1-1.
“It’s only there for immediate
attention,” explains a senior
Hamaspik staff member. If an emergency should occur, the hotline
allows Hamaspik to be “on top of
things in real time,” he says. “You
don’t have to wait until nine o’clock
the next morning until the office
opens. The supervisor knows right
away.”
High resolution
With
the
advent
of
HamaspikCare, the agency’s highly
successful home-care services
agency, Hamaspik added a critical
function to the toll-free hotline:
Fielding HamaspikCare calls.
Thanks to HamaspikCare’s rapid
growth, the number of calls to the
This Dance Called Life
At Hamaspik of Rockland County Day Hab program, lessons abound
Like her chosen discipline,
Malky Lehman’s specialty is difficult to define.
As dance comprises so many
things, so does Music and
Movement, the self-created niche
program taught by Mrs. Lehman
since the early 1990s.
Using ordinary items like feather
dusters, plus gym equipment, a
robust sound system and an
Associates in Education, “Morah
Malky” has been combining games,
movement, pedagogy, psychology
and assorted shtick into an eclectic
educational experience all her own.
The resulting dance classes are
offered to mainstream children and
disabled adults, though, like life,
they embrace so much more than
simple dance.
Morah (Hebrew for “Teacher”)
Malky says Music and Movement is
closest to music therapy or play therapy, asked which of the recognized
disciplines most closely resembles
her niche.
Regardless,
Music
and
Movement evolved from a basement
dance class enhanced with flashlights into the multisensory experience it is today—and into the welcome part of the curriculum at the
Hamaspik of Rockland County Day
Hab Women’s Division that it’s been
since early 2009.
Getting in there
“I found it very rewarding to
work with special-needs adults,”
E2
says Mrs. Lehman on her introduction to the intellectually disabled. A
care facility had asked her to host a
program for its residents one
Chanukah, and Lehman was hooked.
“You see them come alive,” she
remembers.
One resident in particular, bound
to a wheelchair, stayed sullenly in
one corner. But the moment the
instructor tucked a colorful scarf
into the woman’s unmoving hand,
something moved inside, and a deep,
soulful smile spread across her face.
When it was over, Malky
Lehman went back to her car and
wept, asking G-d for the strength to
change that woman’s life.
Lessons
Today, Morah Malky visits
Hamaspik every Friday.
“There’s a certain innocence,
there’s a certain something they
accept,” say Mrs. Lehman of her
Hamaspik pupils. She explains
that, in contrast to this generation’s
mainstream demand for Instant
Everything, the individuals savor
the sensory stimulation of Music
and Movement.
“You open a door that a regular
class may not open,” she says.
“They appreciate when you come.
They make me want to come back
next week.”
And marking her many sessions
at Hamaspik have been more than a
few magical moments. Lehman
offers a sampling.
August ‘11 | Hamaspik Gazette
“There’s a couple of girls who
always love to help me,” she proudly
notes. “They’ll see my van and
come flying down the stairs to help.
One kid, you just see her become
this other human being” once the
music starts. “She starts moving…
Her whole face changes.”
But Music and Movement’s regular Hamaspik appearances are anything but slot-fillers, providing therapeutic benefits and demonstratively
positive results alike.
On a professional, clinical level,
Mrs. Lehman has found that her
Hamaspik students demonstrate
remarkable capacity to reenact each
previous week’s lessons, indicating a
growth process.
Lehman recalls meeting a group
of Hamaspik students while shopping at Rockland Kosher, a Monsey
supermarket. “They started doing
the motions right there in the cereal
aisle,” she notes. “They are learning… They also know my catch-
Hand dancing: woman’s Day
phrases. I don’t have to explain it to
them.”
Another individual at Hamaspik
began articulating one of her first
compound phrases after one Music
and Movement session. As Mrs.
Lehman was preparing to step out
that Friday, the girl burst out,
“Goodbye! Good Shabbos!”
She now says it every Friday
when Lehman leaves, and is also
now a proactive member of the
weekly group activity.
Sentences for life
But Morah Malky hasn’t just
changed her Hamaspik students.
Her Hamaspik students have
changed her.
Working with the individuals at
Hamaspik “makes me appreciate the
faculties that I have and the little
things in life you take for granted,”
she philosophizes. “They inspire me
to want to do more.”
And sometimes, even
they want to do more.
“‘Can you make it harder?’”
Mrs. Lehman remembers
her students asking. “I know
they like a challenge.”
As for her greatest
achievement at Hamaspik
thus far, Morah Malky cites
just being able to see her
students’ smiles, happy
faces and ability to follow
through on instruction.
She also remembers a
Hab
particularly non-verbal indi-
reach the AOD by trying his cell and
home numbers, and in that order. If
neither gets a live AOD within five
minutes, the operator tries a backup
AOD.
But it’s never come to that,
Bernath says. “We want to be there
when they call,” he says. And they
are.
The octet of AODs take their
voluntary roles in addition to their
paid full-time Hamaspik duties
because of their agency seniority—
experience that grants them authoritative command of all departments
and procedures.
The idea of the hotline, especially with the numerous new variables
added by HamaspikCare, is summed
up in four words: We keep you covered.
Thus, when contacted by a hotline operator with the nature of the
emergency and contact info for the
caller, the AOD swings into action,
deploying his thorough familiarity
with the agency, staff and all, to
secure the concrete answer and
immediate results the situation
demands.
Says Bernath: “The AOD will
not drop the call until it’s resolved.”
Because when a community
calls, Hamaspik has always
answered.
vidual who “used to sit in the corner.” She now participates in activities—and, at one particular session,
strung together an entire statement.
“Did she just say a sentence?!” Mrs.
Lehman remembers wondering in
pleasant surprise along with staff. “I
think that that’s a growing moment.”
Steps in the right direction
As a dance instructor, Malky
Lehman uses the word “expression”
to define dance. “It’s another way of
expressing one’s self without using
words,” she offers.
But dance, according to
Lehman, is also awareness of one’s
body. “It’s about learning about the
world around you using different
faculties,” she says. “It’s perceiving
this world through different senses.”
Yet it doesn’t stop there. Dance,
posits Mrs. Lehman, elicits important life skills.
Besides improved physical locomotion, stabilization and manipulation abilities among her students, the
teacher says, dance is about learning
about space and other people’s
space—and respect, cooperation
skills, and having fun with respect to
others around one’s self.
Someone who can’t use her feet
uses her hands, says Lehman, a lesson applicable to dance and to life
itself, and not just literally either.
Like life, dance is “using what
you have to the nth degree and causing joy to others,” Morah Malky
says. “It’s putting your heart into
your body.”
And, in this dance called life, it’s
putting your heart into everything
you do.
At least every Friday at
Hamaspik.
HOME is where the repair is
Hamaspik of Rockland County’s
residential restoration program shifts into higher gear
What if your roof is leaking?
Can it withstand a downpour?
How about if your insulation is
faulty—running up unsustainable
winter heating bills?
And what if you’re a Rockland
County homeowner who can’t afford
to repair your own residence—a
problem compounded by this stillstruggling economy?
Not to worry—if you qualify for
a comprehensive and federally-funded program, that is.
That’s because the HOME
Program, which (among other
things) provides urgently needed
home repairs to homeowners most in
need, has now come to Rockland
County.
And of the only two health and
human-services agencies in the
County to provide HOME services,
one, perhaps understandably, is
Hamaspik.
Homing in
As Hamaspik of Rockland
County HOME program coordinator
Eliezer Eizikovits explains it, the
HOME Rehab program is designed
to correct hazardous conditions at
the residences of low-income
Rockland County homeowners:
leaking roofs, broken stairs, nonfunctioning furnaces, poor insulation, lead paint, unsafe and/or wornout wiring, cracked foundations and
more.
To qualify for the program, an
applicant must:
• Own and reside in the house in
question
• Earn under 60% of the national
median income
• Have a homeowners’ insurance
policy on the house in question
• Have a up-to-date Certificate
of Occupancy (C of O) from the
local municipality
• Be up-to-date in all tax, mortgage, water and sewer payments
Once having provided all necessary paperwork like proof of
income, proof of property ownership, tax- and mortgage-payment
records and the like, the applicant
gets a decision.
Should the decision be affirmative—and if the qualifications are
met, it should be—the program
inspects the premises for various
exacting environmental variables
like the residence’s possible status as
a historic site, whether it is situated
on a flood plain or wetland, or if it
requires
asbestos
abatement.
Results of this inspection are passed
on to the Environmental Analysis
Summer Graduation
Celebration with Uncle Moishy
Entertainer regales new Day Hab participant,
IRA residents with song, dance
What’s a graduation party without your favorite uncle in attendance?
That’s what Concord Briderheim
IRA Home Manager Mrs. Shaindel
Goldberger had in mind when resident Pinchas K. graduated school
and moved on to Hamaspik’s Day
Hab program.
Because a milestone like that
deserves a celebration—and who
better to mark that celebration than
every Jewish kid’s favorite uncle:
beloved Jewish children’s entertainer Uncle Moishy?
The ageless Moshe Tanenbaum
(a.k.a. “Uncle Moishy”) is a veritable Jewish community institution
and an indelible childhood memory
of any North American Orthodox
Jew under 40.
With hundreds of concerts and at
least a dozen popular releases under
his belt, Uncle Moishy is also quite
the folk hero, veteran that he is of
numerous private appearances,
including visits to hospitalized children and individuals with special
needs.
This past Tuesday night, July 5,
Uncle Moishy reigned supreme yet
again—at a “command performance” exclusively for the young residents of Concord and their friends.
The private party began at 6:00
p.m. with the attendance of the
entire Concord residential body,
along with the entire Forshay
Briderheim and some Wannamaker
and Grandview residents too.
Uncle Moishy’s keyboardist,
Unit, or EAU, a division of the New
York State Department of Housing
and Community Renewal (DHCR).
The program then sends down a
“rehab specialist,” a trained contractor who personally inspects the
home to determine which repairs are
needed most to bring the home up to
code.
With the most urgent repairs
decided upon, Hamaspik’s HOME
program will then recruit three contractors to submit bids. And with a
contractor selected, rehabilitation for
up to $25,000 on the home in question can move forward.
Hamaspik will then tend to any
environmental issues before work
begins, obtain project approval from
the DHCR (which purveys this federally-funded program) and request
building permits. Construction then
starts.
Construction from start to finish
is meticulously overseen by
Hamaspik, with Mr. Eizikovits
ensuring that work is performed per
specification, on budget and on
schedule.
Thanks to the $225,000 grant,
Hamaspik’s HOME program can
provide home repairs to qualifying
applicants throughout Rockland
County.
Driving the point home
The HOME program originates
with the federal U.S. Department of
Housing and Urban Development
(HUD), from which it disburses
grants to state public-housing bodies. Those bodies in turn work with
community-based non-profits like
Hamaspik to find those in need.
For well over 20 years now,
Hamaspik has been doing just that.
And now, it’s doing it in yet another
way.
With a well-established community reputation, Hamaspik was one
of the 94 New York State HOME
Program awardees announced by
then-Governor David Paterson on
September 16, 2010.
Albany, which was awarded a
total of $28 million at the time, allocated the funding to help build, rehabilitate or modify 1,472 homes for
the poor, the disabled and others
across the state.
“There are low-income homeowners who just don’t have the
money to take care of their homes,”
says Eizikovits of some potential
HOME qualifiers. He also agrees
that the program will make a difference not just in homes, but in lives
of beneficiaries, allowing them to
remain where they are comfortable
most and eventually revitalize the
community as a whole.
It was Hamaspik’s excellent
existing relationship with the DHCR
which helped the agency secure the
specialized grant.
Thanks in part to Hamaspik’s
still-ongoing Access to Home and
other residential-renovation programs, Hamaspik was given the nod
for yet another program to benefit
the public—and yet another facet of
its ongoing social-services work.
As Eizikovits puts it, “Hamaspik
has a mission to help anybody and
everybody in any way possible.”
OPWDD to publicize
troubled providers
All in the family: Uncle Moishy entertains
who had arrived first, kicked off the
celebration by warming up the
crowd with a few popular numbers.
The boys and young men reacted
enthusiastically.
When the entertainer showed up,
trademark guitar in hand and hat
adorned with oversized Hebrew letter Mem (for “Moishy”), the crowd
veritably erupted.
For the next 60 minutes, Uncle
Moishy had the participants singing,
clapping, moving and even dancing
to his live performance.
The concert culminated with
Uncle Moishy personally joining
hands with several audience members for a spirited dance around the
spacious backyard, where the concert had been held. Uncle Moishy
even gave personal gifts to every
concert-goer: an official Uncle
Moishy coloring book and a CD.
“The boys enjoyed it immensely,” reports Forshay Briderheim
Manager Mrs. Sarah Fischer, who
helped plan the event with Mrs.
Goldberger.
“They were really
ecstatic.”
While other kids might be shyer,
the group-home residents interacted
with Uncle Moishe without reservation, says Mrs. Fischer. “They clap,
sing and do everything they are
asked,” she says.
Music has long been known for
its wide range of therapeutic benefits, including opening channels of
self-expression. For Hamaspik’s
young charges, who don’t subscribe
to inhibitions largely imposed by
society, Uncle Moishy opened those
channels all the more.
On July 8, the New York State
OPWDD Commissioner Courtney
Burke announced the launch of the
agency’s retooled “Early Alert” system, designed to track the program
quality and fiscal sustainability of
non-profit providers.
The announcement represents a
significant change for the benefit of
individuals with developmental disabilities and their family members.
With the announcement, the
OPWDD will now begin publicly
disclosing those organizations
receiving public funds that have had
substantial issues maintaining quality services and/or financial viability.
The planned disclosures are an
enhancement to the OPWDD’s existing program of regularly certifying
and financial reviewing all nonprofit
providers.
“Inadequate and inconsistent
oversight and accountability in the
past failed individuals and families
within the care of this agency and
created a culture that is unacceptable
to this administration. While almost
all nonprofit providers consistently
meet our regulatory standards, revitalizing and refocusing the Early
Alert program and publicly disclos-
ing those nonprofit providers not
meeting quality standards or maintaining fiscal sustainability is a critical step forward as we reform this
agency,” said Commissioner Burke.
New York State Law allows for
adverse actions against non-compliant providers from fines of up to
$15,000 per violation to operatingcertificate revocation.
Commissioner Burke has notified nonprofit providers that, unlike
prior administrations, she will not
hesitate to issue fines and take other
adverse actions when an agency’s
action—or inaction—poses a significant risk to one or more individuals.
While an agency is on Early
Alert, OPWDD will not consider
any requests for expansion of services and may suspend any expansion
that is in progress.
According to Burke, the
OPWDD will not only closely monitor providers demonstrating an
inability to sustain quality supports
and services and/or fiscal viability—
but also “take whatever actions necessary to ensure the well-being of
the people that we are so privileged
to support.”
Hamaspik Gazette | August ‘11
E3
One Year of HamaspikCare
Continued from Page 1
ees) who visit Hamaspik’s administrative offices daily, creating a positive and professional first impression
to those appearing for the first time
and helping all stay on top of their
detailed job applications and government requirements.
To receive those excellent and
uncompromising services, however,
care recipients must reach out to
HamaspikCare first by calling its
toll-free
number:
1-855HAMASPIK (1-855-426-2774).
Upon
contacting
HamaspikCare’s intake office,
potential care recipients—or, often,
their family members—will be cordially and patiently addressed by
Mrs. Tress. The experienced Intake
Coordinator will not only answer
every question, but gently probe for
as much background information as
possible so as to determine the
fullest scope of the situation, and to
diplomatically offer not just
HamaspikCare but whatever other
Hamaspik service that might help.
Recipients are then passed on to
Chaya Back, RN, HamaspikCare’s
dynamic Director of Patient
Services.
The position of Director of
Patient Services entails significant
amounts of energy, multitasking and
focus, and requires the ability to
internalize each individual patient
situation so as to nimbly and flexibly
provide the best and most customtailored patient care possible.
Mrs. Back carefully reviews
each patient’s individual situation
and
determines
which
professional(s) serve the client
best—and then assembles a “custom-made” team from any combination of nurse, social worker, HHA,
PCA, and/or therapist(s) to execute
each client’s individualized Plan of
Care.
HamaspikCare Field Nurses
Lauren Wieder, RN or Bracha
Kivelevitz, RN are then dispatched
to conduct initial skilled nursing
assessments to open each case, or
personal visits to corroborate and
follow up on Mrs. Back’s first
review.
Both nurses also conduct on-site
visits to orient, train and supervise
new HHA and/or PCAs, ensuring
that care is provided properly and in
accordance with the individual’s
Plan of Care. The RNs are also constantly available to aides should
minor medical questions or problems arise in the course of care,
ensuring that quality care is delivered ‘round the clock.
Once confirmed as a duly qualified HamaspikCare recipient, the
patient is handed off to the agency’s
two professional schedulers, Mrs.
Elky Eger and Mrs. Rifky Freund.
Serving as information roundhouses,
the two staff members handle all
communication between all parties
involved in each client’s care—setting up care appointments, fielding
problems, monitoring daily care and
otherwise serving as liaisons
between patients and their caregivers.
The twosome share a combined
wealth of agency experience, having
both worked at Hamaspik for many
years in a variety of capacities and
interactions with individuals and
their families. Said experience lends
both a keen understanding of patient
need and aide experience alike,
allowing them to tend to every situation with all-important sensitivity.
At the same time, Hamaspik’s
punctilious bookkeeper, Mr. Moshe
Biller, will start a new file on the
patient, ensuring that all applicable
industry codes and other requirements are exactingly recorded—a
highly nuanced task that Mr. Biller
handles efficiently and effectively.
Patients can then start receiving
care services at home.
Working together like a welloiled machine with the patient at its
very
center,
the
entire
HamaspikCare team—from intake,
scheduling, billing and HR to therapists and clinicians, HHAs, PCAs
and PACE personal assistants—provides just the right care with one
goal in mind.
That care includes feeding therapy, occupational therapy, physical
therapy, speech therapy, skilled nursing visits and even ‘round-the-clock
nursing care.
With its brand of clockwork efficiency,
it’s
no
wonder
HamaspikCare has significantly
grown since its inception. This summer marks the first anniversary since
it began providing services.
Hamaspik of Rockland County EI
Passes another Milestone
Successful government audit reflects program growth, compliance
Since its inception in May 2008,
Hamaspik of Rockland County’s
early-intervention program has seen
growth in more ways than one.
As part of Hamaspik’s everwidening suite of health and humanservices programs, providing the
broadest range of communities with
a constantly growing number of
diverse programs, the EI program
has seen a number of “graduates”
move on to mainstream schools,
their lagging skills having been
brought largely up to par.
Utilizing home visits by physical
therapists (PTs), occupational therapists (OTs), speech therapists, special educators and even nutritionists
and social workers, the EI program
has changed the lives of numerous
little boys and girls.
And under the tutelage of master
Service delivery: A bus drops off kids at Hamaspik of
Orange County’s Early Intervention program
E4
August ‘11 | Hamaspik Gazette
teacher Mrs. Reizy Weichbrod and
her superb staff, a growing number
of tots have been learning to speak,
walk and play at the program’s classroom program, crawling out of their
shells with the gentle, loving and
professional coaxing provided by
Mrs. Weichbrod and classroom
assistants.
Backed by Hamaspik of
Rockland County Ongoing Service
Coordinators (OSCs) Mrs. Esty
Jeremias and Mrs. Elanit Osinsky,
the young individuals with special
needs have been getting the remedial
services in speech, gross- and finemotor skills and other key areas for
which they were diagnosed and for
which they qualified.
Overseeing the OSCs, the classroom program located at the Kakiat
Middle School in central Monsey
and the team of therapists regularly
making home visits is Mrs. Lalouch,
Hamaspik of Rockland County’s
Director of Early Intervention
Services.
For the past three years, their
work passed muster and then some.
And now, an official audit says so,
too.
In the last week of June, a team
of auditors for a private firm contracted by the New York State Dept.
of Health descended upon Hamaspik
of Rockland County’s administrative
offices for a two-day review of the
agency’s EI program.
Over the course of the audit,
binders of records were produced
and perused. Probing and thorough
questions were asked. Hamaspik’s
EI professionals and several parents
of young EI “students” were thoroughly interviewed. A discerning
visit at the Kakiat location was conducted.
But in the end, Hamaspik’s EI
program emerged none the worse for
wear—with little more than a handful of suggestions on how to
improve document wording, procedures and record-keeping even more.
With its first-ever complete program audit (and its first since exacting new regulations were introduced
by the DOH at this summer’s start)
now safely and securely under its
belt, Hamaspik of Rockland
County’s EI program chalks up a
victory not just for its record of compliance and professionalism, but also
for the precious young boys and girls
it painstakingly serves.
Near the audit’s conclusion, one
otherwise all-business auditor confessed that two minutes in the program’s classroom told him more
about the program than spending all
day at Hamaspik’s offices, adding
that its’ students happiness was “evident”—and his thanks to the teacher.
On hand for the comment, Mrs.
Weichbrod responded by crediting
her “great” staff, citing them for
thanks too.
“These kids are lucky to have
you too,” the auditor rejoined.
Since HamaspikCare’s inception, the licensed home-care services
agency has also run several topnotch, New York State Dept. of
Health (DOH)-approved HHA and
PCA training sessions. The in-house
instructional sessions, under the
stewardship of veteran nurse and
experienced trainer Mrs. Wieder,
educate individuals running the
gamut of the ethnically diverse
Hudson Valley.
The entire operation is masterfully overseen by Director of
Operations Yoel Bernath, whose
ongoing work involves not only
ensuring that everything runs efficiently and that every call gets
answered, but that as many people in
need, in as many regional areas as
possible, are receiving the home care
services they need through whatever
channels possible.
HamaspikCare began working in
recent months with Good Samaritan
and Nyack Hospitals, both of which
also serve the same greater Hudson
Valley community serviced by
Hamaspik—to make a great homecare services agency even better.
Most recently, HamaspikCare
announced a strategic contract with
Empire Blue Cross/Blue Shield of
New York, a leading healthcare
provider, allowing members of that
private insurer to receive the same
excellent home-care benefits provided to all other recipients.
That contract, in turn, builds on
a long-standing relationship between
HamaspikCare and Fidelis, the privately-run public health maintenance organization (HMO). Fidelis,
among many things, offers a managed long-term care (MLTC) program entitled Care at Home.
“I want to have the best available options of care when anyone
needs it. If someone needs home
care, regardless of their insurance
coverage, regardless of their benefits
or entitlements, they should get it,”
says Bernath. “My goal is that when
Intake gets a call, they should identify a service for the need… This is
what Hamaspik is all about—providing a quality service to anyone in
need.”
Additionally,
HamaspikCare
now also works with the Hudson
Valley’s two self-standing MLTCs,
Elant and Senior Whole Health.
Between care recipients on
Fidelis, Empire, or straight Medicaid
or Medicare, as well as recently-discharged patients of Good Samaritan
Hospital and Nyack Hospital,
HamaspikCare continues to reach
out to an ever-growing community
of individuals in need with an everwidening array of strategic relationships that allow it to make the best
match between individual care recipients and caregivers.
And between the agency’s
office-staff hours of nine to five and
its Direct Support Professionals, particularly its HHAs, PCAs and nightshift nurses, working late into the
night, HamaspikCare improves and
changes lives around the clock—and
now, for one full year… and going
strong.
OPWDD Name Change
Continued from Page 1
a progressive solution to the problem
of caring for society’s most vulnerable and too-often-shunned members.
A generation passed.
In July of 2003, a change at the
very top of American government
triggered a change that rippled
across society, explains Johns
Hopkins psychiatrist James Harris,
M.D., a key committee member for
the
American
Psychiatrist
Association’s forthcoming fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM),
modern psychiatry’s authoritative
“bible.”
Using an Executive Order,
President George W. Bush changed
the name of the President’s
Committee on Mental Retardation to
the “President’s Committee for
People
with
Intellectual
Disabilities,” or PCPID.
That name change was recommended to the President by
Committee members after their
majority vote at an earlier
Committee meeting in May of that
year.
Besides its 13 federal members
(mostly U.S. Cabinet Secretaries),
the President’s Committee is also
comprised of 21 U.S. citizens of all
backgrounds, giving the disabled
community of an estimated seven to
eight million Americans highly
informed advocacy in the White
House.
According to Harris, the PCPID
vote reflected what was happening
out in the field—a grassroots effort
by families and advocates to promote equality for people with intellectual disabilities.
Harris, who served as a Clintonera PCPID member, notes that the
Committee’s 2003 vote came after
years of deliberation. “We were
going to call it ‘developmental cognitive disorder,’ ” Harris recalls, a
proposed term referring to disabled
individuals’ language problems that
eventually gave way to “intellectual
disability.”
With the White House’s historic
change of language, the federal government’s National Institutes of
Health (NIH), and its 27 member
institutes, in turn replaced “mental
retardation” with “intellectual disability” in all grant applications.
It was the first federal change of
its kind, and with hundreds of nonprofit, private-sector and academic
bodies nationwide applying for federal research funding, the new term
slowly took root across the country,
points out Harris.
For example, Harris cites the
2007 name-change of the prominent
American Association on Mental
Retardation (AAMR) to the
American
Association
on
Intellectual and Developmental
Disabilities (AAIDD).
By 2010, several states had
already passed measures striking and
replacing the term “retard” and its
variants from all existing and future
legislative texts, as had the Centers
for Disease Control.
In that same year, however, a
chain of events led to President
Barack Obama signing “Rosa’s
Law” into law—a bill that removed
all variants of the “R-word” from all
federal legislation.
Word power
In spring of 2009, Maryland resident Nina Marcellino objected to
public-school usage of the phrase
“mental
retardation”
in
the
Individual Education Plan (IEP) for
her daughter.
Rosa Marcellino, then nine years
old, has Down syndrome—and her
mother eventually took her rejection
of the official usage of a phrase she
didn’t allow in her own home all the
way to the top.
Together with other parents, Ms.
Marcellino got her state delegate to
hold a hearing on ending state usage
of the terminology. Among witnesses was 11-year-old Nick, Rosa’s
brother, whose testimony included
this key statement: “What you call
people is how you treat them.”
Upon later meeting with U.S.
Senator Barbara Mikulski (D-Md.),
the Marcellinos were assured that
should they succeed at the state
level, the Senator would introduce
an equivalent federal bill.
When “Rosa’s Law” was unanimously passed by the Maryland
General Assembly and, in April
2009, signed by Gov. Martin
O’Malley, Mikulski responded in
kind.
With Senators Tom Harkin (DIowa) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.),
Mikulski co-sponsored Rosa’s Law
in November of 2009. The Law was
approved by the Senate’s Health,
Education, Labor and Pensions
(HELP) Committee on August 3,
2010 and passed by the Senate two
days later.
On the 22nd of September, 2010,
the House equivalent of Rosa’s Law,
the Elizabeth A. Connelly Act (so
called after former New York State
Assembly member and specialneeds
champion
Elizabeth
Connelly), was passed by the House
of Representatives.
Upon
the
bill’s
HELP
Committee passage, Marcellino said,
“We are moving closer to getting rid
of the stigmatizing label that carries
so many hurtful memories of a period in our history when people with
intellectual disabilities were disrespected. This has always been about
so much more than just changing
words or political correctness. It’s
about marking a new era where the
dignity of people with intellectual
disabilities is respected and their
value appreciated.”
“I still think the most compelling
reason to stop using that word in our
law books can be found in the words
of Rosa’s brother, Nick: ‘What you
call people is how you treat them,’
Mikulski later wrote. “This bill is
about families fighting for the
respect and dignity of their loved
ones.”
Rosa’s Law changes federal education, health and labor policy by
replacing the words “mental retardation” with “intellectual disability”
and “mentally retarded” with “individual with an intellectual disability”
in all existing and future federal leg-
No Pulse? No Problem
“Beatless heart” replaces damaged hearts’
blood pumping action with constant flow
Now, being a completely heartless man may not be such a bad thing after all—if a device developed at the
Texas Heart Institute becomes the next big thing in cardiology.
Two surgeons at the Houston-based medical center jerry-rigged two existing apparatuses called ventricular
assist devices to create what they call the “beatless heart.”
By intricately linking the tiny devices to work as one unit, Drs. Billy Cohn and O.H. “Bud” Frazier were able
to save the life of 55-year-old Craig Lewis by completely removing his unsalvageable heart and replacing it with
the newfangled device.
The successful surgical procedure made Lewis the first human being to receive a beatless heart.
Unlike standard artificial hearts, which have been in use for years now and which mimic the human heartbeat,
the new device constantly spins, not flexes, creating a constant blood flow.
Thanks to its small size, the device also represents hope for women and others whose smaller bodies or other
conditions prevent the implantation of large artificial hearts.
islative text.
On September 23, the bill was
presented to the White House—and
on Tuesday, October 5, 2010, with
President Barack Obama’s signature,
Rosa’s Law became the law of the
land.
Forward march
Against that background of
ongoing social change was New
York State’s own long march into a
more sensitive, inclusive future.
“For many people with developmental disabilities, the words ‘mental retardation’ is hurtful and represents a disrespectful term,” explains
OPWDD spokesperson Nicole
Weinstein, commenting on last summer’s name change. “OPWDD is a
name that respects the rights for people with developmental disabilities
to have an agency name that invokes
pride and not shame.”
According to Weinstein, the new
name also “sent a strong message
that New York values the dignity and
respect” of people with developmental disabilities and their families.
The OPWDD’s name-changing
process shifted to high gear with the
March 20, 2010 meeting in Albany
of 30 agency stakeholders—individuals with developmental disabilities,
family members, advocates, and
providers—to arrive at a consensus
for a new agency name.
With the primary goal of removing the derogatory and offensive “Rword” agreed upon by all, the meeting resulted in the passing of
Assembly and Senate bills by the
end of the 2010 Legislative session.
The bill not only removed the
“R-word” from the agency’s name,
but from statutory and regulatory
language as well, Weinstein points
out.
The new name also reflects the
agency’s vision of “Putting People
First,” Weinstein adds, and is consistent with the Person First Language
Law, enacted in 2007, which mandates that statutory language emphasizes individuals served, not their
disabilities.
And in a bit of a grammatical
stretch, the bill enshrined a capitalized “With” in “Office for People
With Developmental Disabilities,”
thus avoiding “OPDD,” which might
have been mistaken for “Office for
PDD,” or pervasive developmental
disability, a form of autism. The
OPDD acronym might have conveyed to some “a shift in the
agency’s focus from other diagnoses
within the umbrella of developmental disabilities,” explains Weinstein.
The bill was signed by Governor
David A. Paterson on July 13, 2010.
Dismissing disdain,
embracing empowerment
But a review of history reveals a
sociocultural curiosity: Words long
not associated with the intellectually
disabled were once widely used by
the mainstream to describe them—
but because of their increasing use
as sneering, scornful pejoratives,
those phrases were replaced by others.
The result, however, was those
words’ virtually exclusive use as
insults.
Cases in point, notes Harris,
include “idiot,” “imbecile” and
“moron,” all of which were once
standard clinical terms. Perhaps
unbelievably, New York State once
even had a Commissioner on
Lunacy.
“There’s been discussion for
many years among those affected
about the way the [“R-word”] term
became prejudicial and derogatory,”
says Harris, who is also a U.S. liaison
to
the
World
Health
Organization (WHO).
Harris acknowledges the danger
of “intellectually disabled” becoming yet another expression of contempt. He even mentions a pediatric
patient taunted at school as “special
needs,” and likewise cites a “reluctance” on the part of some to replace
the “R-word” for the same reason.
“Anything will become prejudicial,” he says. “People will always
find some way to label other people.”
While society’s use of clinical
phrases to variously taunt or tease
peers may never change, Harris
emphasizes another change that
came with the disposal of the “Rword”: a focus on improving intellectually disabled individuals’ function levels.
“If we provide services to someone who can work at their maximum
level, they’re not ‘retarded,’ says
Harris, what with said services
empowering individuals to be the
best they can be.
That’s why the term currently
being discussed by Harris’ DSM-V
committee is “intellectual developmental disorder,” which not only
avoids “that word” but also underscores functionality and normalization, a trend in special-needs care
that is anything but trendy.
“Language affects how people
think about themselves and each
other. Last year, OPWDD sent a
strong message about our values…
by eliminating the use of the ‘Rword,’
”
said
OPWDD
Commissioner Courtney Burke at
the one-year name-change anniversary. “This action removed outdated
and insensitive language from our
vocabulary.”
Only time will tell whether
“intellectual disability” falls prey to
the elitist, rejecting cynicism that
corrupted its predecessors. But in
the meantime, one change is here to
stay.
“ ‘Disability’ is socially constructed,” posits Harris. “Eyeglasses
correct a certain ‘disability.’ At least
by focusing on function, we can normalize them [i.e. people with intellectually disabilities]. That’s why
normalization is so important.”
Hamaspik Gazette | August ‘11
E5
Running through Rainbows
Camp Neshoma takes After-School Respite children through range of colors, activities
Life is colorful—at least at
Camp Neshoma.
And as surely as every sparkling
soul has a hue, shade or tint of its
own, the precious young souls who
comprise Camp Neshoma, Hebrew
for soul, certainly do.
The day camp, which runs this
year from June 26 to July 4 and
August 14 to September 5, is
Hamaspik’s summer program for its
After School (and School Break)
Respite participants. It runs for a
total of five non-consecutive weeks.
The After School Respite
Program, one of the many programs
for children with special needs
offered by Hamaspik, is funded by
the New York State Office for
People
With
Developmental
Disabilities (OPWDD). Children
with special needs qualify for this
publicly-funded educational support
program, and are able to attend daily
after school to give their hard-working parents a much-needed respite.
During the summer weeks, however, when most children are out of
school (the program is based on the
New York State public school system’s summer calendar), those same
Respite children get not just a daily
two hours of therapeutic and stimulating activities, but full days—and
several weeks of full days.
Enter Camp Neshoma.
Though essentially nothing more
than a day-long After School Respite
program dressed up as a standard
girls’ summer day camp, Camp
Neshoma, under the capable leadership of longtime Respite stalwart
Mrs. B. Steiner, is filled with life
nowadays, and the most colorful
variety thereof.
In many cases, literally.
The first week of Camp
Neshoma featured a different theme
color for each day.
One day saw campers seeing the
world in yellow—balloons, activities
and all. While America celebrates
Armed Forces Day each year, Camp
Neshoma marked Navy Day in early
July, with campers wearing navycolored clothing, engaging in “military drills” and even wearing Old
Navy t-shirts (which they decorated
with their own handwritten messages).
And before going green was all
the rage, Camp Neshoma had a
“Green Day” of its own, with every
game and activity suffused with the
nature-evoking color.
Other colors, and their themed
days, at Camp Neshoma included
Orange, and Black-and-White.
At the same time, Camp
Neshoma fields a separate program
for teen boys under the expert direction of Hamaspik mainstay Eli
Neuwirth.
Respite is designed to supplement the lives of children with special needs at the same time as it supports the lives of their parents. By
exposing children to the rich tapestry that is life, all parties come away
not just reinvigorated but enriched.
And at Camp Neshoma, that
enrichment comes in every shade of
the rainbow too.
The fullest spectrum: Camp Neshoma boys are seen here enjoying a rich range of indoor and outdoor activities
A Century of Progress
Hudson Valley DDSO marks 100th Anniversary of Letchworth Village founding
A special centennial edition of
the Valley Voice, the official organ of
the Hudson Valley DDSO, marked
the 100th anniversary of the founding of Letchworth Village, its trailblazing forerunner.
Letchworth Village, located in
Century One: A page in the
Voice’s special edition
E6
Thiells, New York, was named for
William Pryor Letchworth, a philanthropist and activist for the humane
and effective treatment of individuals with special needs.
The Village opened its doors to
its first resident on July 11, 1911.
That intellectually disabled individual, Gustave Jacobson, found a
full settlement on which he could
live and thrive free of the overcrowding and mistreatment that
marked many of the institutions for
people with special needs in that era.
The numerous buildings, facilities and farm fields that comprised
Letchworth Village were eventually
renamed
the
Letchworth
Developmental Center. They were
built over the next two decades, with
the full Village only becoming complete in the 1930s.
Among the facilities comprising
Letchworth Village were spacious
dorms complete with large dining
rooms, and workshops for a number
of crafts and skills.
Over the decades after its founding, Letchworth Village became a
disability research center of interna-
August ‘11 | Hamaspik Gazette
tional repute. Among other things, it
was at Letchworth that the cause and
treatment of phenylketonuria, a
metabolic disorder that causes mental disability, was discovered.
Unfortunately,
overcrowding
became a problem at Letchworth in
the 1940s, leading to the building of
the now-notorious Willowbrook
State School to relieve that overcrowding—but only creating yet
another overcrowded facility.
By 1967, according to the
Voice’s special July 2011 edition,
Letchworth was the most crowded
institution in the state.
With the exposure of horrid conditions at Willowbrook, Letchworth
and other state-run facilities in 1972,
the first seeds of today’s community-based residential housing for special-needs individuals were planted.
In 1976, the New York State
Department of Mental Health
(DMH) was split into three bodies,
including the OMRDD (now
OPWDD). The OMRDD in turn
divided the state into a dozen-plus
regions served Developmental
Disabilities Services Offices, or
DDSOs, with the Hudson Valley
region named the Letchworth
DDSO.
Some of the original buildings
that were part of the old Letchworth
Village were turned into offices for
the Letchworth DDSO, while others
were built anew.
From the late 1980s onward, in a
sign of increasing progress, integration and sensitivity, Albany began
closing
its
“Developmental
Centers,” the large institutions warehousing thousands that earned notoriety in days gone by.
By
1993,
nine
state
Developmental Centers had shut
their doors forever—and only 4,730
individuals with special needs
remained housed in existing staterun Centers at the time.
On June 5, 1996, the Letchworth
Village Developmental Center, the
large onsite institution in operation
for decades, closed for good in a celebration that included a parade and
the
attendance
of
thenCommissioner Thomas Maul and
several voluntary agencies, including Hamaspik.
Most recently, the Buffalo-area
West Seneca Developmental Center
was closed in a ceremony attended
by
OPWDD
Commissioner
Courtney Burke.
That closing was made all the
more significant by its date: July 27,
2011, the 21st anniversary of the
signing of the landmark Americans
with Disabilities Act. The day also
marked the 12th anniversary of the
watershed Olmstead decision, which
helped usher in the era of community integration and the closing of isolating institutions.
In 1997, Letchworth DDSO was
renamed the Hudson Valley DDSO,
with its Thiells headquarters complex reflagged the Letchworth
Village Campus. It has since been
headed by several Directors, including friends of Hamaspik Jill Gentile,
who now serves as the OPWDD’s
Associate Commissioner for the
Downstate Region, and longtime
Hamaspik
partner
Michael
Kirschmer, Hudson Valley’s current
leader.
And, like they say, the rest is
history.
E. coli outbreak strikes thousands
Spread of food-borne bacteria underscores public hygiene need
A wave of sickness and death
caused by a dangerous new strain of
the
foodborne
bacterium
Escherichia coli (E. coli) hit ten
European countries and a few
American tourists this summer.
The initial outbreak occurred in
Germany in late May, with 50 dead
and over 4,170 fallen ill (close to
900 severely so) by early July. All
but one death occurred in Germany.
Other cases were reported in
Austria, Denmark, France, the
Czech Republic, the Netherlands,
Norway,
Spain,
Sweden,
Switzerland and the U.K.
Previous E. coli outbreaks have
mainly hit children and the elderly,
but 86 percent of the recent
European outbreak consisted of
adult patients, two thirds of which
were women.
Additional mild cases may have
gone unreported, obscuring the true
reach of the outbreak.
E. coli is found in the digestive
systems of cows, humans and other
mammals and can be spread through
fecal contact. The bacteria are typically carried by fresh produce, with
investigations typically tracing tainted produce back to originating
farms.
Virulent strains of E. coli, a
common and normally healthy bacterium, usually cause diarrhea and
other non-lethal stomach ailments.
Dangerous strains can cause kidney
failure and death.
German authorities initially isolated several tainted cucumbers from
Spain, but those turned out to have
not caused the outbreak. Raw tomatoes and lettuce were also implicated
at first. Another suspect batch of
those vegetables may have originated in the Netherlands or Denmark.
On June 6, officials ruled out
bean sprouts from an organic farm in
northern Germany.
However, investigators with the
Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s
national disease control center,
reversed that announcement on June
11, declaring the farm to be the actual bacteria source despite negative
tests earlier. That farm had been
shut down since June 9.
On the same day, Germany lifted
its warning against eating cucumbers, tomatoes and lettuce.
Russia, which had responded to
the outbreak by banning tomatoes,
cucumbers and lettuce from Spain or
Germany, and later, the entire EU,
despite vigorous protest, also lifted
its ban that day.
European
Union
farmers
claimed to have lost up to $611 million a week as demand plummeted
and ripe produce was left to rot in
fields and warehouses. The EU
pledged on July 8 that it would offer
farmers compensation of up to $306
million for the E. coli losses.
The sizable U.S. military and
diplomatic community in Europe
took precautions against the outbreak, according to American military newspaper Stars and Stripes.
In late June and early July,
European authorities finally traced
the German E. coli outbreak—and a
later, smaller French outbreak that
sickened eight—to tainted fenugreek
seeds from Egypt.
The seeds, which came from
import shipments from Egypt dating
back to 2010 and 2009, were used to
grow fenugreek sprouts which were
infested with the bacterium.
In response to the discovery,
authorities called for thoroughly
steaming or cooking fenugreek
sprouts before consumption and not
to eat them raw, not to sprout any
seeds privately, as well as to destroy
any batches of the Egyptian shipments in question that still remain in
circulation.
The EU also banned imported
Egyptian seeds and beans for sprout-
ing in the wake of the finding.
The strain involved, O104:H4, is
also new to the U.S., causing some
concern.
The rare germ, a type of bacteria
known as Shiga-toxin-producing E.
coli, or STEC, appeared to be resistant to many commonly used antibiotics. However, doctors typically try
to stay away from antibiotics in
STEC cases.
Preliminary lab tests suggested
the strain is a mutant hybrid of two
different E. coli bacteria, with
aggressive genes that could explain
why the outbreak was so massive
and dangerous, according to the
World Health Organization (WHO).
Genetic analysis of the new
strain in a Chinese laboratory found
that it also carries genetic resistance
to several powerful antibiotics, making treatment highly difficult.
The new strain of E. coli, now
being described as “super-toxic,”
also caused the deadly and kidneyattacking hemolytic uremic syndrome, or HUS, among other symptoms. Over 870 have fallen ill with
HUS, including two U.S. citizens,
indicating its massive scope.
About 100 patients with damaged kidneys will need transplants
or life-long dialysis, one health
expert said.
U.S. state health agencies were
directed to report instances of HUS
or bloody diarrhea in recent travelers
to Germany.
The FDA and CDC recommended that travelers who come down
with diarrhea or other food poisoning symptoms while on planes or
other forms of public transportation
wash hands thoroughly with soap
and warm water, disinfect all surfaces contacted, and not prepare
food for others.
Additional recommendations
from the WHO included separating
raw and cooked meat from other
foods, washing cutting boards after
they’ve had meat on them, cooking
food thoroughly, and washing and
peeling fruits and vegetables before
eating, especially if eaten raw.
By mid-July, the crisis was over.
The outbreak vindicates the
comprehensive health and hygiene
guidelines to which adherence is
required by all OPWDD-affiliated
health and human-services agencies
like Hamaspik. Said regulations
include proper food handling and
preparation in all residential and
Day Hab facilities.
Six U.S. nationals who recently
traveled to Hamburg in Germany’s
north, where the outbreak was centered, were reported infected back
home with the strain. Two were hospitalized with serious and life-threatening complications. A seventh was
infected by close contact with one of
the four travelers. One, an older
Arizona man, eventually died.
The E. coli outbreak remains the
largest-known in history thus far.
Twelve people died in a 1996
Japanese outbreak that reportedly
sickened more than 9,000, and seven
died in a 2000 Canadian outbreak.
Hamaspik Gazette | August ‘11
E7
17
In the Know
All about… childhood obesity
Childhood
obesity
(ohBEESE-ih-tee)
is
one of the hottest
health topics nowadays,
what with the Obama
administration putting what it
considers an epidemic on the
front burner of its public health
policy.
At the February 9, 2010 launch
of Let’s Move!, her national antichildhood-obesity initiative, First
Lady Michelle Obama had this to
say: “The physical and emotional
health of an entire generation and
the economic health and security of
our nation is at stake.”
Indeed, obesity is a growing
problem even in the communities
served by Hamaspik, what with lack
of physical exercise and consumption of large amounts of fatty foods
accounting for an ongoing epidemic.
Making matters worse is the
excessive number of gastric banding
surgeries being done within those
communities without giving diet and
exercise a chance to work.
And in May 2010, the White
House Task Force on Childhood
Obesity submitted a comprehensive
124-page report to the President
containing 70 recommendations
grouped by: better parenting, healthier parenting, healthy school food,
access to healthy and affordable
food, and increased physical activity.
But is childhood (and general)
obesity really as big a problem as
they say it is? And what exactly is
the medical diagnosis called “obesity” anyway? Let’s find out!
Definition
Here’s how Let’s Move! defines
the diagnosis:
“Obesity is defined as excess
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body fat. Because body fat is difficult to measure directly, obesity is
often measured by body mass index
(BMI), a common scientific way to
screen for whether a person is underweight, normal weight, overweight,
or obese.”
And that’s basically it: In plain
English, if your child has too much
body fat, he or she is obese—and as
a general rule, if the BMI is above a
certain number, they’re obese.
For adults, here’s how BMI
works:
• Underweight—18.4 and down
• Normal—18.5 to 24.9
• Overweight—25.0 to 29.9
• Obese—30.0 and up
For kids, however, BMI is calculated using the growth chart—you
know, that chart at your pediatrician’s office that tells you whether
your son is too heavy or your daughter is too short compared to the average. So:
• Underweight—below the 5th
percentile
• Normal—between the 5th and
85th percentiles
• Overweight—between the 85th
and 94th percentiles
• Obese—above the 95th percentile
However, it is important to note
a critical difference between being
overweight and the next level up:
obesity.
Being overweight just
means weighing too much—which
could mean having too much muscle, bone, fat and/or body water.
Being obese, however, specifically
means having too much body fat.
Symptoms
It may seem obvious what the
primary symptom is of childhood
obesity. But being “fat” or “very
fat” is not the only symptom of obe-
August ‘11 | Hamaspik Gazette
sity. Physical size does not necessarily mean one is obese—the primary symptom is how much body
fat one has, not how much mass or
weight.
Thus, a non-obese child could be
rather imposing, burly, corpulent or
otherwise large—but not be carrying
too much excess, unhealthy and
unneeded body fat. Conversely, a
child could be relatively small but be
carrying a proportion of body fat
that is well beyond healthy—and
thus be obese.
With that clarified, the true
symptoms of childhood obesity are
the myriad medical, emotional and
social problems triggered, or possibly triggered, by excess body fat.
These include but are not limited to:
• Asthma
• Cancer
• Depression
• Disability
• Gallbladder disease
• Heart disease
• High cholesterol
• High triglycerides
• High blood pressure
• Learning disabilities
• Low self-esteem
• Metabolic syndrome
•Nonalcoholic fatty liver disease
• Osteoarthritis
• Physical discomfort
• Shame
• Skin/wound healing problems
• Sleep apnea
• Social discrimination
• Social isolation
• Stroke
• Type 2 diabetes
Bottom line, childhood obesity
lowers the overall quality of life,
hindering or preventing obese kids
from doing things others normally
and easily enjoy, like participating in
family activities. Obese children
may avoid public places and not
infrequently encounter discrimination.
Diagnosis
If you believe your child is
obese, see your doctor.
The doctor will first conduct a
health history review, which
includes your child’s weight history,
weight-loss efforts, exercise habits,
eating patterns, any previous conditions, medications, stress levels,
family health history and any other
significant health issues.
The doctor will check for other
health problems like high blood
pressure or diabetes.
A general physical exam will
check all vital signs like heart rate,
blood pressure, temperature, and
heart and lung function.
A variety of blood tests depending on the child’s health situation
may also be conducted, including
cholesterol, liver function, fasting
glucose and thyroid tests. The doctor may also recommend electrocardiograms or other heart tests.
The doctor may also measure
your child’s waist circumference
because fat stored around the waist
may further increase risk of diseases
like diabetes and heart disease.
Causes
Obesity, and especially childhood obesity, is the result of eating
too many calories and not getting
enough
physical
activity.
Specifically, obesity is caused by a
child taking in more calories than he
or she burns through exercise and
normal daily activities. The body
then stores these excess calories as
fat.
The true cause of obesity, therefore, is not eating too much—it’s
whatever causes the child to eat too
much. In other words, eating too
much is really just a symptom of further underlying causes.
The official literature of Let’s
Move! puts it best:
“American society has become
characterized by environments that
promote increased consumption of
less healthy food and physical inactivity. It can be difficult for children
to make healthy food choices and
get enough physical activity when
they are … influenced by:
• Sugar drinks and less healthy
foods on school campuses…
• Advertising of less healthy
foods…
• Lack of daily, quality physical
activity in all schools…
• No safe and appealing place, in
many communities, to play or be
active…
• Limited access to healthy
affordable foods…
• Greater availability of highenergy-dense foods and sugar
drinks…
• Increasing portion sizes…”
Most importantly, Let’s Move!
recognizes the devastating, destructive force that is home electronics—
computers, game consoles, PDA
phones and, of course, “the tube”:
“…Children 8-18 years of age
spend an average of 7.5 hours a day
using
entertainment
media…
Eighty-three percent of children
from six months to less than six
years of age (!) view [electronic
media] about one hour and 57 minutes a day. …viewing is a contributing factor to childhood obesity
because it may take away from the
time children spend in physical
activities; lead to increased energy
intake through snacking and eating
meals in front of [devices]; and,
influence
children
to
make
unhealthy food choices through
exposure to food advertisements.”
(If you’re one of those parents
who keep an electronics-free home,
you may now take a well-deserved
bow. You’re welcome!)
Let’s Move! also cites dwindling
natural maternal feeding of babies
and the increasing use of formula
and other supplements.
Other causes of childhood obesity are:
• Certain medications
• Drinking high-calorie beverages
• Eating fast food
• Eating most calories at night
• Genetics
• Lack of sleep, which can trigger appetite-increasing hormones
• Medical conditions like PraderWilli syndrome and Cushing’s syndrome
• Skipping breakfast
• Socio-economic pressure (peer
pressure and healthy-food inaccessibility)
• Unhealthy family habits
Treatment
Introduction
Like its symptoms, it may also
seem obvious what the primary
treatment is for childhood obesity.
But “losing weight” or “dieting” is
not that simple when it comes to this
condition.
Children (or adults) who are
obese
didn’t
become
obese
overnight—and treating their obesity
also doesn’t happen overnight.
Just like the excessive eating and
lack of exercise that causes obesity
results from the perfect storm of bad
habits, dysfunctional families,
unhealthy schools/communities, and
peer/societal pressure, the treatment
of obesity must include and address
this entire big picture of issues too.
In short, to treat your child’s
obesity, you don’t have to get your
child to “lose weight,” “diet” or
“work out.” You need to change
your child’s lifestyle—your family’s
entire way of thinking, behaving and
living.
Discouraged? Don’t be! You
CAN do this!
It may seem like a difficult-toattain solution—especially since, as
a Hamaspik social worker points out
to the Gazette, “people come in with
emotional and underlying issues
when it comes to weight, especially
in today’s society where expectations are so high and unrealistic…
It’s common that if the end result
seems so far away and difficult to
attain, people dismiss the idea
entirely… so any step should be
applauded.”
And indeed, one step at a time,
one healthy decision at a time, one
day at a time, reversing obesity really isn’t impossible.
Even a few simple changes can
trigger results in your child that
you’ll feel and see—encouraging
and strengthening you to go further,
work harder and create an avalanche
effect that’ll eventually bring your
child to the healthy place he or she
deserves to be.
Behavior change
Here’s where it all starts.
For obese children, behavior
change is virtually impossible without parental involvement—so get
your child into a daily exercise routine using fun physical activities and
games, work with a nutritionist (and
school teachers and staff!) to radically overhaul your child’s diet (sorry,
no more junk food!), and reinstate
the family dinner as the sacred ritual
that it should be.
considered the safest way to lose
weight and the best way to keep it
off permanently. Avoid drastic and
unrealistic diet changes, such as
crash diets, because they’re unlikely
to help you keep excess weight off
for the long term. And children
should not be put on diets unless
specifically approved by their doctor.
Fruits, vegetables and whole
grains
Eating more of these foods give
you and your child more “munching
satisfaction” so that you all can feel
full and satisfied on larger portion
sizes with less calories.
calorie plan/healthy-eating plan for
your child with his or her doctor and
nutritionist.
Summary
Obesity, unfortunately, is by and
large a symptom of an increasingly
ailing and dysfunctional society, in
which material affluence and abundance—at least according to one
study—actually increases unhappiness, not cures it. Let’s Move!’s literature correctly points out that it
took us a generation to get here—
and will take a generation to get
back to where we should be.
Here’s a summary on how to
treat obesity:
• Drastically reduce (or better
yet, eliminate) usage of home electronics and media
• Eat daily family meals (and
Exercise and activity
Exercise as a treatment for a
child’s obesity includes the entire
family—which means everyone has
to exercise, not just your child. But
Also:
Reduce your child’s portion
don’t worry! There’s no shortage of
fun and exciting physical activities sizes, make sure he or she doesn’t
skip breakfast, and create a daily
you can do with your child.
Begin by increasing your family’s
activity level: Get up
and move around the
home more frequently.
Start gradually if your
family isn’t in good
shape or isn’t used to
exercising. Even a
ten-minute daily walk
can help.
According to Let’s
Move!,
children
should be getting one
to two hours of physical activity throughout
the day, including outside play when possible.
To make your own
exercise goal more
doable, break it up
into several sessions
throughout the day,
doing just five or six
minutes at a time.
Aerobic exercise
is the most efficient
way to burn calories
and
shed
excess
weight. But any extra
movement also helps
burn calories. So park
farther from store
entrances, do household chores faster,
garden more often,
and get up and move
The right approach, with heart and devotion to every individual
around periodically.
healthy ones) together, not at fastfood joints
• Turn daily exercise or physical
activity into parent/child bonding
time
So start today, right now, with
little things like exercising more,
eating less, reducing family dysfunction and getting the support you
need from professionals and peers.
By taking positive steps to counteract obesity, you and your loved
ones will get to where you and your
family should be—and, fortunately,
a lot quicker than in one generation.
Hamaspik thanks Williamsburg
pediatrician Dr. Chandu Patel and
Hamaspik of Rockland County
social worker Tzivia Frommer,
LMSW, for critically reviewing this
article.
Day
Habilitation
Soaring
Upwards
Hamaspik Day Hab:
Weight loss
If your child is
already obese, the
good news is that even
modest weight loss
can improve or prevent associated health
problems—even just
five to ten percent of
his or her total weight.
That means that if
your obese child
weighs,
say,
75
pounds, he or she
would need to lose
only about 3.75 to 7.5
pounds to start seeing
benefits.
Slow and steady
weight loss each week
over the long term is
Space and
time are
very limited
Call today, Zishe Lowy
Director of Day Service
State of the art Seperate Facilities
(845)503-0210
Eventful days of joyful, theraputic and educative activities tshopping t trips t computers t swimming
t delicious meals t exercise t hands-on vocational training t arts and crafts,
Hamaspik Gazette | August ‘11
E9
Public
Health
And
Policy
locations, is offering free monthly health
screenings for members and guests this summer. The first, a free kid’s health and ID
screening, was held July 9; next month’s will
focus on vision health for all ages.
Slamming abuse across the pond
In the wake of a BBC reporter secretly
catching abuse of adult care home residents on
video, a care workers’ group slammed the Care
Quality Commission—England’s equivalent of
New York State’s CQCAPD special-needs
oversight board—with a petition of no confidence.
HHS to not spy on doctors
The Dept. of Health and Human Services
will now not be anonymously calling doctors
to learn whether they refuse Medicare or
Medicaid patients due to those programs’ low
reimbursement rates. Bowing to apparently
fierce public criticism, HHS announced on
June 28 that the “mystery shopper” survey
program had been spiked.
Making healthcare magical
Kids (and kids at heart) just love theme
parks and their costumed employees—and
tend to dislike doctors and hospitals. Just ask
any parent. Now, a three-day Orlando course
teaches caregivers how to act, work and treat
patients “in character,” creating a positive,
“guest”-oriented patient experience.
Ten great public health
achievements: United States,
2001 to 2010
Building on U.S. life expectancy’s 62-percent jump from 1900 to 2000 due to public
health breakthroughs, the U.S. Centers for
Disease Control (CDC) recently asked its scientists to pick the top ten medical achievements of 2000 to 2010. In no particular order,
here are their picks:
1. Vaccine-prevented diseases
Recent analysis indicates that current vaccinations prevent approximately 42,000 deaths
and 20 million cases of disease, with net savings of nearly $14 billion in direct costs and
$69 billion in total societal costs.
2. Infectious-disease prevention/control
Public health infrastructure improvements
and innovative targeted prevention efforts
resulted, for example, in a 30% reduction of
tuberculosis (TB) cases, a 58% decline in central line-associated blood stream infections,
the interception of over 3,000 potentiallyinfected blood donations containing West Nile
virus, and the elimination of canine rabies in
2004 after 60-plus years of effort.
3. Tobacco control
Horrifying libertarian purists but saving
billions in medical costs, state smoke-free
laws, various taxes on tobacco products, and
increasing federal government regulation and
banning of tobacco products dramatically
increased by 2010. Despite progress made,
smoking still results in an approximate $193billion annual national economic burden.
4. Newborn health improvements
Folic acid fortification of U.S. cereal grain
products labeled as enriched beginning in
E10
Medicaid pays, crime doesn’t
1998 contributed to a 36% reduction in newborns’ neural tube disorders (NTDs) by 2006.
In 2003, 46 states were screening newborns for six genetic and endocrine disorders;
by April 2011, all states reported screening for
at least 26 disorders on an expanded and standardized uniform panel.
From 1999 to 2008, newborn screenings
for hearing loss rose from 46.5% to 96.9%.
5. Decreasing motor-vehicle accidents
From 2000 to 2009, thanks to safer roadways, vehicles and road use, and tougher laws:
• The death rate related to motor vehicle
travel declined from 14.9 to 11.0 per 100,000
and the injury rate declined from 1,130 to 722
per 100,000
• Child pedestrian deaths declined by 49%
from 475 to 244
• Child bicyclist deaths declined by 58%
from 178 to 74
6. Cardiovascular disease prevention
During the past decade, age-adjusted coronary heart disease deaths dropped from 195 to
126 per 100,000 and age-adjusted stroke
deaths dropped from 61.6 to 42.2 per 100,000.
Factors contributing to these reductions
include declines in uncontrolled hypertension,
elevated cholesterol and smoking, and
improvements in treatments, medications, and
quality of care.
7. Occupational safety improvements
Working conditions were improved and
workplace-injury risk was reduced:
• Implementing a best-practices standard
for patient lifting produced a 35% decline in
low back injuries among U.S. nursing care and
residential-center workers between 2003-2009
• The National Children’s Center for Rural
Agricultural Health and Safety’s guidelines
produced a 56% decline in youth farm injury
rates from 1998 to 2009
• The U.S. Coast Guard’s Dockside
Stability and Safety Checks, launched in 1999,
reduced Bering Sea crab-fishing fatalities from
770 deaths per 100,000 full-time fishermen in
the mid-1990s to 260 deaths per 100,000 fulltime fishermen today
8. Cancer prevention
From 1998 to 2007, colorectal cancer
August ‘11 | Hamaspik Gazette
death rates decreased from 25.6 per 100,000 to
20.0 for men and from 18.0 per 100,000 to
14.2 for women.
9. Childhood lead poisoning prevention
Only five states had lead-poisoning prevention laws in 1990—but 23 did by 2010.
State-law enforcement and new federal laws
brought the percentage of children ages 1-5
with unsafe blood lead levels down to 0.9% in
2003-2008. The annual economic benefit of
preventing lead exposure is estimated at $213
billion.
10. Public health preparedness and
response
Streamlined medical supplies and equipment purchasing, interagency cooperation, and
national agency responsiveness resulting from
the 2001 terror attacks allowed the government to effectively squelch the 2009 H1N1 flu
pandemic and prevent millions of infections
and thousands of hospitalizations and deaths
from that and other public-health threats.
COPD now #3
Chronic obstructive pulmonary disease
(COPD) became the U.S.’s third largest cause
of death in 2009, behind heart disease and cancer and topping stroke, according to the CDC.
First-ever global
infection conference
The first-ever International Conference on
Prevention and Infection Control (ICPIC), a
project of the World Health Organization
(WHO), was held in early July in Geneva,
Switzerland. The conference addressed hospital-acquired infections (HAIs), which are a
leading cause of death in the United States.
Sam’s Club going into healthcare?
The day that American mega-giant-superretailer Wal-Mart starts opening doctor’s
offices and hospitals is probably not that far
off. Tongue in cheek? Maybe. (Hey, they sell
everything else.) But a press release tells the
Gazette that Sam’s Club, a popular Wal-Mart
division which already offers in-store pharmacies, eye doctors and optometrists at many
Medicaid’s federal-level Office of the
Inspector General added Dr. Gautam Gupta of
Illinois to its Top Ten Most Wanted Fugitives
List on June 13, 2011. With associates, Gupta
allegedly bilked Medicaid and private insurers
for $25 million in unnecessary or unperformed
services.
Gupta joins Oleg Kheyson, Muhammad
Azeem and a handful of other foreigners who
preyed on their host country’s generous medical insurance programs. All are facing
decades in prison.
In related recent news, a jury convicted El
Paso doctor Anthony Valdez of bilking
Medicaid, Medicare and military health system Tricare of over $40 million. He faces 160
years in prison.
Also, Brooklyn neurologist Leonard
Langman pleaded guilty in July for a scheme
that defrauded Medicare, the U.S. Dept. of
Labor’s Office of Workers’ Compensation
Programs (OWCP), the New York State
Workers’ Compensation Board (NYS-WCB)
and other entities.
Tylenol Extra Strength
Caplets recalled
Tylenol is recalling one U.S.-distributed
lot of Tylenol Extra Strength Caplets, 225count bottles, lot ABA619 (see bottle side for
#), due a small number of odor reports linked
to trace amounts of TBA, a non-toxic chemical. Consumers should call 1-888-222-6036
for a refund.
FDA approves 2011-2012
flu vaccine
On July 18, the FDA announced approval
of the 2011-2012 flu vaccine formulation to be
used this coming season by six antivirus manufacturers. It includes the 2009 H1N1 strain.
Eight percent of U.S. kids
food-allergic
The largest study of its kind, conducted by
the Food Allergy and Anaphylaxis Network
(FAAN), found that eight percent of U.S. kids,
or 5.9 million, have food allergies, of which
peanut allergies form the largest group.
So, What's Happening in Your Health Today...?
Drink to your heart
An Italian study of 64 young
volunteers found that small amounts
of red wine made the volunteers’ left
ventricles decrease function—but
their right ventricles increase function. More research on the effects of
small amounts of alcohol on the
heart is needed.
Cardiac arrest? Chill out!
A new cardiac-arrest treatment
technique pioneered by the
Minneapolis Heart Institute entails
packing the patient in ice for 24
hours. Lowering the body’s core
temperature to 92 degrees is thought
to help the body get by with less
oxygen, and has been shown to
reduce nerve damage.
Hand tech bad for eyes
People texting, reading or
browsing on PDAs force eyes to
work harder, shows new research.
More fork, less food
Restaurant-goers using larger
forks ate less than diners using regular forks, says a study conducted
(where else?) at a restaurant in Italy.
Researchers cite the psychological
satisfaction triggered by the forks’
larger serving sizes as the reason.
Double leg transplant
A young Spanish accident victim
became the world’s first double leg
transplant patient in July.
Fighting back pain
A gov’t-funded study of backpain massage therapy and standard
medical care found that the therapy
reduced pain and improved function
faster.
In related news, a Dutch review
of 26 studies that compared chiropractic to medication, exercise or
physical therapy found that chiropractic appears no better or worse
than other options at relieving back
pain long-term. “No single therapy
is better than another,” said study
author Sidney Rubinstein.
Child survivors
have higher risk
While 80 percent of childhood
cancers are cured nowadays, a study
of over 14,000 kids up to 38 years
found that childhood cancer survivors have a higher risk than others
of developing new tumors as adults.
Kids’ screenings increasing
As of 2009, close to half of pediatricians are now regularly using
standardized screening tests for kids
under three, like the Denver
Developmental Screening Test or the
Ages & Stages Questionnaire,
according to a Dartmouth University
study. Early detection of developmental issues like autism is key to
initiating early and effective treatment, experts say.
patients now shows that victims
transported by ambulances that notified ERs in advance got critical
brain scans, and scan results, far
faster than patients transported by
other means.
Alzheimer’s news
Marriage good for you
A three-year study found that
people whose spinal fluid had higher
levels of a protein called APP at the
study’s start developed Alzheimer’s
by study’s end. Because APP is
involved in Alzheimer’s development, the study may lead to a new
early Alzheimer’s test.
The idea that fitness prevents
Alzheimer’s was underscored again
in several new studies. One says
that even a 25-percent cut in factors
like obesity could cut 500,000 U.S.
cases yearly. Another found that
older adults who stayed physically
active had a 90 percent lower risk of
developing significant cognitive
decline.
A study of over 281,000 veterans found that those who had suffered wartime concussions were
over twice likelier to develop
dementia including Alzheimer’s.
Some inherited forms of
Alzheimer’s may be detectable up to
two decades before problems with
memory and thinking develop,
according to new research.
A study presented at the midJuly
Alzheimer’s
Association
International Conference in Paris
says that people at risk for the disease are twice as likely to fall as
healthy people—and the disease
may also be visible in scans of the
eye.
Alzheimer’s is the second-most
feared disease after cancer, U.S.
researchers now say.
The health benefits of marriage
garnered these recent stories:
A Brigham Young University
analysis of 127,753 patient records
found that colon-cancer patients who
were married were 14 percent less
likely to die than unmarried patients.
In a Canadian study of over
4,000 heart-attack patients, married
men feeling chest pain were found to
go to hospitals an average of 30 minutes sooner than single, divorced or
widowed men.
Weight loss:
calories, not type
High carbs or high protein?
Either low-fat diet is good, says a
New Zealand study of 300 dieting
Type 2 diabetics, finding that the key
is decreasing calorie intake, regardless of source.
First-ever synthetic
windpipe transplant
In a world first, a cancer patient
in Sweden had his entire windpipe,
tumor and all, surgically removed
and replaced with a rejection-free
new windpipe made from his own
stem cells.
In related news, the American
Heart
Association
recently
announced the world’s first skincell-based replacement blood vessel.
Faster ER stroke care?
Call ambulance
Yes, ambulances get stroke victims to emergency rooms faster than
cars or taxis—but a study of 14,000
CT scans reduce
smoker deaths
Results from the landmark
National Lung Screening Trial, a
nearly decade-long study into the
effectiveness of lung-cancer screening methods, show that CT scans
reduce deaths among current or former heavy smokers by 20 percent
compared to standard chest X-rays.
In related news, however, a
study by Memorial Sloan-Kettering
lung cancer specialist Dr. Gregory
Riely found that back-to-back CT
lung tumor scans on the same
patients only minutes apart produced
different enough results to convince
radiologists that some tumors had
grown or shrunk when they had not.
CT scans are inherently variable by
up to ten percent, Dr. Riely says.
Chickenpox fatalities fall
Vaccines for chickenpox, a disease once part of childhood, were
first popularized in 1995. By 2007,
the CDC now reports, already-rare
annual deaths fell from 105 to 14.
Don’t age so fast
Progeria is an extremely rare and
incurable terminal illness that causes
kids to age rapidly. It’s caused by
too much progerin, a toxin protein,
in cells. Now, NIH scientists say
that rapamycin, an antibiotic, boosts
cells’ ability to flush out progerin—
opening the door to a possible cure.
Faster new heart-emergency transfer system
A University of North Carolina
study of 55 state hospitals before
and one year after creating a faster
hospital-to-hospital transfer system
for patients needing emergency
coronary angioplasties has found
that the system cut average transfer
times from 97 to 58 minutes.
Patients suffering the most lethal
heart attacks generally need emergency coronary angioplasty to open
blocked arteries within 90 minutes
of initial assessment—but only 25
percent of U.S. hospitals can perform the procedure.
Too much sitting,
lung blood clots
An 18-year study of nearly
70,000 nurses found that sitting an
average of six hours daily doubled
risk of suffering pulmonary
embolisms, or blood clots in the
lungs, compared to more activity.
$635 billion in pain
Pain afflicts at least 116 million
U.S. adults each year and costs the
nation $560 billion to $635 billion
annually in medical and economic
costs, according to a new Institute of
Medicine report.
Playing Creator?
Not so fast…
Biomedical
gerontologist
Aubrey de Grey, the pioneer of
Strategies for Engineered Negligible
Senescence (SENS), a theory positing that humanity is on the cusp of
radical longevity due to ongoing
medical breakthroughs, admitted in
a recent interview that “What we can
actually predict in terms of how long
people will live is absolutely nothing, because it will be determined by
the risk of death from other causes
like accidents.”
lism.
And in a July 14 editorial, Sen.
Dianne Feinstein (D-CA) called for
a federal ban of the “unsafe chemical” from baby bottles and cups, citing bans on said items by China,
Canada and the European Union due
to its purported health risks, including endocrine disruptions.
Malaria research
making moves
It may be hard to believe that
malaria kills a child every 45 seconds in today’s world, at least
according to the World Health
Organization, which estimates that
225 million malaria cases (and
781,000 deaths) occur globally each
year, mostly in sub-Saharan Africa.
That’s why malaria research remains
important, with two significant findings made in recent months:
• A study released in May found
that certain bacteria in mosquitoes’
guts stop the growth of the malariacausing parasite by at least 98 percent. Malaria is spread by infected
mosquito bites. Researchers hope to
place the bacteria in mosquitoes’
environment to make them naturally
malaria-resistant.
• Vanderbilt researchers have
isolated a compound that overwhelms mosquitoes’ (and other
bugs’) every odor receptor, creating
a repellent that could keep them
away from humans.
Study: Chantix
boosts heart risk
Late talkers,
healthy adults
A new study shows an increase
in the risk of heart attacks and other
cardiovascular events among smokers who take the drug Chantix to
help them quit. Researchers found a
72% increase in these events compared to smokers taking a placebo.
Australian researchers followed
late talkers into their teens and found
the kids were no more likely to be
shy, depressed or aggressive than
their peers as they grew up. That
means a “wait-and-see” approach
may be just fine for toddlers with a
language lag, as long as they develop normally in other areas, according to researchers.
BPA bad for husbands?
Male mice exposed to bisphenol
A (BPA), a chemical used in some
plastics, displayed decreased sense
of direction in a maze test—and also
repelled female mice despite no visible defects. The BPA-effects study
indicates a possible but unproven
effect by the chemical on human
males.
BPA became widely used in the
manufacturing of plastics in the
1950s and is used in many consumer
products today, including green-bean
can liners. The FDA currently considers BPA safe, but recent research
has linked it to cancer, heart disease
and other serious conditions.
In another recent study, BPA and
chemicals called phthalates found in
solvents, plastics and numerous
household products were found to
possibly lower the body’s thyroid
hormone levels, which play a role in
many critical bodily functions,
including reproduction and metabo-
Toddler development
unharmed by Mom’s bed
A five-year study of 944 lowincome families with little kids
found no link between toddlers who
bed-shared and the onset of either
cognitive or behavioral problems by
the age of five.
So is salt bad?
Modern medicine holds that
excess salt raises blood pressure, a
risk factor for heart disease, a leading cause of death. But while cutting salt does cut blood pressure,
research has not yet demonstrated
that lower blood pressure translates
into better overall heart health in the
wider population—a contention
recently made by British scientists,
triggering a contentious debate.
Hamaspik Gazette | August ‘11
E11
Summer Safety Tips, Part II
Additional seasonal precautions from the world of health
Kids’ physical activities
Kids out of school? Not in summer camp? Spending all day at
home? The Alliance for a Healthier
Generation says kids need to get 60
minutes or more of physical activity
a day—especially during the summer. Here are their tips:
• Don’t use “screen time” to
reward or punish children because
that makes it seem more important
than it is
• Use praise, encouragement and
recognition for children’s physical
activity
• Do use “screen time” programs
and videos that feature activities like
dancing or exercise
• Help kids find healthy alternatives to screen time: Take them to
the park, play outside with them, or
help them learn a new sport
• No electronic screens of any
type in kids’ bedrooms! The only
screens in their rooms should be
those on the windows
Barbecue and picnic safety
Breaking out the old grill for a
backyard family meal? Stay safe,
On Tuesday, June 29, a group of
individuals from Hamaspik of
Orange County’s men’s Day Hab
program paid a personal visit to a
fellow “Day Habber” who’d been
under the weather at home for a few
days. The surprise drop-in left him
in heightened spirits—giving him a
boost that was sure to positively
affect his physical state too.
*
Hamaspik of Rockland County
IRA Nurses Evie Steinhart and Katia
Sussholz, RN led an AMAP certification course for a number of the
agency’s DSPs, or Direct Support
Professionals, in early July. The
Approved
Medication
Administration Personnel (AMAP)
course, which was held at the
Hamaspik Terrace ballroom at
Hamaspik’s administrative offices in
Monsey, walked direct-care staff
through the various state and federal
regulations governing the safe storage and administration of medications to residential individuals with
special needs. The course also provided staff with a significant amount
of anatomy and physiology as it pertains to medication, as well as a
thorough explanation of many medication classifications.
Staffers newly employed in residential homes for individuals with
special needs must receive AMAP
training before they are legally
authorized to provide residents with
medication, Sussholtz explains to
the Gazette. And to complete
AMAP certification, a staff nurse
must witness new staffers correctly
pour or otherwise dispense medications to consumers at three separate
pourings, or scheduled medicationadministrating times.
E12
says
the American
Dietetic
Association:
• Wash your hands often
• Separate raw meats from
ready-to-eat foods
• Cook all food to recommended
temperatures
• Scrub grill and utensils before
and after use
• Don’t use the same dish towel
repeatedly (use paper towels and
don’t reuse them)
• Don’t use the same brush to
baste raw and cooked meats
• Boil leftover marinade before
seasoning cooked meats
• Keep food cool with plenty of
ice or ice packs; keep cooler under
40 degrees Farenheit
• Don’t keep perishable food
outside too long: In 90 degrees or
up, an hour is the limit
Heat safety
The risk of heat-related illnesses,
especially for older people, rises in
summer heat—including long-term
damage or death. According to the
National
Athletic
Trainers
Association, the most common heat-
related illnesses include:
• Heat stroke, or body temperature topping 104 degrees Fahrenheit
• Heat exhaustion, or loss of
fluid or sodium
• Heat cramps, or intense pain
and persistent muscle contractions
during and after exercise
To prevent and treat these illnesses before they become serious:
• Allow time for heat acclimatization
• Take breaks and include adequate rest between outdoor exercise
regimens
• Drink plenty of water or sports
drinks before, during and after outdoor activities
• Exercise during the early
morning or late evening when temperatures are cooler
• Know when to quit. If something doesn’t feel right, stop now,
get inside, rest and rehydrate
Preventing bug bites
An article by a specialist with
TRICARE, the U.S. military’s
healthcare system, notes several suggestions to keep from getting bitten
by mosquitoes and other bugs this
season:
• Use EPA-registered sprays that
contain DEET, the most popular and
effective bug repellent
• Wear protective clothing when
outdoors from dusk to dawn—peak
biting times for many insects
• Don’t wear heavily scented
soaps, perfumes or bright colors
which attract bugs
• Don’t leave drinks and garbage
cans uncovered; get rid of containers
with standing water that attract mosquitoes
• After outdoor activities, check
yourself and family members for
ticks
Some bug bites and stings can
transmit diseases like the West Nile
virus, Lyme disease, Rocky
Mountain spotted fever (RMSF), or
cause serious reactions, allergic or
otherwise.
It is normal for a bite or sting to
result in redness of the affected area
and minor swelling. Fever, prolonged/unusual redness or soreness
may indicate an infection; see a doctor immediately.
Preventing sunburn
In related news, the American
Academy of Pediatrics offers these
sunburn protection tips:
• Apply sunscreen all over children’s faces and bodies
Happenings around Hamaspik
*
*
*
On July 8, the Hamaspik of
Rockland County Day Hab Women’s
Division proudly rolled out their
first edition of Day Hab Highlights,
a crisp and breezy weekly newsletter.
According to the inaugural edition, the individuals enjoyed their
annual carnival on July 6, a yearly
event held jointly with Chaveiros, a
local day camp. That same week,
they also celebrated two birthdays
with a party and even taught their
friends from the Ateres girls school
how to properly grill vegetables at a
joint barbeque picnic at Gene Levy
Park. (Yum! And healthy, too.)
Individuals at the Hamaspik of
Orange County Day Hab’s Women’s
Division are stringing along quite
nicely—and quite literally.
During the first week of July,
program participants were asked by
the head counselors of Bais Rochel
Day Camp, a local program for
Kiryas Joel, New York girls, to
string strings of beads that together
would form a glorious backdrop for
a stage production. “The girls loved
and enjoyed it immensely!” reported
Women’s Division Director Mrs.
Niederman. “It was great for our
fine motor skills”—not to mention
for a sense of community inclusion.
Things are growing at the
Forshay Briderheim IRA—literally.
The group home now maintains a
tiny vegetable farm of its own in its
backyard, where fresh tomatoes and
peppers have been flourishing to
give individuals and staff a taste of
good-old-fashioned homegrown produce. And furthering that homestead
spirit of old is the backyard presence
of several live young chickens,
coop, run and all, which “the boys”
have been lovingly caring for since
late June. “It’s animal therapy,”
comments Home Manager Mrs.
Sarah Fisher. “The boys love it.”
Hamaspik Gazette
© ‘03-‘11 All Rights Reserved
Published Monthly by “Hamaspik”
Distributed free
USPS Presorted Non-profit Mail
Postmaster: Return service requested
President
Executive Director
Editor
Hershel Weiss
Meyer Wertheimer
Mendy Hecht
Writers and Editors
Isaac Schnitzler
Joseph Landau
Letters or Address Change?
Tel: (845) 356-8400 ex. 212
Fax: (845) 503-1212
Mail: Hamaspik Gazette, 58 Rt. 59, Suite 1, Monsey, NY 10952
August ‘11 | Hamaspik Gazette
• Remember to reapply every
two hours, or after children get wet
• Ensure sunscreen is at least
SPF 15 and protects against UVA
and UVB rays
• Apply sunscreen even on
cloudy days
• Have kids wear lightweight
cotton clothing that covers legs and
arms
Summer lighting-strike risk
The American College of
Emergency Physicians (ACEP) says
that the number of people struck by
lightning each year rises in summertime. About 50 U.S. lightning fatalities occur annually. According to
the ACEP, many can be prevented
with these tips:
During a lightning storm:
• Stay inside
• Turn off and stay away from
anything plugged into power sockets
• Use cell phones and cordless
phones if possible
• Avoid water, which conducts
electricity
• Avoid metal objects
• Wait 30 minutes from the last
lightning flash before resuming
activities
Additionally, ACEP points out,
people struck by lightning are safe to
touch—so start CPR immediately on
any victim without a pulse.
*
The Uncle Moishy concert for
Concord Briderheim IRA residents
and their friends (see “Summer
Graduation Celebration,” pg. E3)
was actually supposed to take place
the week before, with Uncle Moishy
not appearing due to unforeseen circumstances.
But, ever creative, Home
Manager Mrs. Shaindel Goldberger
came up with an exciting activity on
the spot, filling the gap left by the
performer’s absence with something
(almost) as fun.
Mrs. Goldberger quickly produced red and blue balloons and
small stickers. Names and birthdates of each individual were written
on the stickers and inserted into the
inflated balloons.
The two bunches of color-coded
balloons, symbolizing the two IRAs,
were then ceremoniously exchanged,
with each resident then picking a
balloon.
With staff help, each individual
next popped his balloon to get the
sticker inside—and getting the name
and birthdate of a resident from the
other IRA for whom to plan a surprise birthday party.
*
It’s summertime, right? Time
for summer-themed bulletin boards!
And that’s exactly why the
Hamaspik of Rockland County
Women’s Day Hab program recently
revamped its boards.
In that same balmy second week
of July, the young women also
enjoyed the breathtaking natural
scenery of S. George’s Island Park in
Westchester County.