(NEW YORK) — New research on the connection between sleep and Parkinson’s disease is being hailed as a “first step” toward curing and preventing the condition, a brain disorder that causes uncontrollable movements.
The research, led by the Parkinson’s Progression Markers Initiative, funded by The Michael J. Fox Foundation, is working to make a concrete connection between Parkinson’s and REM sleep behavior disorder, or RBD, which causes a person to “physically act out vivid, often unpleasant dreams” during deep sleep, according to the Mayo Clinic.
Studies have found that up to 41% of Parkinson’s patients experience RBD before their diagnosis, with 65-75% of these patients being men. Researchers say they are hoping that a concrete connection between Parkinson’s and RBD can help us learn more about Parkinson’s.
“People who live with RBD can help researchers understand how and why Parkinson’s comes on from the very earliest moments so that we can work on getting to that cure and even preventing the disease from happening,” said Dr. Rachel Dolhun, a board-certified neurologist and movement disorder specialist and the head of medical communications for The Michael J. Fox Foundation.
“It’s one of our first steps toward curing and preventing Parkinson’s, something that we can’t do today,” she said of the research.
Parkinson’s is currently incurable and there is no way to diagnose the condition through blood or laboratory tests. The diagnosis is based mainly on clinical symptoms, how it presents and the history of the disease in the patient.
An estimated one million people in the United States are affected by Parkinson’s, according to The Michael J. Fox Foundation.
Gary Rafaloff is one of those one million people. He said he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s a decade ago after suffering for years from sleep issues, later diagnosed as RBD, that included making strange noises and waking up while violently lashing out during dreams.
“It’s a terrible symptom that is really not spoken about a lot, and there’s not a lot of research on it,” said Rafaloff. “I’m lucky if I average three hours of good sleep at night.”
Rafaloff said that after years of sleep issues, it was a shock to be diagnosed with Parkinson’s.
“When I was first diagnosed, I really didn’t know much about Parkinson’s disease, so, of course, you hear something like that and you think it’s the worst,” he said. “And I didn’t have any idea what life expectancy was going to be, what life would be like.”
Parkinson’s disease occurs when nerve cells in the area of the brain that control movement and release the brain chemical dopamine become impaired and/or die, according to the National Institutes of Health.
While symptoms differ in everyone, common symptoms may include tremors in the hands, arms, legs and head; muscle stiffness; slowness of movement; difficulty with balance and a tendency to fall; difficulty swallowing; and chewing and skin problems, according to the NIH. Non-motor symptoms may also include constipation, depression and memory problems.
Most people first develop Parkinson’s around age 60, but about 10 to 20% of people experience early-onset Parkinson’s before age 50.
With no blood or lab test for diagnosis, doctors usually diagnose Parkinson’s through a person’s medical history and a neurological examination, according to the NIH.
(NEW YORK) — The road toward an all-electric vehicle future is long and filled with roadblocks concerning high costs and supply chain issues, according to automakers and motor vehicle experts.
However, the head of one of the world’s leading automakers said that motorists are hungry to shift into that new era.
Bill Ford, the chairman of the Ford Motor Company, spoke to ABC’s GMA 3 Tuesday about his company’s push into an all EV fleet. Ford touted that its electric offerings, such as the Mustang Mach-E and F-150 Lightning pickup truck, have been sold out.
“We are really betting the company,” he told GMA 3. “I’m so excited by the response that we’ve had to it.”
Ford Motor plans to have half of its fleet be EVs by 2030 and invested $5 billion in EVs this year, of 2021, Ford said.
Still, experts contend that the roadmap to a complete EV adoption has its roadblocks. Supply chain issues have made it harder for vehicle companies to produce the components for the vehicles as fast as other cars, motor vehicle experts said.
The nation’s budding charging infrastructure has left many communities, including those in rural areas, without any option to power an EV.
Ford said the company has been working its way through it, and insisted that the market for EVs would be stronger.
He noted that EVs have fewer moving parts than their gas-powered counterparts and that helps to lower the maintenance costs for customers.
Ford noted the F-150 Lightning’s starting price tag of $39,000.
“This is not a luxury vehicle at the high end of the market, where only a few people can do it. We’re bringing EVs into the range of the average person. We’re bringing EVs into the range of the average person,” he said.
Ford also talked about the concerns that some motorists have about the cost of powering EVs. While the vehicles can plug into a standard outlet, they can charge faster using an in home EV charging kit which can cost thousands of dollars to purchase and install.
President Joe Biden has touted EV infrastructure investments, including an expansion of the nation’s public charging grid, as part of his agenda and has pushed automakers to increase their EV output.
Last year he took a test drive in a F150 Lightning, flooring the truck in front of reporters.
(NEW YORK) — Over 120,000 pounds of ground beef products are being recalled over possible E.Coli contamination.
The affected products come from Lakeside Refrigerated Services, located in Swedesboro, New Jersey, and were produced between Feb. 1, 2022, through April 8, 2022, and distributed to locations nationwide, the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food Safety and Inspection Service (FSIS) announced Wednesday.
The E.Coli contamination was discovered during routine testing, according to the FSIS, and no illnesses have been reported.
What products are subject to the recall?
The FSIS posted a complete list of beef products subject to the recall as well as labels that appear on the impacted ground beef products to help consumers identify affected products. See the label list here.
Brands including Thomas Farms, SE Grocer’s Naturally Better, Tajima, Marketside Butcher and Weis by Nature are among those impacted.
The FSIS urges consumers to throw away or return affected products. Learn more here.
Lakeside Refrigerated Services is available to answer consumer questions via email (customercare@lakesiderefrigerated.com) or by phone (800-493-9042).
What are the symptoms of E.Coli bacteria?
People can become ill two to eight days after consumption of E.Coli bacteria. Symptoms of E.Coli bacteria include vomiting or diarrhea that worsens over several days, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Most people recover within a week; some may develop a more severe infection.
(LONDON) — Trevor Reed, a former Marine from Texas who had been held in a Russian prison for nine years, has been released, according to a statement from Russia’s Foreign Ministry on Wednesday.
Reed was exchanged for Russian pilot Konstantin Yaroshenko, a convicted drug trafficker, the ministry said.
(NEW YORK) — The funds to help states make transportation more sustainable have been promised, but will they be enough to propel the U.S. toward its emissions goals?
While it’s a step in the right direction, the $6.4 billion pledged by the Federal Highway Administration to help states fund projects to reduce greenhouse gas emissions will barely make a dent in the funds needed to help the U.S. meet its goal to be carbon neutral by 2050, experts said.
Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg announced last week that states would receive the money — part of a $1 trillion infrastructure package passed by Congress in November — over five years to create projects that support widespread use of electric vehicles and trail facilities for pedestrians and bicyclists.
“It’s a good start,” Tom Moerenhout, a research scholar at Columbia University’s Center on Global Energy Policy, told ABC News. “But, it’s not a lot of money.”
It will likely require more than $100 billion “to really make a dent into road-based or transportation-based carbon emissions,” which are the largest source of carbon emissions in the U.S., Moerenhout said.
While roads, bridges and train lines have “really long lifespans,” the decisions states make on where to allocate the funding will need to be strategic, as they will “stick with us through 2050,” Elizabeth Irvin, a senior transportation analyst at the Union of Concerned Scientists, told ABC News.
“That’s funding for states to work on transportation projects, where they’re explicitly taking into account both emission reductions and sustainability and also environmental justice,” Irvin said. “Those are all really important things.”
In the coming years, there will be a significant shift in the number of electric vehicles on the road, despite the war in Russia threatening to further disrupt the supply chain, Randy Bell, director of the Global Energy Center at the Atlantic Council, a nonpartisan think tank, told ABC News.
The changing market has been evident in the release of more electric crossover and SUVs, which is “what Americans want to drive,” Rawn said.
On Tuesday, Bill Ford, executive chairman of the Ford Motor Company, announced the first shipment of the F-150 Lightning, the first electric version of the top-selling truck in the U.S. for 45 years. Ford had to stop taking orders due to the “tremendous interest” in the Lightning, Ford said, adding that it sold out soon after the plans were announced last year.
The need for charging infrastructure to power these EVs will be “huge,” Bell said, echoing the need to spend money wisely.
“EV adoption is not uniform around the country,” Bell said.
The infrastructure for charging stations will also take the burden off families from having to install charging capabilities at home, Carol Lee Rawn, senior director of transportation at Ceres, a sustainability nonprofit, told ABC News.
“So you don’t have to worry about having a plug at your house,” she said. “You can plug when you go shopping, or when you go to work, and it’s also extremely helpful for businesses that are interested in transitioning to electrification.”
In addition, policymakers will need to consider infrastructure that allows people to walk and ride bikes and scooters safely, Rawn said, adding that E-bikes are becoming a viable alternative for many people.
Countries are now sprinting to meet the ambitious pledges made at COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, in October 2021.
The Biden administration has continued to roll out a steady stream of initiatives to ease emissions from the transportation sector.
In December 2021, the Environmental Protection Agency announced its strictest vehicle emissions standards ever for cars and light trucks from model years 2023-2026. In February, the Transportation Department gave states the go-ahead to build electric car charging stations. And earlier this month, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration issued new standards for vehicles sold in the U.S., requiring the average fuel efficiency to be at least 40 miles per gallon starting in 2026 — up from the 28 mpg standard enacted under former President Donald Trump.
Currently, the U.S. is not on track to meet its 2030 or even 2050 goals, Moerenhout said, adding that it will be especially important for governments to incentivize the reduction of emissions.
“I think Europe has shown that with tightening fuel emission standards, you can move people into more sustainable practices and incentivize electrification,” Moerenhout said. “But in the U.S., it has just been far too sporadic.”
With the Russian-backed conflict in Ukraine now detracting from the sense of urgency toward climate change, it will be imperative that governments find a way to address energy security and climate action together, Bell said.
“So you may end up with a more pragmatic pathway towards climate action, which ultimately becomes more economic, becomes more politically palatable and becomes much more realizable in the short to medium term,” he said.
(LONDON) — The editor of the Mail on Sunday refused a request to meet with the U.K. House of Commons’ speaker over an article widely derided as misogynistic and sexist that accused the deputy leader of Britain’s opposition Labour Party, Angela Rayner, of using Basic Instinct tactics to “distract” Prime Minister Boris Johnson during his weekly audience with lawmakers.
The speaker, Sir Lindsay Hoyle, had summoned David Dillon, the newspaper’s editor, in response to the article, roundly criticized as “misogynistic,” but the Mail on Sunday has refused the request, citing free press concerns and evidence that Rayner may have joked about the comparison.
Rayner, one of the leading figures in the Labour Party, told ITV News that the article was “disgusting,” untrue and had left her “crestfallen,” saying that she felt compelled to wear trousers for her first TV appearance to discuss the story on Tuesday.
“I didn’t want people at home thinking, ‘Let’s have a look to see what her legs are like and how short her skirt is or not,'” she said. “Because I feel like I’m being judged for what I wear, rather than what I’m saying to you and how I come across.”
The article, which appeared in the Mail on Sunday last week, reported that anonymous lawmakers from Johnson’s ruling Conservative Party had claimed that Rayner put the prime minister “off his stride” by crossing and uncrossing her legs during prime minister’s questions, the weekly half-hour sessions in the House of Commons when the government is held to account.
The article was accompanied by a picture of Rayner in the House of Commons and a picture of actress Sharon Stone from the 1992 movie Basic Instinct, a reference to the infamous scene where she crosses and uncrosses her legs during a police interrogation. Despite widespread criticism, the original article on the newspaper’s Twitter account has not been deleted.
Rayner said she was “fearful” of the story coming out and asked the Mail on Sunday not to run with it.
“I was with my teenage sons … trying to prepare my children for seeing things online,” she told ITV. “They don’t want to see their mum portrayed that way and I felt really down about that.”
Sir Lindsay Hoyle, the speaker of the House of Commons, who presides over debates in the legislature, summoned the newspaper’s editor for a meeting about the article, which is due to take place on Wednesday. Hoyle described the article as “misogynistic and offensive.”
Both the Mail on Sunday and the Conservative Party have come under a barrage of criticism for the “misogynistic article.” The Mail on Sunday’s publisher, Associated Newspapers, has not commented on the article.
Johnson and a number of other MPs condemned the “misogyny directed anonymously” at Rayner. Though Rayner thanked the prime minister for his comments, she had earlier said that Johnson was “dragging the Conservative Party into the sewer.”
The scandal is the latest in a string of controversies that have dogged the prime minister, who was recently fined for breaking his own lockdown laws.
The leader of the opposition Labour Party, Sir Keir Starmer, said that the briefing to the Mail on Sunday was “a disgraceful new low from a party mired in scandal and chaos.”
(JEFFERSON CITY, Mo.) — Missouri has become the latest state to advance bills that target transgender youth.
The Republican-led House voted to push forward in a committee this week with HB 2649 or the “Missouri Save Adolescents from Experimentation (SAFE) Act,” which bars physicians and health care professionals employed by state and local governments from providing “gender transition procedures” to anyone under the age of 18. It also prohibits state or locally-run facilities from performing the procedure on minors.
The legislature also voted for an amendment to HB 1973, which would require transgender students in high school to play on the sports teams of the same biological sex listed on their birth certificate.
Any physician or health care professional who performs gender transitioning procedures or refers anyone to any health care professional that can could be “subject of civil and administrative actions,” according to the proposed bill.
The SAFE Act also states that any health carrier or health benefit plan on or after Jan. 1, 2023, will not include reimbursement for gender transition procedures for an individual under 18 years of age, nor will it be required to provide coverage for gender transition procedures.
Republican Rep. Suzie Pollock, who sponsored the SAFE Act, said when presenting it at a hearing on Thursday that the SAFE Act “helps kids struggling to embrace their biological sex by protecting them from harmful drugs and surgery.”
“The SAFE Act is providing a standard of informed consent for children by not violating the Hippocratic Oath of ‘Do no harm,’” she said. “Giving children puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones and even irreversible surgery violates the first duty of medicine, which is ‘Do no harm.’”
PROMO, a Missouri statewide organization advocating for LGBTQ equality, tweeted against the SAFE Act.
“Testifying in front of HB 2649 this morning. Rep. Pollock’s extreme attack on banning access to life-saving affirming health care for trans kids. We’re here to protect trans youth in our state,” PROMO said. “Don’t be fooled, there’s nothing ‘SAFE’ about this act. Call Rep. Pollock now and express how offensive her misunderstanding of science and medicine really is.”
Republican Rep. Ron Copeland said he offered the amendment to HB 1973 to protect his daughter.
“I know this is a controversial issue in this body, and when it comes right down to it, I come up here and I’m going to fight for my daughter and all the daughters in the state,” Copeland said at the hearing. “I want everybody to know that I’m here as a father, and if I can’t fight for my daughter’s rights, I can’t expect anyone else to do that.”
Copeland said he is okay with biological women playing male sports due to the biological differences.
Republican Rep. Mary Elizabeth Coleman was in agreement with Copeland’s amendment.
“Conflating who can and cannot participate in [sports] is really going to hurt the outcome for our daughters, so as someone who has really benefited from participation in women’s sports, I would ask everyone to stand up for our daughters and for the girls of the state and support this amendment,” she said.
Missouri Democrat Rep. Ian Mackey went viral on Apr. 14 for his speech condemning a different bill that would ban transgender girls from competing on girls’ sports teams. Mackey spoke up about the same issue again at Monday’s hearing.
“I just want to remind my colleagues — colleagues that I have had conversations with over the last few days about this legislation — that your vote on the record will last forever,” Mackey said. “Do the right thing.”
Democratic Rep. Peter Merideth also spoke out against the amendment.
“I’ve got three daughters. I want to protect my three daughters. This stuff is not how we do it … This is not about protecting our daughters. It’s about ignorance and fear,” Merideth said at the hearing on the bill. “It’s about bullying the most vulnerable group of kids in our state to score political points.”
Both bills will move forward and await to be heard on the floor in front of the full chambers.
(NEW YORK) — As mask mandates are lifted, and mitigation measures are increasingly dropped across the nation, a stark reality continues to hinder the nation’s return to a pre-pandemic sense of normality. Hundreds of Americans are still losing their lives to COVID-19 every day.
However, with the growing availability of coronavirus vaccines and antiviral treatments, many health experts assert that, given the United States’ tremendous medical advancements in the fight against the virus at this point in time, few Americans should still be dying of COVID-19.
“It should be pretty close to ‘no one,” Dr. Shira Doron, an infectious disease physician and hospital epidemiologist at Tufts Medical Center, told ABC News.
Infectious disease experts say that the vast majority of those still dying are the unvaccinated. In February, unvaccinated adults were 10 times more likely to die of COVID-19 compared to vaccinated individuals and five times more likely to require hospitalization.
When compared to fully vaccinated and boosted adults, unvaccinated people were about 20 times more likely to die of COVID-19 and seven times more likely to require hospitalization.
“We have vaccines that, for people with normal immune systems, are about 90% effective at preventing hospitalization, and, for those who get COVID-19 and have even a single risk factor for progression to severe disease, we have treatments, like Paxlovid and Bebtelovimab, that are 90% effective at preventing progression to hospitalization,” Doron said. “Add those together and not only should no one be dying, but no one should be getting hospitalized, if we are using those tools as we should.”
Despite widespread medical approval of the drugs, federal officials say that many of those resources, in more than ample supply, are not being used as widely as they should be, and as a result, thousands of lives are being unnecessarily lost.
On Tuesday, the White House announced that it would take new actions to increase access to Paxlovid, Pfizer’s antiviral COVID-19 pill.
“We now have more tools than ever before to protect people from the virus, including highly effective treatments,” the Biden administration said in a statement Tuesday.
Paxlovid, which reduces the risk of hospitalization and death by 90%, currently gets prescribed to about 55,000 Americans a week, which is about 2.5 times more than a month ago. But over the past week, the U.S. has seen an average of 44,000 new infections each day.
The administration’s plan is to double the number of pharmacies that stock the drug to 40,000 sites nationwide in the coming weeks, as it was previously limited to 20,000 due to insufficient supply.
Officials will also work to provide physicians with more guidance and tools to understand and prescribe the treatments.
Despite the plan to increase the availability of critical drugs to combat COVID-19, some health experts are concerned that it will still not be enough to save lives, given the many barriers that stand in the way of ensuring that those drugs and treatments are widely accessible to all those who need them.
Issues of access remain critical
Although therapeutics and vaccines will be important tools to prevent serious illness and deaths, experts say decreasing the number of daily COVID-19 fatalities will also be a function of equitably increasing access to these preventive measures and treatments.
“Equitable access is a huge barrier at this point in time, especially to effective treatments such as Paxlovid,” Colleen Kelley, an associate professor in the division of infectious diseases at Emory University School of Medicine, told ABC News.
Lack of access to transportation to proper pharmacies can have major consequences for public health.
According to ABC News’ analysis last summer of pharmacy locations across the country, there are 150 counties where there is no pharmacy, and nearly 4.8 million people live in a county where there’s only one pharmacy for every 10,000 residents or more.
Based on Census data, there are far fewer pharmacies per person — especially chain pharmacies — in rural parts of the country compared to urban areas.
In addition, the access inequities underscore the racial gap prevalent throughout the country in both rural and urban areas, with more pharmacies per person in whiter and wealthier neighborhoods than in poorer, predominantly nonwhite neighborhoods.
Persisting disparities throughout the pandemic have also resulted in a higher likelihood of death from COVID-19 for Black and brown Americans.
According to federal data, adjusted for age and population, the likelihood of death because of COVID-19 for Black, Asian, Latino and Native American people is about one to two times higher, compared to white Americans.
Although some minority communities initially lagged behind in the nation’s vaccination efforts, the rates of Black and brown Americans have significantly caught up proportionally to their respective populations.
A recent report, produced by the Poor People’s Campaign in collaboration with the U.N. Sustainable Development Solutions Network, also revealed the “devastating and disproportionate” impact of the virus on low-income communities in the U.S.
The report found that death rates in the lowest income group were double the death rates of those in the highest income group
“Widespread equitable access would drive hospitalization and death rates way down,” Doron said, adding that not enough individuals know that treatments are available and end up in the hospital.
“Those who are more medically literate and do their own research know how important it is to suspect COVID at the first sign of symptoms, have easier access to testing, and know to call their doctor for a prescription for an antiviral or for an infusion of monoclonal antibody or remdesivir,” Doron said.
Education pertaining to treatments as well as widespread, equitable access to COVID-19 vaccines, tests and effective treatments are critical to boosting our way out of the pandemic by ultimately driving down hospitalizations and death rates, Dr. Jay Bhatt, an internist and adjunct faculty at the UIC School of Public Health, told ABC News.
“This would likely reduce spread and cases of chronic disease triggered by COVID-19 infection and likely hospitalizations and death,” Bhatt said.
COVID-19 funding will play an important role in treatment access
Equitable access to drugs also remains critical for the millions of Americans who are moderately or severely immunocompromised and thus have a weakened immune system, putting them at increased risk of severe COVID-19 illness and death, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
According to physicians, a large proportion of the few fully vaccinated Americans who are getting breakthrough infections and dying are those with underlying conditions or those who are being treated with immunosuppressive drugs.
“There may be a small number of individuals with chronic disease and those that are immunocompromised infected with COVID-19 that may not survive infection even though they have had appropriate treatments and be vaccinated. It is also possible that COVID-19 flares chronic conditions that may lead to complications and death,” Bhatt said.
Matthew Cortland, a disability rights advocate, stressed the importance of getting those drugs to those at higher risk.
“If you are at higher risk, having a reduced viral load can only benefit you,” Cortland said. “There’s still a shortage and a scarcity mindset. Paxlovid has to be readily available basically everywhere.”
The push to make treatments more widely available only further underscores the need for COVID-19 funding, Cortland added.
“Congress will need to fund more purchases” of these treatments, Cortland said. “That’s the only way that we get to as few COVID deaths as possible.”
(NEW YORK) — A new report diving into the data on vital measures of health and social determinants of health finds that women, and particularly women of color, continue to experience steep pay gaps, that many Americans cannot afford child care and many school districts may be underfunded.
The 2022 County Health Rankings report, shared in advance with ABC News, offers a unique snapshot of whether and how Americans are thriving — or as it may be, surviving.
Metrics like these are meaningful as the nation emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic and contends with the “intertwined crises of structural racism and economic exclusion” to examine how living wages or lack thereof “can impact a just recovery,” the report said.
“The data reinforces what we’ve known for some time. People in both rural and urban communities face long-standing barriers, systemic barriers — avoidable barriers — that get in the way of groups of people and places in our country from being able to live long and well,” Sheri Johnson, co-director of County Health Rankings & Roadmaps and director of the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute, told ABC News.
The rankings find “troubling issues” affecting women and families with children regarding economic security and family support, underscoring what the pandemic has repeatedly laid bare: “glaring failures” within the infrastructures of wage equity, child care costs and school funding.
Equal pay is not just a ‘women’s issue’
Women earn little more than 80 cents for every dollar men earn, on average, for the same work, the rankings find. But that’s not all.
To earn the $61,807 average salary of a white man, an Asian woman must work an extra 34 days, the report said.
A white woman must work 103 more days to earn that same $62,000 salary.
The report said a Black woman must work 223 days to make up that difference, while an American Indian/Alaska Native woman would have to work 266 days.
A Hispanic woman would have to work 299 days to make up that salary difference.
COVID’s prolonged toll “exposed the labor force barriers that prevent full participation of women and caregivers” and “places an additional burden on women with low incomes and women of color, who are the least likely to have employer-provided benefits,” the study said.
An economic security infrastructure that is inequitable for some weakens the entire system, Johnson said.
“There are consequences when we haven’t constructed community conditions for everyone to thrive,” Johnson said.
Child care costs exceed what many Americans can afford
Across counties, a family with two children spends, on average, a quarter of its household income on child care, the report said.
For those making the hourly $7.25 federal minimum wage, child care costs would take up nearly 90% of their annual income.
By that math, the average child care provider likely cannot afford their own services, which would consume more than half their average $25,460 annual income if they had two children.
“That’s pretty striking,” Johnson said — especially when contrasted with the government’s suggestion that families not spend more than 7% of their income on child care.
The rankings find that during the pandemic, the lack of affordable child care forced parents — especially mothers — out of the workforce and also hit child care providers, who were disproportionately women, which harmed families’ and communities’ well-being.
Stark differences in school funding across rural, urban and suburban communities
Half of all counties included in this analysis had school districts operating at a deficit, the rankings find. Among those districts, per-pupil spending, on average, was $3,000 below the annual estimated amount needed to support average test scores.
While schools in large urban metro counties, on average, operated under large deficits, schools in rural counties — the majority of all U.S. counties — were overrepresented among counties with inadequate school funding.
There are “patterns of disinvestment” reflected by the disproportionate geographic spread of school funding deficits, Johnson said.
Many counties in the western and southern U.S. operate with funding deficits. School districts in these counties, on average, spend less than what is estimated to be necessary to achieve national average test scores.
Counties with higher proportions of Black, Hispanic and American Indian & Alaska Native populations experience funding deficits notably greater than most U.S. counties, the report found. Funding deficits are especially high in the Southern Black Belt region.
A solution: relieving the “stress pathways” that exacerbate poor health among those who were already hurting, Johnson said, such as “ensuring equal pay for equal work through policies such as paid family leave, paid sick leave, universal basic income, living wage laws, Child Tax Credit expansion, and the Earned Income Tax Credit,” the report says.
“We can expect more of the same if we do nothing,” Johnson said. “And the same is not fair. It’s not just, and it’s not necessary.”
(NEW YORK) — Antisemitic incidents in the U.S. reached an all-time high in 2021, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s latest annual report.
The organization recorded 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism — the highest number of incidents on record since the ADL began tracking these attacks in 1979.
This averages to more than seven incidents per day and represents a 34% increase year over year.
“In 2021, the world still wasn’t fully reopened yet,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a Tuesday press conference on the findings. “People were still socially distancing. Businesses are still shuttered. Campuses are still closed and yet, 2021, far and away, the highest total we have ever seen.”
Oren Segal, the vice president of the ADL Center on Extremism, said that these audits typically represent an undercount of the reality due to lack of reporting and other barriers to data collection.
The majority of the incidents were categorized as harassment, which increased more than 40% from last year.
The ADL also recorded a major increase in incidents at Jewish institutions such as synagogues, community centers and schools — from 327 in 2020 to 525 in 2021, an increase of 61%.
“The findings come at a time where Jews are feeling particularly vulnerable because of the violent, antisemitic incidents that have targeted our community over the past several years, but also because of how they’ve targeted the Jewish community in the last several months,” Segal said.
He pointed to recent attacks, including the Colleyville, Texas, synagogue hostage crisis in January.
Three-quarters of American Jews believe there is more antisemitism in the U.S. today than there was five years ago, according to a 2020 Pew Research Center survey.
About 53% say that, as a Jewish person in the U.S., they feel less safe than they did five years ago.
Jewish Americans continue to be the most targeted religious group, FBI hate crime statistics show.
“This should be a warning call to all Americans — antisemitism isn’t just a Jewish problem. It’s an American problem that demonstrates or indicates the decay of our society,” Greenblatt said at the conference.
