The following is the sixth post in a series covering aspects and angles on the DC Women’s Agenda’s recent white paper, Voices and Choices for D.C. Women and Girls: Recommendations for City Leaders 2007. The DC Women’s Agenda promotes the advancement, equality and well-being of women in D.C. This series of blogs is an extension of a very important proposal of recommendations to city leaders to truly make tangible changes in the Washington metropolitan area.
It is outrageous that the top killer of women in Washington, D.C.–heart disease–can be prevented, in many cases, by simple education about healthy eating habits and lifestyle choices.
And yet, preventative education is often overlooked as a core strategy in improving our nation’s health care system. Even Michael Moore’s recent documentary, Sicko, which documents how our nation’s broken health care system is failing its citizens, doesn’t address the importance of preventative education.
The film addresses the need for insurance companies to cover more preventative care, but neglects to take into account that through preventative education, the likelihood that there will even be the need for care at all–and the costs associated with it–are lessened.
Which is why the D.C. Women’s Agenda’s recent white paper strongly advocates preventative education as a key strategy for improving the health and well-being of our community–with the potential for great impact particularly among our city’s women and girls.
The top health risks of women in our city, as documented in The Portrait Project, are HIV/AIDS, heart disease, teen pregnancy, obesity and diabetes.
All of which are by and large behavior influenced, and in some cases, completely preventable through behavior change.
Yet, according to the 2006 D.C. Mayor’s Health Care Task Force Report, even though 40 percent of all health outcomes are directly related to behavior, only 2 to 3 percent of our resources are spent influencing behavior through prevention programs.
One case in point is diet. Many children are not being taught proper eating habits. I commonly see kids walking to school eating a bag of chips at 8:30 in the morning. As we documented in our white paper, only 42.7 percent of schools require a health education course as part of general curriculum. More alarming still, only 16 percent of D.C. schools offer fresh fruits and/or vegetables for purchase in the school store.
To address this, the D.C. Women’s Agenda has recommended, among other things, to be sure that our city’s girls are educated about how to take care of their bodies. Children need to be taught how to eat right so that they do not have to deal with obesity, diabetes or heart disease later on.
Enabling girls to have education about health will ensure that there are fewer deaths related to avoidable causes, and consequentially, less time and money spent on emergency health care.
Providing girls–and all children–with adequate nutritional information and education will enable them to make good choices about nutrition. It would mean that many of them will be able to grow up to be healthy adults not worrying about diabetes or heart disease, and able to focus on other things rather than health problems that could have been prevented if they had been taught a little about nutrition at an earlier age.
And healthier children and adults mean a healthier community–as funding, resources and efforts once spent battling preventable illness and disease can be directed to other community needs.
For previous posts on the white paper, please visit:
DCWA: Calling all city leaders! (Intro post)
DCWA: Economic security is key to the city’s health.
DCWA: Safety for women anything but small talk.
DCWA: White picket fence eludes many, especially women.
DCWA: Achieving balance difficult if you can’t weigh your options.
Jessica Goshow is DC Employment Justice Center’s (DCEJC) legal and policy associate. Being that EJC and Wider Opportunities for Women are the co-chairs of the DCWA, she was involved in the coordination, writing, and reviewing of the white paper.
The DC Women’s Agenda, DC Employment Justice Center and Wider Opportunities for Women are all Grantee Partners of The Women’s Foundation.
