I-Team In-Depth

A Survival Tool In Transgender Community, Breast Binders Are In High Demand

By |

Requests for free breast binders by transgender youths in 2022 have outnumbered supplies at Health Care Advocates International (HCAI) in Stratford, which serves LGBTQ and HIV communities. HCAI received 126 binder requests in the first three weeks of January alone, crushing last year’s numbers and temporarily wiping out inventory. The group sent out 190 binders in all of 2021. A quarter of them went to Connecticut youths, with the rest shipped nationwide and beyond. “The numbers are jumping because there is such a need,” says Tony Ferraiolo, the Youth & Family Program director at HCAI.

I-Team In-Depth

For Some Transgender People, Pandemic Paves Path To Transition

By |

Kyle Avery Jones had recently come out as transgender to her parents and friends when her final semester at the University of Connecticut began in January 2020. She wore androgynous clothes to school, sought out gender-neutral bathrooms, and limited her socializing to queer-friendly weekend gatherings off-campus. “Everyone in my classes assumed I was a dude. I didn’t want to show up one day with a face full of makeup and a dress on. I was literally counting down to the end of the semester.

children's health

E-Reading, Screen Time for Young Children Draw Scrutiny 

By |

The Mitchell branch of the New Haven Free Public Library tries to be at the forefront of whatever products are trendy or new. That means offering e-books for patrons of all ages and providing computers for children who want to conduct research online or play games. But, according to branch manager Sharon Lovett-Graff, the library’s youngest patrons, and their parents, remain interested primarily in borrowing print books. “At one time, we were all very nervous that e-books would take over. But not anymore,” said Lovett-Graff, who estimates that in the past year, the library checked out about 5,300 board books — thick, picture books aimed at pre-readers.

When The Diagnosis Is Poverty

By |

Joanne Goldblum of New Haven is on a mission to get health care clinicians to recognize that poverty may be the underlying cause of their patients’ illnesses and that the best treatment might be as simple as a brown bag of food or a tube of toothpaste. Goldblum is CEO of the New Haven-based National Diaper Bank Network (NDBN), an organization dedicated to getting basic needs to people. She co-authored the Basic Needs-Informed Care Curriculum—with support from Yale School of Medicine faculty—designed to help clinicians, social workers and educators recognize the myriad ways a lack of resources can present itself. For example, a baby comes to a well child visit in dirty clothes. Clinicians might typically ask: Is the mother too depressed to care for the infant?

Environmental Health

Number Of Lead-Poisoned Children Drops, But More Showed Higher Levels

By |

Nearly 1,400 new cases of lead-poisoned children under age 6 were reported in Connecticut in 2015, a slight drop from the year before, but more children showed higher levels of poisoning. A child whose blood test shows 5 micrograms of lead per deciliter or higher is considered poisoned. The 2015 numbers show 98 new cases of children with lead levels of 20 micrograms or higher, four times the threshold number and a 32 percent jump from 2014. “We cannot, with any certainty, explain why this is the case,” said Krista M. Veneziano, coordinator of the Connecticut Department of Public Health’s (DPH’s) Lead, Radon, and Healthy Homes Program, about the disproportionately larger numbers of higher toxicity. Exposure to lead can damage cognitive ability, including a measurable and irreversible loss in IQ points.

LGBTQ Advocates Lobby For Passage Of Bill Banning Conversion Therapy

By |

State lawmakers are considering a bill that would prohibit licensed professionals from performing conversion therapy on minors, a practice designed to change a person’s sexual orientation or gender identity. Medical and mental health experts have widely denounced conversion therapy, which also is known as sexual reorientation therapy, as being ineffective and detrimental. Critics of conversion therapy say it is based on the flawed assumption that homosexuality and bisexuality are sicknesses. “It’s disgraceful,” said state Rep. Jeffrey Currey, a Democrat representing the 11th House District. Currey introduced the bill along with Democratic Fifth District Sen. Beth Bye.

childhood hunger

Pediatricians Will Screen For Hungry Kids

By |

Like all pediatricians, Dr. Lori Smith keep tabs on many aspects of her patients’ health, but until recently the Westport-based doctor didn’t always consider whether the children she sees might be going hungry. “It wasn’t something that was necessarily on our radar,” she said. While her practice treats some lower-income patients from nearby Norwalk and Bridgeport, most of the children Smith and her colleagues see come from relatively affluent families. But Smith, who has been a pediatrician for more than 16 years, and her colleagues recently began screening all patients—regardless of their household income—for food insecurity, part of a new effort doctors and advocates hope will help prevent childhood hunger. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) in October recommended that pediatricians screen all patients for hunger at well visits.

Women's Health

NARAL: Crisis Pregnancy Centers Misinform Pregnant Women

By |

Imagine a business that doesn’t advertise the services it actually provides, lies to its customers and purposefully pretends to be something it’s not. Connecticut has no less than 27 such businesses in its crisis pregnancy centers, which claim to be medical establishments but are anything but. Within those centers, women are told outlandish lies about abortion, and are often pressured to carry the baby full-term. These are not crisis centers. They are fronts for the anti-abortion movement, but they refuse to advertise as such to their vulnerable clientele of women who must decide how to deal with an unintended pregnancy.

Disparities

Connecticut Lags In Kids’ Mental Health Screening; Reforms Considered

By |

Selenia Velez remembers the near-daily phone calls from the pre-school, alerting her that her 2-year-old son had acted out aggressively and needed to be picked up immediately. The calls went on for months, as Velez, 27, of Hartford, and her husband bounced between the pre-school and their son’s pediatrician, who recommended that they take him to a psychiatrist for an evaluation. But the psychiatrist was booked and held them at bay, as Velez watched her son’s behavior deteriorate. “We just felt hopeless,” the mother of four recalls of her oldest son, now 7. “It was one of the most heartbreaking things you can go through as a mother.