Economic Stability, Education Access and Quality

00:06 When we talk about economic stability, there are certain things that again, influence health.

00:12 One of the things I want to point out from the beginning is that healthy people goals have been around for a very long time.

00:19 So we're 30 something years in or almost 30 something years in.

00:23 And the thing that stood out to me the most when I looked at the goals for 2030, is that in most of these categories, there has been little to no change over the last several years.

00:35 Why is that? Because we failed to acknowledge what was determining health for people who are in these marginalized spaces.

00:43 So pointing it out, in the United States, 1 in 10 people live in poverty.

00:49 That's quite a bit when we think about it and put it in the context.

00:52 And many people can afford healthy foods, health care, and housing.

00:56 Before we decide that we want to label people as lazy or say that they don't care, we do need to think about how we as healthcare providers can help aid and change the economic situation for people who live in these types of conditions.

01:15 And I've been asked the question before, what do we do? We write grants all the time.

01:21 And we can get together interprofessionally and intraprofessionally, and put our heads together and write these grants across disciplines.

01:30 So join in the public health campaign for trying to change these things.

01:36 The goal for the economic stability is for to help people earn steady incomes that allow them to meet their health needs.

01:45 How do we do this? I just mentioned, if we write a grant, right, we partner with people in those communities.

01:51 And we ask through focus groups, what the needs are? We don't want to assume what the priorities are, because they're not the same for every single group.

01:59 We tend to think that but it's not necessarily the case.

02:03 So involving people in the communities is very important.

02:06 Then the second thing we can do is how do we use some of that grant funding to employ people within those communities.

02:14 Even if it's just a job training, we can do that.

02:18 I hate to say just, so I take that word back, it's not adjust.

02:21 But one of the main things we can do is help with job training, interview skills, pay people on the grants to help us with whatever we need to do to achieve the goals of whatever that grant was written for.

02:35 This one saddens me. Education, access, and quality.

02:40 When we think about children who grow up in communities where the resources are lacking, and the access sometimes is lacking, and thinking about all the different corollaries that contribute to poor education.

02:53 Sometimes it's because these kids aren't even going to school.

02:56 Why aren't they going to school? Maybe the parents work somewhere, and that don't necessarily have the transportation.

03:05 Just a whole bunch of different factors can impact it, but one of the greatest ones is lack of resources or minimal resources.

03:13 And I can speak to that from a personal perspective.

03:16 I went to a predominantly black school K through 12.

03:20 And when I was younger, I remember we got hand me down books written in, pages missing, sometimes highlighted, and that's a distraction.

03:29 As I progress through school, then we started to get new books, and we were all so excited.

03:34 You have to sign your name in these spaces.

03:37 So you can see how many times the book was used before it got to you.

03:40 So we were so excited when we got a new book.

03:43 And then I also want to veer off a little bit and talk about people may look at me and say, "Well, you might have had limited resources, but look at you, you made it." Well, I made it because I was determined to make it and I had excellent teachers.

03:58 But that's not the case in general for most people who grow up in those types of situations.

04:03 And even though I wasn't in a state of poverty.

04:07 The school I went to wasn't prioritize.

04:10 So that's why I say it's multiple factors.

04:12 And it's also why you have to go to each community and see what the needs are because it may not be an economic issue, but a lot of times it is.

04:22 I do recall going to school with a lot of people who didn't have the same means that my family had.

04:28 So just, I know the impact from multiple different levels.

04:33 When we think about education, access, and quality, the lower the educational level, the worse the health outcomes for people and as a decreased life expectancy.

04:43 There's a negative impact on children in so many ways - self esteem, self confidence.

04:49 If you don't have a whole lot of money, the way children dress, they've even the ability to take baths every day, and then other kids tease these kids just so many things.

05:01 Not even going to the dentist sometimes, so poured dentician leads to decreased health outcomes, optimal outcomes, because can you eat certain foods? Not necessarily.

05:14 if you have issues with your dentition.

05:17 And there has been minimal improvement in this area.

05:20 The goal for here is to increase educational opportunities and help children and adolescents do well in school.

05:27 So another thing I want to talk about in that is that, I can also recall my teachers when I said, going out of the way.

05:35 We grew a garden when I was in the second grade, We were able to plant the crops, and then we harvested them, and we took that stuff home.

05:44 And it was all healthy vegetables and stuff.

05:46 So teachers also have to be committed to that change.

05:50 When we talk about, how do we make it better? People with higher educational levels are likelier to have better health and increase like expectancies.

06:04 Children from those low income families, children with disabilities, and those who routinely experience forms of social discrimination like bullying, I mentioned that already, they're more likely to struggle with math and reading.

06:17 Two very important subjects that kind of help us to grow and shape everything else we learn.

06:23 And they're less likely to graduate from high school and go on to college, which means they're also less likely to get safe, high paying jobs, and more likely to have health problems like heart disease, diabetes, and depression.

06:36 So, just didn't that we can see the cycle of how all these things affect children who become adults, and the cycle continues, and people stay in that place.

06:46 And it is our responsibility to help just as humans and humanitarians to help to change these outcomes.

06:54 Many children live in places with these poorly performing schools.

06:59 And the unfortunate part of that is oftentimes, and I've seen this with my own eyes, teachers tend not to care.

07:06 You know, they go there for a paycheck, and they just kind of, again, further marginalized children who have learning disabilities, rather than thinking of creative ways to help children be successful.

07:19 And think about the fact that it's not the child's fault, fault that they're in this situation.

07:25 Many families can't afford to send their children to college.

07:29 Well, they also aren't aware that there are different federal grants and different funding that is available to children who don't necessarily have the financial resources.

07:40 And then think about the stress.

07:42 Stress of living in poverty and how it can affect children's brain development.

07:46 And it makes it harder for them to do well in school.

07:49 Again, the cycle.

07:51 But they often get labeled and placed in special education programs sometimes that they don't necessarily need to be and they just need someone to nurture them, and someone to understand all the different factors that are contributing to their situation.

08:07 There are interventions to help children and adolescents do well in school, and help families pay for college, and have those long term health benefits.

08:16 But school counselors have to be involved in reaching out to those families and making them aware of the benefits that are out there for them so that they can achieve these higher or more optimal health outcomes.

08:30 So what is our role as health care professionals? We need to go into the schools as well.

08:35 We have school nurses, but we usually just when we're in those school nursing positions, we usually just take care of acute episodic illnesses versus thinking beyond.

08:48 So that's one of the things we need to do as healthcare providers and as nurses in particular.

08:54 You need to focus more on just the illnesses and think about it from a holistic perspective and what can we do to help children thrive?