Reflection weeks 11 and 12

Week 11

This week I got to write a review on the documentary series "Un-Natureal Causes". The episode we watched is "In Sickness and in Wealth". The video is based on the health disparities amongst the people in Lousiville, Kentucky and how rich people live about 9 years longer on average compared to the poorest people in the city. The reasoning for this was due to the lack of health care coverage and a high amount of daily stress due to a lack of control over obsticles in their lives. The rich can manipulate stress better as they have money power to better control when they work, and rarley have to worry about losing their home or some other thing based on a lack of money. The biggest disparity is that America spends by far the most money on health care, and have less than stellar infant mortality rate.

We then later in the week covered the Healthy 2010 objectives. Our assignment is to pick out an objective of the Healthy 2010 list. My objective I chose is objective 25, reduce chlamydia trichanosis. Find out if it is meeting its goals by looking at the graphs. We then went to the THOMAS homepage and searched for a related law that is under review by the Minnesota state government that will work towards supporting our Healthy People 2010 goal.


Week 12

What a week of fun. The Tuesday class day was focused on talking about how a bill gets turned into a law. The use of YouTube was used to show us the School House Rock educational video "I'm Just a Bill". In the video there is a song and skit of a bill going from an idea to a written bill by the local polititican. Then the bill got to go to a subcommittee for debate if should be brought forth to be voted on. The democratic process was explained in a song and action cartoon. The week was a lot more of a relaxed week. Then on Thursday we had a discussion on reading article 20 of are text "News on the Environment Isn't Always Bad" by the Christian Science Monitor. This aritcle was a change of pace from the usually stuff we have read that denotes negative environmental problems. This aritcle focused on the past decades and what they have done to accomplish environmental feats. The 80's was the was about getting rid of the CFC's (chorofluorocarbons) that are putting a hole in the ozone, and the 90's was able to get rid of the harmful pestacide DDT.