New research finds that air pollution deaths in the US have risen sharply since 2016, with an estimated 9,700 more deaths in 2018 than 2016. “The researchers, Karen Clay and Nicholas Muller, argue that some of the increase is due to non-regulatory factors, like an increase in wildfires and economic growth. But they note a decline in Clean Air Act enforcement [including the rollback of 24 air pollution regulations]… that could be responsible as well… But the specific kind of pollution addressed in the new study is what experts call PM2.5: microscopic particles 2.5 micrometers or less wide (a small fraction of the diameter of a human hair) arising from human industry, including coal mining and burning, gasoline combustion, construction dust, etc.”
New research from UCLA shows how prioritizing equity can help ensure that communities of low income benefit from bond measures. Researcher Jon Christensen describes his findings: “When a funding measure prioritizes disadvantaged communities, earmarks funding for them, and sets guidelines to make sure projects go where they’re intended — it works. In every case where there was a specific funding target set, that target is being exceeded by the current trends in spending. And these projects improve water systems in communities that have historically not benefitted from these kinds of investments.The other thing that we found was that technical assistance — providing funding for disadvantaged communities that lack civic infrastructure — is paying dividends. These places typically lack funding and staff for things such as planning, public engagement and engineering to compete on a level playing field with wealthy communities like Santa Monica, and communities like it, that have large planning staffs that can put together a proposal to apply for this kind of funding. Smaller communities or cities might have one person whose job it is to put together plans and proposals — or maybe none at all. [Q: What has this proposition meant on the ground for disadvantaged communities in California?] The human right to water: safe, clean, reliable, accessible drinking water is the law in California. But there are currently 1 million Californians who don’t have regular access to clean, safe, reliable drinking water. Prop. 1 funding is enabling 155 projects serving disadvantaged communities to be built to improve access to safe, clean, affordable drinking water. It’s enabling 86 projects serving disadvantaged communities to build and improve waste water treatment projects.”
Four major drug companies reached a $260 million settlement with two Ohio counties, hours before the first federal opioids trial was scheduled to begin on Monday. NPR reports that the agreement “ does not end the broader legal "war" between local governments and the companies they have sued in federal court — it pertains only to Summit and Cuyahoga counties. As the first to go to trial, their lawsuits had been expected to serve as a bellwether for the nearly 3,000 lawsuits that have been folded into one massive federal case known as the National Prescription Opiate Litigation. Those thousands of lawsuits — filed by city, county and tribal representatives against companies in virtually every link of opioid drug production — remain on track for eventual trials if they do not reach settlements of their own.” Reuters looked at Teva Pharmaceutical’s proposed $23 billion drug giveaway to settle outstanding opioid litigation and finds that the company has wildly inflated drug costs. Unsurprisingly, “when Teva announced the value of the donated medicine - a generic version of opioid addiction treatment Suboxone - it based the figure on the drug’s list price, which does not account for significant discounts routinely provided by the drugmaker. If based on the estimated cost to manufacture the drugs, the value could be as low as $1.5 billion, drug pricing consultants and industry analysts say… In interviews with Reuters, lawyers representing local governments in the opioid litigation said the figure proposed by Teva inflates the real value of the drugs. They said the proposal will not be enough to address a nationwide addiction crisis that has claimed some 400,000 lives over the last two decades. The deal is “overvalued to make the settlement look better,” said Hunter Shkolnik, a lawyer on the plaintiffs executive committee that is managing more than 2,300 federal lawsuits consolidated in the U.S. District Court in Cleveland. “I don’t believe a no-cash payment from Teva, one of the largest generic manufacturers in the world, is appropriate.”
Vox reports on displacement in Washington, DC, following the story of a civil-rights attorney who is suing the city for $1 billion for ignoring “opposition from his clients, who are lower-income residents, while purposefully wooing “creative” economy workers to the city. By changing zoning laws to allow for the construction of a glut of studio and one-bedroom apartments and condominiums, Theresa says, the city purposefully gentrified its neighborhoods… Theresa believes that much of the development and displacement that has befallen DC is city-initiated: that DC had a vision for transformation, one that would embrace the promise of the so-called “creative class” economy and that would necessarily disadvantage and ultimately push out middle- and working-class people, most of them African American… Everyone is affected by the loss of community, said Mindy Fullilove, a psychiatrist and professor of urban policy and health at the New School who studies how social systems affect mental health and, specifically, gentrification in the Shaw neighborhood of DC, as well as in Orange, New Jersey. “When the benefits of strong communities are lost,” she said, “it takes a long time to recreate a community that has the social structure to benefit the individual, and we have done these [redevelopment] projects so many times, and displaced people so many times, that they can’t reorganize. And so what we have created at the level of community in the United States is a lot of individuals running around, but not in strong communities. And that’s pretty much across the board.””
In this op-ed featured in NACCHO Voice, PI's Dana Fields-Johnson and Sarah Mittermaier write about the spate of recent opioid settlements, what has and hasn’t worked in past public health settlements, and the need to fund prevention. "As thousands of cities and counties hard-hit by the opioid crisis move closer to settlements with opioid manufacturers and distributors, it’s time to talk about how communities can use these funds to meet urgent needs for treatment and invest in what it will truly take to stop this epidemic: preventing people from becoming addicted to opioids in the first place.”