Black mothers trapped in unsafe neighborhoods signal the stressful health toll of gun violence in the U.S.

THE CONVERSATION

Black mothers who feel trapped in their neighborhoods feel terrified for their children. Jose Luis Pelaez/The Image Bank via Getty Images

BY LOREN HENDERSEN AND RUBY MENDENHALL

Black mothers are the canaries in the coal mine when it comes to the mental and physical harms of stress from living with gun violence in America.

In the U.S., Black people are likelier than white people to reside in impoverished, racially segregated communities with high levels of gun violence. Research has suggested that living in violent and unsafe environments can result in continuous traumatic stress, a constant form of PTSD. Researchers have also linked experiences of violence and poverty to an increased risk of chronic disease such as cancer and cardiovascular, respiratory and neurodegenerative diseases.

We are Black women and public policy and sociology professors who study health inequities and sustainable policy solutions. Our research has found that Black mothers who feel trapped in neighborhoods they perceived as unsafe because of high levels of community violence are more likely to report elevated PTSD and depression symptoms, as well as elevated stress hormone levels.

The trauma of gun violence and systemic racism isn’t simply a Black mother’s story – it’s an American story.

Health effects of feeling trapped

Our research team sought to understand how stress from structural violence affects the body, specifically the immune system. We talked to 68 low-income single Black mothers living on the South Side of Chicago about how they deal with gun violence in their communities and how it affects their health.

We asked these Black mothers to complete surveys that measured depression and PTSD symptoms. We also asked them to provide blood samples to examine the effects of stress at the cellular level, measuring the activity of genes that code for the receptors for the stress hormone cortisol. Looking at cortisol receptors offers a more cumulative measure of cortisol levels over time.

We found that about 65% of the mothers wanted to move out of their neighborhoods but could not afford to do so. These mothers felt trapped in areas with high levels of gun violence that fostered a sense of not feeling safe for adults and children. One mother in our study, whom we will call Ellan, described her neighborhood as dangerous and wanted to leave as soon as she could. “I’m very terrified of my kids going out to the park, playing in front of the house,” she said. “And I’m afraid that a car might come past shootin’ and one of my kids get hurt.”

Another mother in our study, whom we will call Skylar, felt she couldn’t escape to a safer community. “I don’t really want to raise my kids there, but I don’t have a choice. You know, cause it’s what I can afford. But it’s real violent.”

Mothers who felt trapped reported more symptoms of PTSD, like disturbing memories and dreams and reliving stressful experiences, than mothers who did not feel trapped. They also reported more depressive symptoms, such as feeling down and hopeless, taking little pleasure in doing things and having trouble sleeping.

Mothers unable to afford the move to safer neighborhoods had lower levels of glucocorticoid receptors. Having fewer glucocorticoid receptors helped protect their bodies from being overwhelmed by high cortisol levels caused by stress. Nevertheless, high cortisol levels from chronic stress are linked to a number of negative mental and physical health outcomes.

Environment determines health

Where someone lives, learns, works, plays and worships can determine their health and has the power to make them sick and cause premature death.

Researchers have estimated that around 83,570 Black people die prematurely each year in the U.S. because of health disparities, using 2002 data. Some scholars have previously described this as equivalent to a plane full of Black passengers falling out the sky every day every year.

It is important to note that it is not the racial makeup of where a person lives that shapes the significant disparities they face, but exposure to violence, poverty and lack of resources as a result of structural racism. Redlining, environmental contamination, food deserts and gun violence are a part of the racial capitalism, or exploitation of marginalized communities, that affect the health of Black women.

What we are learning about the constant threats to the safety of Black mothers and their families also applies to the general American public.

The rate of mass shootings is increasing. Firearm fatalities are a leading cause of death among children ages 1 to 19 in the U.S. Gun violence has harmed people while they are watching a parade, shopping at a store, worshipping, attending school and other ordinary events.

Increasing access to wellness

Understanding the complexity of the exposome – the word researchers use for environmental factors like gun violence that affect an individual’s health and well-being – can help extend the years of healthy life of groups who typically experience premature death. Building this knowledge requires input from people of color and others who have traditionally been pushed to the margins of society.

We are currently creating a “wellness store” that places wellness tools and health knowledge at the fingertips of individuals, especially for those experiencing interlocking traumas such as racism, sexism, classism, incarceration, racial segregation and rural geographic isolation. These tools, co-created with community health workers and citizen scientists, range from phone apps to public policy designed to get stress “out from under the skin.” Our goal is to work with clinics, hospitals and community organizations to provide accessible tools to prevent illness.

Black communities are filled with resilient and vulnerable individuals who deserve urgent policy solutions that lead to societal change. We believe that more investment in disease prevention and health equity can help the U.S. use the knowledge, technology and finances that it already has to help people access its most precious resource: a healthy life and the ability to pursue wellness.

New Tool Calculates Economic Value Of Breastfeeding For Mothers And Society

BY DR. LIJI THOMAS

Breast milk has long been recognized as the ideal food for babies and infants, with exclusive breastfeeding recommended for babies up to six months of age. Earlier researchers have attempted to quantify and evaluate in economic terms the production of breast milk by the world's mothers but with varying results. Researchers use the Mothers' Milk Tool (MMT) across a few selected countries to illustrate how much society gains from breastfeeding in purely economic terms. The paper is published in the journal Frontiers in Public Health.

Introduction

Breastfeeding is well known to be the best food for infants and young children. However, when limited, as it often is because of multiple factors, it could cause heavy health costs, losses of human life, and increasing strain on the economy. In fact, noted economists Amartya Sen and Joseph Stiglitz described the failure to include breastmilk in measurements of economic goods and services such as the gross domestic product (GDP), which are fundamental to economic policymaking, as a "serious omission in the valuation of home-produced goods, which is clearly within the SNA production boundary, is quantitatively non-trivial and has important implications for public policy and child and maternal health."

The obvious fallout of such an omission over the ages includes the lack of adequate paid maternity leave, and the widespread marketing of breastmilk substitutes, while a counterattack may be seen in the spread of breastfeeding-friendly facilities in healthcare and maternity services. In 1993, the System of National Accounting (SNA) was changed to allow for the inclusion of breastmilk production as an economic item in the GDP.

Ignoring the value through the nonmarket role of breastmilk also involves a neglect of the role played by families in developing human capital. Despite SNA changes, public policies are still woefully bereft of any insight into assigning a correct value to breastfeed in economic terms.

Studies on breastfeeding in these terms typically take one of three forms. They may assess the cost of not breastfeeding or the cost of supporting breastfeeding, the economic value of breastfeeding, and of lost milk. Two tools are available at present that allows any country to count the cost, in economic terms, of not breastfeeding, allowing for a more accurate assessment of the financial investment required to promote this practice. These tools are the Cost of Not Breastfeeding (CNB) Tool and the World Breastfeeding Costing Initiative (the WBCi Costing Tool).

The MMT is a new online tool brought about by a team of scientists interested in putting a value label on the unpaid work done solely by women in breastfeeding infants and small toddlers. The design for this tool came from a thorough review of existing tools and literature to pick out its current and potential uses, the required features, and the data it would need to incorporate.

The scientists also identified the best open-access data so that the tool's database could be constantly updated. Analysis of future options, testing of predictive models to provide data where gaps in breastfeeding information have already been reported, and validation of the MMT using prior research and people likely to use it in the future were all part of the development process.

The MMT tells the user how much milk is produced by women for children up to three completed years and how much is lost compared to the amount that could be produced without imperiling the woman's well-being. This calculation is available for individuals, as well as on a national and global level.

Further development is required, such as enabling real-time updating of data on breastfeeding indicators, births, and currency exchange rates.

What does the MMT show?

The MMT shows that breastfeeding is responsible for approximately 35.6 billion liters of milk a day. This figure represents about half the potential production under optimal circumstances. Conversely, social barriers or difficulties due to the cultural surround and infrastructure deficiencies have resulted in the loss of 38% of this milk, which would come to US$ 2.2 trillion annually (around US$ 100 a liter ).

Countries represented for this study include Australia, Brazil, Canada, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Kenya, Nigeria, Nepal, Norway, the Philippines, the UK, the USA, and Vietnam. Interestingly, high-income countries produced between four million liters (Ireland) to 605 million liters (the USA). In Ireland, 80% of potential production was lost, while in Australia, with 51 million liters, two-thirds were lost.

Conversely, over 220 million liters in Nepal, representing 95% of potential production, were maintained, with a third or less being lost in Kenya, Nigeria, Indonesia, and Vietnam. With the largest population among the selected countries, India produced about 8.7 billion liters but lost 40% of its potential production.

In financial terms, Nepal lost S$ 900 million but India over US$ 146 billion.

Overall, the researchers highlight the "crucial but largely invisible" nature of human milk nationally as a nourishing, sustainable, and safe food resource for infants and young children. Its importance lies in the food security and improved health it provides to this large segment of society at national and global levels. Measuring women's milk production in terms of its value to the economy will help greatly in assigning it a place in financial thinking and in the thoughts of individuals, societies, and governments.

This would result in better support for breastfeeding mothers in terms of changes in cultural access and infrastructure, such as feeding rooms. This protects women's health and drastically relieves food pressures on the environment. Thus, routine acceptance of breastfeeding is, in reality, "an important national capital asset with large economic value."

What are the implications?

The MMT clearly delineates the economic loss due to the deprecation of this important source of infant nutrition. To prevent this, governments and investors must promote breastfeeding and provide adequate support via national programs and projects.

The tool could help mothers and those involved in public health policymaking, government officials, food scientists, policymakers, and those concerned with national accounts and statistics. It could help put breastfeeding on the paper when it comes to food balance sheets and economic production. Further, it could track the loss of potential production and help calculate environmental savings and the adverse impact of increased greenhouse gas emissions (GHGE) and water use on the environment.

"The tool supports the 2015 Call to Action by the Global Breastfeeding Collective by facilitating the tracking of progress on breastfeeding targets." It may be used along with existing tools for cost estimates of various programs and policies.

READ ORIGINAL STORY HERE

2 At Mother Teresa's Charity Arrested Over Alleged Baby sale

Roman Catholic nuns are shown next to a photo of Mother Teresa at the Missionaries of Charity house in Kolkata, India, in 2017. Two people at the charity's shelter for unwed mothers were arrested in a child trafficking case, authorities said. Image: Debajyoti Chakraborty/NurPhoto via Getty Images

PATNA, INDIA (ASSOCIATED PRESS) — A nun and another worker at a shelter for unwed mothers run by Mother Teresa's charity in eastern India have been arrested for allegedly selling a baby, police said Wednesday. Three other complaints were being investigated.

An Indian couple had claimed they paid 120,000 rupees ($1,760) to Anima Indwar, who worked at the shelter run by the Missionaries of Charity, said police officer Aman Kumar.

Kumar said the police were investigating three other complaints against Indwar for allegedly selling children from the shelter. One more charity worker was under police questioning.

Kumar also said the police have shifted 12 pregnant women from the charity to a government-run home for care. The move apparently was to avoid any similar situation after their babies are born.

The arrests Tuesday and Wednesday followed the couple's complaint the charity worker had taken back the baby boy and kept their money.

Spokeswoman Sunita Kumar said the Missionaries of Charity was investigating.

"There was no question of selling any child as the Missionaries of Charity had stopped giving children for adoption three years ago," she said. She said the charity had never taken money from parents while arranging adoptions in the past.

Police officer Kumar said 100,000 rupees ($1,470) was recovered from the two who were arrested.

Kumar said the boy was born May 1 to a resident of the shelter and was handed to the Indian couple by Indwar on May 14 in Ranchi, the capital of Jharkhand state.

The couple told police that Indwar called them on July 1 and asked them to visit the shelter with the baby to complete some formalities.

Rupa Verma, chairperson of an organization run by the state government for children's welfare, said Indwar took the child away when the couple arrived.

The state-run organization later took custody of the boy, the Press Trust of India news agency quoted Verma as saying.

Mother Teresa started the Missionaries of Charity order in Kolkata in 1950 and it later set up hundreds of shelters that care for some of the world's neediest, people she described as "the poorest of the poor."

She received the Nobel Peace Prize for her charitable work in 1979 and Pope Francis declared her a saint last year, two decades after her death.

Somalia: 110 Dead From Hunger In Past 48 Hours In Drought

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

MARCH 4, 20917

Displaced Somali girls who fled the drought in southern Somalia stand in a queue to receive food handouts at a feeding center in a camp in Mogadishu, Somalia. Somalia's prime minister said Saturday, March 4, 2017 that 110 people have died from hunger in the past 48 hours in a single region as a severe drought threatens millions of people.

MOGADISHU, SOMALIA(AP) — Somalia's prime minister said Saturday that 110 people have died from hunger in the past 48 hours in a single region — the first death toll announced in a severe drought threatening millions of people across the country.

Somalia's government declared the drought a national disaster on Tuesday. The United Nations estimates that 5 million people in this Horn of Africa nation need aid, amid warnings of a full-blown famine.

Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire spoke during a meeting with the Somali National Drought Committee. The death toll he announced is from the Bay region in the southwest part of the country alone. Somalia was one of four regions singled out by the U.N. secretary-general last month in a $4.4 billion aid appeal to avert catastrophic hunger and famine, along with northeast Nigeria, South Sudan and Yemen. All are connected by a thread of violent conflict, the U.N. chief said.

The U.N. humanitarian coordinator, Stephen O'Brien, was expected to visit Somalia in the next few days. Thousands have been streaming into Somalia's capital, Mogadishu, in search of food aid, overwhelming local and international aid agencies. Over 7,000 internally displaced people checked into one feeding center recently.

The drought is the first crisis for Somalia's newly elected Somali-American leader, President Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed. Previous droughts and a quarter-century of conflict, including ongoing attacks by extremist group al-Shabab, have left the country fragile. Mohamed has appealed to the international community and Somalia's diaspora of 2 million people for help.

About 363,000 acutely malnourished children in Somalia "need urgent treatment and nutrition support, including 71,000 who are severely malnourished," the U.S. Agency for International Development's Famine Early Warning Systems Network has warned.

Because of a lack of clean water in many areas, there is the additional threat of cholera and other diseases, U.N. experts say. Some deaths from cholera already have been reported. The government has said the widespread hunger "makes people vulnerable to exploitation, human rights abuses and to criminal and terrorist networks."

The U.N. humanitarian appeal for 2017 for Somalia is $864 million to provide assistance to 3.9 million people. But the U.N. World Food Program recently requested an additional $26 million plan to respond to the drought.

Sergio Pessolano's "Mother and Child"

I like this expression captured by Sergio Pessolano. It is original and a symbol of the true nature of Motherland Africa.

A Portrait of Mother and Child by Jerry Taliaferro

Black, indeed, is beautiful. The above portrait is one of photographer Jerry Taliaferro's captures. Taliaferro was born in Brownsville, Tennessee. He joined the army and later entered the United States Academy at West Point. His photo works was discovered while stationed in Germany.

I can imagine how this amazing portrait of mother and child brings back memories of the origin of true black women and as a tribute to our mothers, wives, sisters and daughters.