TAKE A BREATH…sounds easy huh? Well, not for one in seven children across the nation.

Asthma attacks -struggling to breathe, wheezing, gasping for air —are frightening events for children and their families. Asthma is the most prevalent chronic children’s disease in the US, affecting one in seven children nationwide and, in some communities, as many as one in every four kids. Low-income communities and communities of color are hit the hardest.

In the US, 19% of Puerto Rican children and 13% of black children have asthma. Compare that to just to 8% non-Hispanic white children.

What makes breathing hard for these children? The air they breathe in the places they live, learn and play.

Asthma triggers lurk in everyday environments. Children with asthma, and their families, live with the fear that their child’s asthma may be triggered in the most common places –their homes, schools and outdoors. Car and truck exhaust. Mold hidden in the walls of an apartment. Caustic chemicals used to clean school hallways. All of these triggers can bring on a sudden and dangerous asthma attack.

To allow children to breath easy, we need to give them clean air. Parents, environmental health and justice groups, housing organizations, and community-based organizations know that no single family can do this alone. That’s why they have forged important alliances and garnered the attention of the public and policymakers to capture important policy opportunities.

A new report by PolicyLink and The California Endowment, Breathing Easy from Home to School: Fighting the Environmental Triggers of Asthma sheds light on ways that community-based organizations and coalitions across the nation are working to address environmental triggers of asthma.

The report offers numerous policy recommendations that have already shown great promise for addressing this issue and critical lessons are lifted up from local, state, and regional efforts that can be replicated in other communities. Some of these diverse recommendations include: ensuring considerations for health impact assessments in land use planning decisions; promoting public transportation; advocating for systematic housing code enforcement; securing financial coverage for home remediation from health insurers; advocating for green cleaning products at schools; and creating pesticide-free zones near schools.

These approaches constitute an important platform for igniting a movement to alleviate—and reduce—childhood asthma. Policymakers and others can build upon these lessons to enact needed changes.

All children should be able to breathe easily—where they live, learn, and play.

With food prices climbing and the economy on shaky legs, more and more Americans are taking the food security of their families and their communities into their own hands.

An insightful piece in today’s NY Times (”Urban Farmers’ Crops Go from Vacant Lot to Market“) shows how innovative residents of low-income communities are using training from local nonprofits and even some funding from city coffers to help kick-start urban farms.

I know that these urban farms have really helped invigorate my neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. In fact, a 60-person delegation from the UN Commission on Sustainable Development is coming this weekend to Bed-Stuy to visit a couple community gardens, like the Bed-Stuy Farm (photo from their site).

Also, it’s worth pointing out that the Times’ story was written by Tracie McMillan, one of the best and most tenacious reporters when it comes to issues of food access and low-income communities. Visit her site to check out some of her recent work.

The Kern County, California, NBC station has a great piece on the report PolicyLink released yesterday about the connection between your food environment and your risk for diabetes and obesity. The report, Designed for Disease (pdf), was a joint project from PolicyLink, the California Center for Public Health Advocacy and UCLA’s Center for Health Policy Research.

To see how other media outlets like the LA Times, PRI’s Marketplace and the Sacramento Bee covered the study, click here.

Are our food options making us sick? According to a new report released today by PolicyLink, the balance of healthy-versus-unhealthy retail food options in your neighborhood is directly tied to your risk for diabetes and obesity.

The groundbreaking study, Designed for Disease: the Link Between Local Food Environments and Obesity and Diabetes, was released jointly with the UCLA Center for Health Policy Research and the California Center for Public Health Advocacy. It examines the correlation between the health of nearly 40,000 Californians and the mix of retail food outlets near their homes.

The key finding: people living in neighborhoods crowded with fast-food and convenience stores but relatively few grocery or produce outlets are at significantly higher risk of suffering from obesity and diabetes.

The findings are the latest in a growing batch of evidence that the obesity epidemic is at a crisis level. As PolicyLink Vice President of Research Victor Rubin said for the release of the new report:

“Clearly the obesity crisis in California can no longer be seen only as a fight over personal choices. Public policies drive the universe of food options from which we can choose. Families who live in communities with choices limited to high-calorie foods and beverages face substantially greater health risks. Policy makers at the state and local level can save lives by giving Californians healthier food options.”

The results lend even more weight to a recent USA Today lead editorial, which argued that the obesity epidemic is literally killing Americans at a younger and younger age — and disproportionately targeting poor Americans.

Everyone knows how to lose weight: exercise more and eat less, fatty foods in particular. But fast food, eaten on the run and in vast quantities, has too often replaced the leisurely sit-down dinners with healthier foods of years past. Further, obesity is increasing worldwide, and among the poor more than the affluent. Broad social changes underlie the trend, and so it will not be easily reversed. But where it is worst, among the poor, better access to preventive health care plainly is part of the answer.

A century ago, poorer Americans were more likely to have their lives shortened by hunger and malnutrition. It would be a tragic irony if the obesity epidemic has a similarly devastating and unequal impact.

The editorial builds off the stunning findings of this Harvard University report.

For more information on how to help build healthier communities, visit the PolicyLink Center for Health and Place. Also, check out a great blog about this subject from the Grassroots Leadership Network.

Via the Atlantic’s Matt Yglesias, here’s an interesting proposal from what Matt describes as the Green Party candidate for Paris Mayor which would “create a generous program along the lines of food stamps here in the U.S. but specifically targeted at the purchase of fresh produce.” Since my French starts and stops at “papier mache,” I’ll have to trust him on the translation.

California made a major stride in this direction just last week, when the state’s Women, Infants and Children Supplemental Nutrition Program decided to start offering “fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains and soy products to the 1.4 million low-income Californians the program serves.” PolicyLink President Judith Bell was on-hand for the announcement.

This AP Investigative story is simply stunning:

Scientists using federal grants spread fertilizer made from human and industrial wastes on yards in poor, black neighborhoods to test whether it might protect children from lead poisoning in the soil. Families were assured the sludge was safe and were never told about any harmful ingredients.

Nine low-income families in Baltimore row houses agreed to let researchers till the sewage sludge into their yards and plant new grass. In exchange, they were given food coupons as well as the free lawns as part of a study published in 2005 and funded by the Housing and Urban Development Department. (emphasis mine)

A similar study was also conducted in East St. Louis, Illinois.

The health dangers of living in low-income communities aren’t always so blatant or intentionally inflicted, though. The PolicyLink Center for Health and Place is a great source of information and strategies on how to build and lift up healthier communities.

Justin, from the new Chicago start-up nonprofit MoveSmart.org, noted in the comments of an earlier post on the new Tesco Fresh and Easy small supermarkets moving into low-income neighborhoods that there are some other chains trying to bring low-cost food to these neighborhoods. He writes:

In Chicago there’s a network of Aldi stores. They are a German chain that offers very cheap groceries (sometimes 50% of what you find in the major chain stores) and have locations in many impacted neighborhoods. Aldi stores, however, have a large footprint and can’t be easily inserted into existing retail space. I hope that Tesco plans to come to Chicago and try some infill - there’s a number of food deserts around the city that could use it!

In the meantime, there are some folks here working to get fresh fruits and veggies into ‘corner stores’ - http://gapersblock.com/drivethru/2008/04/11/big_bodega_love/

As a former Chicagoan myself (and sometime-Aldi shopper) I concur with Justin’s critique that the Aldi’s footprint is too big to work in some of these communities. The prices are pretty incredible, though.

Also, take the time to check out the fledgling MoveSmart.org site. They’re trying something pretty cool. Here’s part of their mission statement:

Until now, information on neighborhoods has been buried in the back of academic reports, pinned to community center bulletin boards, and locked in data sets only available to planners, inaccessible to those who would benefit from it the most: housing seekers looking for a better neighborhood. MoveSmart.org will leverage the power of this information by combining these and other data sources into a single mapping engine built into a full-featured site that includes guides, tools, calculators, forums, and social networks, all designed to foster racial and economic integration.

And here’s a video explaining why they’re doing what they do (set to one of the best horn samples around, “Make the Road by Walking” by Menahan Street Band)

Some very cool work is happening at Purdue University’s Vulcan Project, closely tracking CO2 and greenhouse gas emissions in the US. As we at PolicyLink say all the time, where you live affects how you live. Living in the Northeast or coal-burning Southeast has a huge impact on the air you breath.

Thanks to Wired’s blog and Andrew Sullivan for the heads-up.

Also, this video does a pretty cool job explaining what’s happening in this map and demystifying the US carbon footprint.