On a bustling Friday morning, the aroma of rice and beans wafts through a cloud of hairspray in Romy’s Beauty Salon in Meriden. Merengue music soothes the senses. Customers exchange pleasantries in Spanish as Romy Norwood offers each a small bowl of “arroz y habichuela,” the Dominican staple of rice and beans. Later in the day, Norwood repeats the courtesy with small mugs of strong coffee, “cafecito,” prepared by her mother, Yolanda Sosa, in the kitchenette in the rear of the shop. Unlike Norwood and her mother, most clients aren’t wearing a mask.
Deaf residents report frequent issues with sign language interpretation at Connecticut hospitals and health care facilities, hindering their ability to understand medical care fully. And though video remote interpreting (VRI) services are widely available at Connecticut hospitals, patients have reported mixed experiences with the technology. The issues persist more than 30 years after passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA), which requires interpretation for patients and family members under the “effective communication” section of the law. In the last three years, the U.S. Attorney’s Office has negotiated four settlements with medical facilities in Connecticut for complaints related to communication with deaf patients. “At one point, ADA and accessibility seemed to be very good,” said Marissa Rivera, an advocate with Disability Rights Connecticut (DRCT).
More than 1,000 Connecticut children under age 6 were reported poisoned by lead in 2020, according to a report released this week by the state Department of Public Health (DPH). Of the children tested that year, 649 were new cases. As has been the case for many years, nearly half of the 1,024 lead-poisoned children lived in the state’s cities. New Haven had the highest number of lead-poisoned children, with 171, followed by Bridgeport, 148; Waterbury, 81; Hartford, 71; and Meriden, 35. These five cities had 49% of all lead-poisoned children in Connecticut in 2020.
Connecticut seniors on Medicare are more likely to take sedatives for insomnia and medications for depression than their counterparts across the country, according to a new report by Dartmouth researchers. An analysis of state data in a national report by the Dartmouth Atlas Project also shows that Connecticut’s Medicare program relies heavily on brand-name drugs, versus generics, especially in wealthy towns in Fairfield County – a factor that could be contributing to the state’s ranking in the top 10 nationally in prescription drug spending per patient. Connecticut seniors spent an average of $2,795 on medications in 2010 – 45 percent higher than the lowest-spending state, Minnesota, and the highest rate in New England. The new report provides an in-depth look at how prescription drugs are used by Medicare beneficiaries, age 65 and older, in the program’s Part D drug benefit, which had 37 million enrollees in 2012. It shows wide variations in the use of both effective and risky drugs among the 306 regional health care markets across the U.S.
While the underlying health status of populations is a factor in prescription drug use, “it really does not explain the variations in drug use intensity that we observed,” said Dr. Nancy Morden, a lead author of the study.
What do some of the wealthiest communities along Connecticut’s “Gold Coast” in Fairfield County have in common with the poorest towns in rural Windham County? Both counties include a growing number of families relying on federally funded free and reduced-price school meals to feed their children during tough economic times. Hunger among school-age children in Connecticut is on the rise and experts do not expect the trend to change soon given the state’s 9 percent unemployment rate and sluggish economy. “Children in Connecticut are hungry,” said Susan Maffe, president of the School Nutrition Association of Connecticut (SNACT) and director of Food Service for the Meriden public school system. “We know of children who come to school on Monday whose last meal was probably the lunch they ate at school on Friday.”
“Childhood hunger is impacting school districts across the board in urban, rural, even wealthy communities,” said Therese Dandeneau, an education consultant with the Connecticut Department of Education’s school nutrition programs.
Among the evidence of childhood hunger in Connecticut:
Thirty-four percent of all students in Connecticut’s public school districts were eligible for free or reduced-price lunch during the 2010-11 school year, up from 26.4 percent during the 2004-05 school year, according to Connecticut Department of Education statistics.
From March through May of this year, more than 700 arrests were made in Connecticut schools, two-thirds of them for minor offenses such as breach of peace or disorderly conduct, according to data obtained from the Court Support Services Division (CSSD).
