Letters on public health, transgender bathrooms

Need quality health care for everyone

This is National Public Health Week. We have some of the best medical care in the world. Yet that doesn’t mean we are all healthy.

The current generation of children and young adults in the United States could become the first generation to experience shorter life spans and fewer healthy years of life than their parents. To fulfill our health potential, here are important system changes to address:

▪  Expand KanCare. The Affordable Care Act brought health insurance to 18 million more Americans. But there is a gap in Kansas. Expanding KanCare would insure up to 150,000 more Kansans. Since Jan. 1, 2014, Kansas has forfeited more than $1 billion in federal funds for expansion. The Bridge to a Healthy Kansas is a budget-neutral proposal to expand KanCare.

▪  Invest more in health and prevention. About 75 percent of health care costs relate to preventable conditions: obesity, tobacco use and unsafe sex practices. Yet less than 3 percent of health care spending focuses on prevention. Prevention investments are a smart use of public dollars that also save lives.

What can you do? Voice your support with elected leaders and policymakers about these important public health issues. Let’s be healthier by next year’s National Public Health Week.

Improving health

Every day in my work, I strive to improve the health of Sedgwick County residents. It is not always an easy goal; however, it is a challenge at which I am determined to succeed.

While studying for my master’s of public health degree, I learned a lot about the impact of nature, nurture and other factors that determine the status of a person’s health. Choice is but one of these factors, and is far outweighed by a person’s ZIP code and intrinsic position in society.

Our default health behaviors are ingrained in us from the moment we are born. Believing that health is a choice is like believing a person knows how to ride a bicycle simply by looking at one.

I firmly believe that health is an undeniable right for all, and in order to achieve true health in our community, public health workers have to be able to provide people with the knowledge, power and support to make good decisions.

In honor of National Public Health Week, I would like to thank my fellow public health workers who fearlessly face the challenges and never lose sight of our true purpose, a healthy community.

Bathroom problem?

Wow. I thought we had real problems in Kansas. Roads are falling apart. Educating children is an afterthought. We have the highest food sales tax in the nation. Oh, and the state is still broke.

Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Shawnee, saw other problems (Senate Bill 513 and House Bill 2737). An epidemic of cross-dressing men using girls’ bathrooms and dressing rooms. Thanks to her and the Legislature, we may soon be able to hunt these sickos down.

It was brilliance the way the bills defined male and female: just the sex you were assigned at birth. So simple, so elegant. You are either XX (female) or XY (male) at birth. So stay in your own bathroom, you sick pervert.

Oh, but what about the 25 million or so poor souls walking the face of the Earth whom God did not definitively assign male or female: the intersexed, as they are also known? They have XXY chromosomes and other genetic conditions. These bills completely ignore this segment of the population.

This story was originally published April 3, 2016 at 7:04 PM with the headline "Letters on public health, transgender bathrooms."