I-Team In-Depth

A Dangerous Mix: High Ozone Levels And Obesity

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For the 29% of Connecticut adults who live with obesity, summer brings a difficult form of air pollution. Ground-level ozone is the colorless, odorless gas formed when auto exhaust reacts with sunlight at temperatures above 80 degrees. Ozone can be dangerous for people who have higher body mass indexes. If the pandemic shutdown were now, those with obesity and others who suffer from the adverse effects of ground-level ozone might have caught a break. Officials know that other forms of pollution dropped significantly during the early spring.

Coping With Pandemic: Resurgence Of Guilt

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Placing loved ones in a nursing home is often fraught with emotions, and a common one is guilt.  Many are feeling a resurgence of guilt now, knowing that they are at higher risk during this pandemic. Coronavirus has swept through 150 of the state’s nursing homes and, as of April 29, 1,249 residents have died — representing about 55% of all COVID-19 deaths.  As of last Thursday, there were 4,814 cases in nursing facilities. ConnHealthITeam · Coping With Pandemic: Guilt
Dr. Kirsten Wilkins, an associate professor of psychiatry at the Yale School of Medicine, talks with C-HIT’s Colleen Shaddox about strategies you can use to help your elderly relatives – and yourself – cope during the pandemic.

I-Team In-Depth

Pandemic Exposes Stark Health Disparities Generations In The Making

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Soon after Minerva Cuapio, a 48-year-old Mexican immigrant who lives in New Haven, was laid off from her job at a dry cleaner in March, she developed a headache, an itchy throat and a dry cough. Then came the shortness of breath that really worried her daughter, Izarelli Mendieta, 29, of New Haven. While trying to get her mother care, she said, they were bounced from a doctor to the state’s COVID-19 hotline to a telemedicine visit back to the hotline and then to a drive-through testing center and an emergency room visit. The family waited nine days for Cuapio’s positive test results. Izarelli’s father, Pedro Mendieta, 55, who lost a foot to diabetes, tested positive, too, but had mild symptoms.

Minerva Cuapio and Pedro Mendieta have recovered, but their daughter, who translates for her parents because they only speak Spanish, said if she could meet Gov. Ned Lamont, she would ask him to make the process easier for families like hers.

Coping With Pandemic: Are You Lonesome Tonight?

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It’s important to practice physical distancing – but not social distancing. People need connection and belonging. There are ways to achieve that online through volunteering and using new platforms to connect with friends. Low-tech sources of meaning like poetry and prayer are helpful too. C-HIT’s Colleen Shaddox talks about ways to battle loneliness with Dr. Megan V. Smith, associate professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and the Yale Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine.

Mental Health

Coping With Pandemic: Parents Just Don’t Understand

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Adolescents want and need to be with peers, so the isolation imposed by the pandemic is especially hard for them. Parents are put in the difficult position of enforcing that isolation. Students are also experiencing many losses – Spring sports, prom, graduations, and field trips. C-HIT’s Colleen Shaddox talks about how parents can support their teenaged children with Dr. Megan V. Smith, associate professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and the Yale Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine.

Mental Health

Coping With Pandemic: Who’s Zoomin’ Who?

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The pandemic has many parents trying to do their jobs from home, supervise their children’s education and provide 24-7 care. Creating reasonable expectations can keep parents from becoming overwhelmed in a high stress situation. Setting goals that are achievable – and carving out a bit of time for yourself — will make this extraordinary time more manageable. C-HIT’s Colleen Shaddox discusses ways to find balance with Dr. Megan V. Smith, associate professor in the Departments of Psychiatry and the Yale Child Study Center at the Yale School of Medicine.

home care

Pandemic Brings New Set Of Challenges For Home Health Aides And Clients

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Social distancing is one way to curb the spread of the coronavirus, but for health care workers who provide care in people’s homes, especially for the elderly, that type of care brings heightened risks, experts say. Home health workers assist clients with daily tasks like bathing, dressing, toileting, walking and transferring out of bed; all things that require them to be extremely close to those they serve. In many cases, they also shop for groceries and pick up prescriptions and other necessities. It’s a challenging time, but home health workers are committed to delivering quality care, said Pedro Zayas, spokesman for the SEIU Healthcare 1199 NE, which represents more than 5,000 independent personal care attendants. “Our providers are people who went into this field because they like caring for others,” he said, adding that caregivers are diligent about self-monitoring for fever and other symptoms.

Cases of the highly contagious coronavirus continue to spike in Connecticut and nationally, with elderly people being particularly susceptible.

I-Team In-Depth

Opioids Backlash Leaves Some Struggling With Chronic Pain

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Unable to obtain morphine, Heather Weise, 50, lay balled up in pain at her home in Milford earlier this year. It took nine days to refill her narcotic painkiller and she blamed the clampdown on opioid prescriptions for her woes. “My pain’s up there with cancer,” said Weise, an administrative assistant at the sandwich-chain Subway. “I almost ended up at the ER.”

Weise suffers from adhesive arachnoiditis, an inflammation of membranes surrounding the brain and the spinal cord, for which she was prescribed a daily dose of 120 milligrams of the opioid painkiller morphine. When her prescription ran out in the stipulated 30 days for refills, she had nowhere to turn to for relief.

Disparities

Blacks, Poor At Higher Risk Of Heart Disease; Overall Death Rate Falls

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The death rate from heart disease plummeted nationally over several decades for all racial and ethnic groups, but the rate of decline has slowed slightly and African Americans and low-income individuals are still at a higher risk of developing the disease and dying from it, according to a report from the National Center for Health Statistics. The report isn’t surprising to Dr. Edward Schuster, medical director, Stamford Health Cardiac Rehabilitation Program.  “In the United States, there’s a lot of talk about income disparity, which is a political hotcake,” Schuster said. “But what we are seeing is a life expectancy disparity. According to a recent Journal of American Medical Association, if you’re a man in the top 1 percent of income, you can expect to live 13 years longer than someone in the 1 percent at the bottom.”

Heart disease is largely preventable by maintaining a balanced diet, a healthy weight and moderate exercise, with only 20 percent of cases involving genetics, said Dr. David L. Katz, who heads the Yale-Griffin Prevention Research Center, which works with communities to develop programs to control chronic diseases. But significant groups in lower income and urban areas don’t—or can’t—act on the message, Katz said.

Women's Health

Menopause’s Long Learning Curve

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Every day an estimated 6,000 women in the U.S. reach menopause, a natural part of aging. But for countless women, it feels like anything but. The symptoms, which range from merely bothersome to debilitating, are triggered by the body’s loss of estrogen, which occurs at a median age of 50 to 52 among women in industrialized countries. Vasomotor symptoms alone (hot flashes, night sweats), which disrupt sleep and count as the most commonly reported complaint, last an average of 10 years and affect nearly 90 percent of menopausal women. A recent study published in the journal Menopause found that 250,000 women who suffered from hot flashes lost a cumulative $300 million per year in wages due to lost productivity and doctor visits, compared to asymptomatic women.