Category Archives: Health Care

Because of my mother —Dr. Noll @ VLCIA 19 July 2011

Dr. Noll, president of WACE, welcomed VLCIA’s new executive director Andrea Schruijer, and then reminded the board that the honking cars outside indicated an ongoing community assessment of biomass, and he encouraged them to consider previously presented materials and to prevent the biomass plant from finding a back door to come back in.

He remarked that he had visited his mother in Germany:

One and half years ago she was in the intensive care unit for about three weeks because she had severe lung issues. She moved away after that to an area where there isn’t the kind of air pollution she was exposed to before hand, and every single day she wakes up she feels like she’s on vacation.

Here’s the video:


Because of my mother —Dr. Noll @ VLCIA 19 July 2011
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Tom Call, Roy Copeland chairman, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett,
Andrea Schruijer Executive Director, J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Project Manager,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 19 July 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

-jsq

Solar: jobs, leadership, grid, independence, and health

Peak power when you need it: solar. Somebody has been studying it, and addressing problems local decisionmakers right here in south Georgia have been raising.

Solar Power Generation in the US: Too expensive, or a bargain? by Richard Perez, ASRC, University at Albany, Ken Zweibel, GW Solar Institute, George Washington University, Thomas E. Hoff, Clean Power Research. That’s Albany, New York, but it applies even more to Albany, Georgia and Lowndes County, Georgia, since we’re so much farther south, with much more sun.

Let’s cut to the chase:

The fuel of heat waves is the sun; a heat wave cannot take place without a massive local solar energy influx. The bottom part of Figure 2 illustrates an example of a heat wave in the southeastern US in the spring of 2010 and the top part of the figure shows the cloud cover at the same time: the qualitative agreement between solar availability and the regional heat wave is striking. Quantitative evidence has also shown that the mean availability of solar generation during the largest heat wave driven rolling blackouts in the US was nearly 90% ideal (Letendre et al. 2006). One of the most convincing examples, however, is the August 2003 Northeast blackout that lasted several days and cost nearly $8 billion region wide (Perez et al., 2004). The blackout was indirectly caused by high demand, fueled by a regional heat wave3. As little as 500 MW of distributed PV region wide would have kept every single cascading failure from feeding into one another and precipitating the outage. The analysis of a similar subcontinental scale blackout in the Western US a few years before that led to nearly identical conclusions (Perez et al., 1997).

In essence, the peak load driver, the sun via heat waves and A/C demand, is also the fuel powering solar electric technologies. Because of this natural synergy, the solar technologies deliver hard wired peak shaving capability for the locations/regions with the appropriate demand mix peak loads driven by commercial/industrial A/C that is to say, much of America. This capability remains significant up to 30% capacity penetration (Perez et al., 2010), representing a deployment potential of nearly 375 GW in the US.

The sun supplies solar power when you need it: at the same time the sun drives heat waves.

The paper identifies the problem I’ve encountered talking to local policy makers, especially ones associated with power companies: Continue reading →

San Antonio promises to shut down a coal plant

We could do something like this. We’ve already made a start with Wiregrass Solar.

San Antonio, the Clean-Energy City? Look out Austin, SA Mayor Julian Castro promises to shut-down a coal plant by 2018.

At an event this afternoon at UT-San Antonio, Mayor Julian Castro announced a suite of green energy projects that he said would position San Antonio as the nation’s “recognized leader in clean energy technology” and help fulfill his aggressive environmental goals.

Most notably, Castro and leaders from CPS Energy, the city-owned utility, pledged to shut down one of its coal-fired power plants 15 years ahead of schedule. By 2018, the city would mothball the 871-megawatt J.T. Deely Power Plant — a bold move in a growing state that’s seemingly addicted to coal.

So what are they going to use for energy? Continue reading →

Healthcare town hall in Atlanta tomorrow

Jane Osborn points out this Healthcare Facility Regulation Division Invites you to an Informal Town Hall Meeting on June 22, 2011:
The Department of Community Health (DCH), Healthcare Facility Regulation Division (HFRD) invites you to attend a Town Hall Meeting on the topic, “Establishing Meaningful Distinctions for Levels of Care in Licensed Personal Care Homes, Assisted Living Communities and Nursing Homes”. The Town Hall Meeting will be held in the DCH Board Room, 5th Floor, 2 Peachtree Street, NW on Wednesday, June 22, 2011 at 11:30 a.m.

The purpose of this Town Hall Meeting is to provide a forum where interested consumers, providers, advocates, stakeholders and regulators may discuss the topic informally. This informal dialogue will assist the DCH in its development of proposed rules for personal care homes and assisted living communities as a result of the passage of SB 178 which creates a licensure category called assisted living communities. Of course, any rules that the DCH ultimately develops would be taken through an informal rules advisory group process and the public rule-making process. If you are unable to attend the Town Hall Meeting, but would like to provide input on this topic, please feel free to send your input electronically to DCH staff using the following email address: sedoughe@dhr.state.ga.us.

That web page also includes some questions for which DCH wants public input.

-jsq

The health of the community is way more important than the job —Leigh Touchton

Leigh Touchton, president of the Valdosta-Lowndes NAACP, says the local and state NAACP are opposed to the biomass plant because the community that is most affected is the minority community. She referred to her previous presentation of a letter from Dr. Robert D. Bullard.

She also brought up an incident with Brad Lofton and recommended that VLCIA hire an executive director who wouldn’t act like that.

And she said she deals with VSEB all the time:

I’ve taken men through there, I’ve signed them up.
She referred to me when she said that, so what I said before is appended after the video.

Here’s the video:


The health of the community is way more important than the job —Leigh Touchton
Regular Meeting, Valdosta-Lowndes County Industrial Authority (VLCIA),
Norman Bennett, Roy Copeland, Tom Call, Mary Gooding, Jerry Jennett chairman,
J. Stephen Gupton attorney, Allan Ricketts Acting Executive Director,
Valdosta, Lowndes County, Georgia, 17 May 2011.
Videos by John S. Quarterman for LAKE, the Lowndes Area Knowledge Exchange.

What I actually recommended regarding VSEB, in response to a specific request from Leigh Touchton for recommendations, was maybe schedule a meeting with Roy Copeland to talk about VSEB and solar job opportunities: Continue reading →

Call Off the Global Drug War —Jimmy Carter

Jimmy Carter in the New York Times 16 June 2011, Call Off the Global Drug War said the Global Commission on Drug Policy:
… has made some courageous and profoundly important recommendations in a report on how to bring more effective control over the illicit drug trade. The commission includes the former presidents or prime ministers of five countries, a former secretary general of the United Nations, human rights leaders, and business and government leaders, including Richard Branson, George P. Shultz and Paul A. Volcker.

The report describes the total failure of the present global antidrug effort, and in particular America’s “war on drugs,” which was declared 40 years ago today. It notes that the global consumption of opiates has increased 34.5 percent, cocaine 27 percent and cannabis 8.5 percent from 1998 to 2008. Its primary recommendations are to substitute treatment for imprisonment for people who use drugs but do no harm to others, and to concentrate more coordinated international effort on combating violent criminal organizations rather than nonviolent, low-level offenders.

These recommendations are compatible with United States drug policy from three decades ago. In a message to Congress in 1977, I said the country should decriminalize the possession of less than an ounce of marijuana, with a full program of treatment for addicts. I also cautioned against filling our prisons with young people who were no threat to society, and summarized by saying: “Penalties against possession of a drug should not be more damaging to an individual than the use of the drug itself.”

Imagine that! A drug policy meant to address the problem.

How did we go wrong? Continue reading →

Thomasville training for Georgia Crisis Response System —Jane Osborn

Received today from Jane Osborn:
From: “Jane Osborn”
Subject: Georgia Crisis Response system
Date: Thu, 16 Jun 2011 11:54:39 -0400

John, There was a Conversations that Matter group held here June 9th to discuss the changes coming with the closing of the state hospitals as it relates to persons with developmental disabilities. We had about 40 local people who were consumers, family members and some service providers in addition to officials from the Region 4 office that covers this area. The services for them will be drastically smaller than those planned for persons with a diagnosis of mental illness, but this training announcement has one session left in this area…June 28 in Thomasville. Scroll all the way to the bottom to find information for the Thomasville event.

The one we had here was sponsored by the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities and All About Developmental Disabilities, an Atlanta-based advocacy group. One of the things we learned was that these Crisis Response Systems supposedly have been in place since June 1, one based in Valdosta and one in another part of the region. You can go to the DBHDD website to see the counties included in our area.

The teams were formed by contracting with organizations from California and Indiana (instead

Continue reading →

“I’m obviously here on one issue.” —Karen Noll @ VLCIA 14 June 2011

Karen Noll asked the VLCIA board to put a no-biomass clause in any purchase agreement regarding the proposed biomass site.

She began with these words:

I’m Karen Noll. I hope some of you already have seen my writing and have read my letters to you in the past. I’m obviously here on one issue. I hope that in the future I can be talking to you about other issues. But right now I’m talking to you about biomass. And we celebrated that it was dead and it was gone and now it’s not. Because we really don’t know … what the plan is.
By “we” I’m guessing she meant WACE. Some of us who are not members of WACE warned that it ain’t over until it’s over, and it only took a week to discover that VLCIA already knew Sterling Planet wanted to buy the proposed biomass site.

Karen Noll made a pitch based partly on saving taxpayer money. In addressing health concerns, she handed the board a letter from local doctor Craig Bishop. She handed the board a petition with “at least 700 signatures” and she said for each signature there was probably at least one more that didn’t sign. Some of what she said appeared to be drawn from a letter that is appended in this post after the video.

Here’s Part 1 of 2: Continue reading →

Georgia moving people out of mental hospitals

The state of Georgia is stopping admitting to state mental hospitals people with developmental disabilities and is starting to move many people with severe and persistent mental illness out of state hospitals into the communities.

According to DBHDD Summary of October 2010 Settlement by Georgia Department of Behavioral Health & Developmental Disabilities, Frank E. Shelp, M.D., M.P.H., Commissioner:

By July 1, 2011, Georgia will stop admitting to its state hospitals people for whom the reason for admission would be a primary diagnosis of a developmental disability, including Temporary and Immediate Care (TIC).

Enhanced community services will be provided for people whose primary diagnosis is a developmental disability and who are either currently hospitalized in state hospitals or who are at risk of hospitalization in state hospitals. Those with forensic status may be included in the target population if the relevant court finds community placement appropriate.

In all cases, the individuals served will be able to make an informed choice about where they’d like to live. Unless they choose otherwise, everyone in the target population will be served in their own homes or the homes of their families and none will be served in a host home, congregate living setting, skilled nursing facility, intermediate care facility, or assisted living facility. All of the waiver participants will receive support coordination.

And a larger group of people: Continue reading →

Treating an “epidemic of mass incarceration” —Physicians in NJEM

Everybody from Serpico to Richard Branson and even the U.S. Senate says the War on Drugs has failed and we should stop locking up so many people. Now physicians weigh in.

ScienceDaily, 1 June 2011, U.S. Physicians Call for New Approach to Address National ‘Epidemic of Mass Incarceration’

With 2.3 million people behind bars and an estimated 10 million Americans cycling in and out of correctional facilities each year, the United States is in the midst of an “epidemic of mass incarceration,” say researchers from the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, a collaboration of The Miriam Hospital and Brown University.

In a Perspective article to appear in the June 2 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM), the authors argue that much of this epidemic is due to inadequate treatment of addiction and mental illness in the community, which they say can be linked to policy changes over the last 30 years, such as severe punishment for drug users as a result of the nation’s “War on Drugs.”

“More than half of all inmates have a history of substance use and dependence or mental illness, yet they are often released to the community without health insurance or access to appropriate medical care and treatment,” says Josiah D. Rich, M.D., M.P.H., director of the Center for Prisoner Health and Human Rights, which is based at The Miriam Hospital.

“Sadly, without these linkages to transitional care in the community, the majority of these individuals will re-enter the revolving door of the criminal justice system, which already costs our county $50 billion annually,” he adds.

What is to be done? Continue reading →