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Health and Wellness

Period poverty affects people all over the world. These women of color are working to end it

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Period Poverty, Menstrual Health Awareness Month, Menstrual Health Equity, Black Women's Health and Wellness, Flow Initiative, Free Menstrual Products, theGrio.com

When Sabrina Natasha Browne runs out of menstrual hygiene products, she, like many people, goes to CVS and pays the $12-15 it may cost to restock. Four years ago, she didn’t realize what number of menstruating women simply couldn’t walk right into a pharmacy and walk out with the menstruation products they needed, especially in her community of Hoboken, New Jersey.

A New Jersey specialist said her eyes were opened when she participated in a volunteer produce collection event organized by The Hoboken Girl and Flow initiativea national nonprofit organization based in New Jersey.

“As a volunteer, I immediately motivated my network to donate thousands of products to those in need,” she added.

Browne didn’t stop there. She eventually became a partner in The Flow Initiative, working with founder Eiko La Boria to end period poverty for all. In particular, she works on organizational partnerships and increases consumer awareness of period poverty across the country.

“I’m proud to be a partner with The Flow Initiative and to be at the forefront of the menstrual health movement with Eiko as we work to end period poverty,” she explained.

Browne described period poverty as “a public health problem in which women, girls and people who menstruate do not have access to products that support menstrual health, including sanitary pads, tampons and sanitary pads.”

She added that this can be a global problem, affecting adults and kids. More or less two out of five teenage girls admitted they couldn’t afford menstrual products, one in five may miss school because of their period, and one other 44% said they felt embarrassed or ashamed about not having access to products. When women do not have reliable access to high-quality menstrual health products, it can impact their ability to go to school, work and contribute to society.

(From left to right) Sabrina Natasha Browne and Eiko La Boria. (Photo: Flow Initiative)

“Period poverty can impact a person in several ways, including disruptions to education, health problems, psychological impacts, economic mobility, and stigma and social isolation,” La Boria shared in an email. “The financial burden of purchasing menstrual products can strain limited household resources, exacerbating poverty.”

Period poverty is a public health issue that will disproportionately affect Black and Brown women and women of lower income status on this country. This may not only be access to the right products, but in addition the right tools to cope with symptoms comparable to pain from cramps.

“Even if a Black woman has access to menstrual products, the symptoms themselves can impact her education, work and personal life. But when these symptoms are compounded by period poverty, the losses can be even greater,” Browne wrote in an email.

While period poverty may accompany poverty generally, “it is not something that discriminates. I’m sitting here and I say, ‘Well, there’s a hot spot in this one particular state.’ Every state struggles with period poverty,” Browne explained.

The Flow Initiative, launched by La Boria in New Jersey in 2018, goals to end period poverty and further promote menstrual health equity. The national nonprofit uses a three-pronged approach to get to the heart of the problem. First of all, it helps deliver products. It then provides education on menstrual health and hygiene. The final step in her approach is to influence policy.

Last 12 months, The Flow Initiative marked the anniversary of his death New Jersey Bill A1349which requires all public schools to provide students in grades 6 through 12 with free menstrual health products. The bill also requires the state to cover the costs, which Browne said “relieves the burden on schools.”

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“From my perspective, we’ve seen that women, girls and people who menstruate feel this particularly at the school level because it’s a big part of what we do,” Browne added.

She explained that students “miss school, career development, and the opportunities that come with not having access to products. And now New Jersey is one of the first states to really chart a path where hopefully other states will replicate and pass similar laws.”

Universal laws could also potentially lead to greater public understanding of menstruation. Browne noted that half of the world’s population menstruates, yet there continues to be rampant misinformation and inadequate education.

Browne said that when organizing events, The Flow Initiative is inundated with questions, from general questions on periods to advice on the best products.

Period Poverty, Menstrual Health Awareness Month, Menstrual Health Equity, Black Women's Health and Wellness, Flow Initiative, Free Menstrual Products, theGrio.com
Sabrina Natasha Browne distributing menstrual health products. (Photo: Flow Initiative)

“In doing this work and talking to some of my peers, I learned how many of them either had periods but didn’t know what it was,” Browne noted. “I mean in each of our experiences, when you think about where (you were when) you got your first period: ‘Who helped me?’ “Who listened to me?” For some of us, these are moments of pride and excitement. For others, it may bring back pain and sadness.”

Browne, who’s of Liberian and Belgian descent, said she grew up in a house where menstruation was not shameful. She was raised with enough supplies, not stigma, and was given the number 101 by her grandmother. La Boria, a Puerto Rican woman, didn’t know the details of menstruation until her first period, when her mother, who worked as a nurse, explained to her that it would occur every month.

“I was devastated and irritated,” she said. “It inspired me to provide young people with the education to know what is happening to their bodies, the ability to properly manage their menstrual cycles and understand the enormous responsibility that comes with it.”

Since its inception, the Flow initiative has made quite a few advances. To date, the organization has distributed over 1.3 million menstrual health products, conducted just over 300 workshops, and, as well as to successfully supporting the passage of Bill A1349, helped organize New Jersey’s official Menstrual Health Equality Day on May 28.

They also had the opportunity to partner with major players in the menstrual health market, including U by Kotex and Period.org. Other partners include Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services and more.

Browne said that from White House meetings to influencing local policy, the Flow Initiative has managed to establish itself as a “credible national player” in the mission for menstrual health equity.

“We are credible, we are compassionate. We are on the front lines of this work. And that is what the brands which have worked with us appreciate,” she said.

The initiative can be all the time relevant. As part of a social media campaign called ‘Voices for Change’, the organization is organizing a period products drive to secure £100,000 in funds to support students over the summer months. La Boria said they are also preparing for more initiatives.

“The Flow initiative is in an era of innovation and diversification of solutions. We are preparing exciting initiatives,” she said.

To learn more about period poverty and the way you possibly can support its efforts, visit the website Flow Initiative website.


This article was originally published on : thegrio.com
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Health and Wellness

an informative story of light healing

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For millennia, humans have had one obvious and reliable source of light – the Sun – and we’ve got known that the Sun is crucial to our survival.

Perhaps for this reason ancient religions – resembling those in Egypt, Greece, Middle East, India, AsiaAND Central AND South America – concerned the cult of the Sun.

Sun worship – resembling the worship of the Greek god Helios – was common in lots of cultures.
Enthusiast of neoclassicism/Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-NC-SA

Early religions were also common related to healing. Sick people turned to a shaman, priest or priestess for help.

Although ancient people used the Sun for healing, it might not be what you’re thinking that.

Since then, we’ve got used light for healing in some ways. Some of them chances are you’ll recognize today, others sound more like magic.

From warming ointments to tanning

Currently, there’s little evidence that ancient people believed that sunlight could cure disease. Instead, there’s more evidence that they used the Sun for healing.

Ebers Papyrus (reproduction)
The Ebers Papyrus from ancient Egypt contained recipes for ointments that needed to be heated by the sun.
Wellcome Collection

The Ebers Papyrus is an ancient Egyptian medical scroll created around 1500 BC. It accommodates a recipe for an ointment for “they make the tendons (…) flexible“. The ointment was constructed from wine, onions, soot, fruit and wood extracts, frankincense and myrrh. After application, the person was “exposed to sunlight.”

Other recipes, for instance for cough, involved putting the ingredients right into a container and leaving it within the sun. This might be to warm up the drink and permit it to brew stronger. Same technique occurs in medical writings attributed to the Greek physician Hippocrates, who lived around 450-380 BC

It was written by the physician Aretheus, who worked around 150 AD in what’s now Turkey sunlight could heal chronic cases of what he called “lethargy”, but today we might recognize depression:

The classical Islamic scholar Ibn Sina (980-1037 AD) described the health effects of tanning (at a time once we didn’t know of the link to skin cancer). In Book I Canon of medicine he said the new sun helps with all the pieces from flatulence and asthma to hysteria. He also said that the sun “refreshes the brain” and has a helpful effect on “cleansing the uterus.”

Sometimes it was hard to inform science from magic

All hardening methods described to this point depend more on the sun’s heat than on its light. What about light-only curing?

The healing power of sunlight Jakob Lorber
German mystic and visionary Jakob Lorber believed that sunlight healed almost all the pieces.
Merkur Pub Co/Biblio

The English scientist Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727) knew that sunlight could possibly be “split” into rainbow spectrum of colours.

This and lots of other discoveries radically modified ideas about healing over the subsequent 200 years.

But sometimes it was hard to inform when latest ideas got here up learning from magic.

For example, the German mystic and visionary Jakob Lorber (1800-1864) believed that sunlight was one of the best cure for nearly all the pieces. His 1851 book “The Healing Power of Sunlight” read: still in print in 1997.

Public health reformer Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) he also believed in the facility of sunlight. In his famous book Notes on Nursingshe said about her patients:

second only to the necessity for fresh air is the necessity for light (…) not only light, but in addition direct sunlight.

Nightingale also believed that sunlight was the natural enemy of bacteria and viruses. It seems at the least partially right. Sunlight can kill some, but not all, bacteria and viruses.

Chromotherapy – a treatment method based on colours and light – appeared during this era. Some proponents claim that the origins of using coloured light for healing date back to ca ancient Egyptit’s hard to search out evidence of this now.

A page from The Principles of Light and Color
The 1878 book “Principles of Light and Color” paved the best way for people to be treated with light of different colours.
Getty Research Institute/Internet Archive Book Images/Flickr

Modern chromotherapy owes much to the fertile mind of Edwin Babbitt (1828-1905) from the United States. Babbitt’s 1878 book Principles of light and color he was based on experiments with coloured light and on his own visions and clairvoyant observations. It’s still in print.

Babbitt invented a conveyable stained glass window called Chromolumaimed toward restoring the balance of the body’s natural coloured energy. It is claimed that sitting under coloured light from a window for a certain period of time restores health.

Spectro-Chrome, circa 1925, at the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago
Spectro-Chrome made one entrepreneur lots of money.
Daderot/Wikimedia Commons

Indian entrepreneur Dinshah Ghadiali (1873-1966) examine it, moved to the United States and invented his own instrument, the so-called Spectro-Chromein 1920.

The theory behind Spectro-Chrome was that the human body was composed of 4 elements – oxygen (blue), hydrogen (red), nitrogen (green), and carbon (yellow). When were these colours? imbalanceit caused the disease.

A couple of hour-long sessions with Spectro-Chrome could be enough restore balance and health. For example, through the use of green light, you’ll be able to supposedly help your pituitary gland, while yellow light helps with digestion.

By 1946, Ghadiali had created about one million dollars from sales of this device within the USA.

And today?

While some of these treatments sound strange, we already know that certain coloured lights treat certain diseases and disorders.

Blue light phototherapy it’s utilized in the hospital treatment of newborns with jaundice. People affected by seasonal affective disorder (sometimes called winter depression) may be treated by often exposing themselves to this medicine white or blue light. And ultraviolet light is used to treat skin diseases, resembling psoriasis.

Nowadays, light therapy is even utilized in the cosmetics industry. LED masks with star inscriptions, promise to fight pimples and reduce the signs of aging.

However, as with all forms of light, exposure to it comes with each risks and advantages. In the case of these LED face masks, they might disturb your sleep.


This article was originally published on : theconversation.com
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Health and Wellness

Ethnicity is a useful shortcut for identifying needs – without it, targeting public services will become more difficult

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Latest government news directive prioritizing public services “based on need rather than race” will make reaching New Zealanders with greater needs more difficult and take longer.

The directive’s give attention to ethnicity fails to acknowledge that many ‘surrogate’ needs – resembling age, gender, rural location and income – are routinely utilized in New Zealand and elsewhere allocate resources.

And this policy is contradictory relevant evidence that ethnicity is in truth an appropriate strategy to discover needs.

As well as making it more difficult to discover and reach New Zealanders most in need, these policies are more likely to exacerbate existing inequalities. There is also concern that it will put providers liable to financial failure because they don’t receive enough funding to cover patients with the best needs.

Effective shortcuts

Proxies resembling ethnicity, age, gender and placement are effective shortcuts to where the cash is going. The purpose of their use is to offer the proper resources at the proper place and time.

Take, for example, the major funding formula for primary care.

To ensure adequate funding for populations with higher needs, the fundamental services formula is as follows weighted to make sure a higher level of funding to specific population groups. These include children and older people, women, people using multiple services and folks living in rural areas.

From which the particular features used as proxies are taken tests which recognizes that certain groups use or need health services more than others.

Blunt instruments

Frankly, powers of attorney are relatively blunt instruments. However, given the challenges of pinpointing needs, these are the perfect we’ve got.

To determine population health needs without proxies, a nationwide survey of individuals’s health would should be conducted, making an allowance for a big selection of conditions and risk aspects.

Such a study would also must discover which health needs people consider most significant to find out which services might be prioritized. Collecting such information could be expensive and its validity period could be very short.

Mortality rates (by state) may provide data on health needs, but with some limitations – not every health condition causes death.

Other data may give attention to the usage of services (different proxy server). But this approach also has drawbacks. For example, it doesn’t reveal unmet needs for individuals who should not have or cannot access services.

There are serious gaps in our data sets. We have quite good data on hospital services, including diagnoses. However, data is not as available for other services, including the usage of primary care and mental health services.

And the information is virtually non-existent relating to understanding the needs of key population groups, resembling individuals with disabilities and the rainbow community.

Providing a solid analytical case for any resource allocation goal will be difficult in the present environment, particularly given recent public sector cuts.

Are all proxies problematic or only one?

The government has chosen ethnicity as a side of private identity that public sector agencies should use with the best caution as a proxy.

However, when all other aspects were taken under consideration (for example, age and rural location), Māori, Pacific Islanders and other ethnic groups worse health outcomes and access to health care.

In primary care, nevertheless, ethnicity is used only as a proxy measure when allocating a small pool of funding to enhance access to services.

Māori and Pacific peoples particularly proceed to face barriers to accessing health care that might be removed – if ethnicity influenced resource allocation decisions more, not less.

Māori and Pasifika people in New Zealand proceed to struggle with poorer health outcomes.
Fiona Goodall/Getty Images

The issue of human rights

The coalition government formulates its aversion to “racial policy” around human rights – particularly Art. 1.4 of the Act International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination.

This allows states to take special measures (only) when essential to adequately protect the rights of specific ethnic groups. This signifies that the measures taken in Aotearoa have gone beyond what was essential.

However, the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination said New Zealand’s health policy was insufficient to satisfy Māori needs. The commission found there was a structural bias against Māori, which meant it was difficult for Māori to access health care on an equal footing with other New Zealanders.

It also found that Māori service providers are marginalized and should not paid for their work at the identical level as other service providers. She also expressed concern in regards to the poorer health outcomes that Māori and Pasifika proceed to face.

In a context of persistent, well-documented inequality and discrimination, the coalition government desires to pretend that ethnicity is not related to need.

If agencies are forced to overlook the role that ethnicity plays in health needs, we will expect a lot of wasted work by back-office employees trying to assemble evidence about what we already know to justify targeted services. Or a lot of wasted money, ensuring services widely available and targeting much more profitable.

Proxies, including those based on ethnicity, play a crucial role in a fair and equitable resource allocation system. They should not random, lazy, or the results of prejudice. They are based on available evidence of demand at population level.



This article was originally published on : theconversation.com
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Health and Wellness

This new podcast is exclusively for Black women who want to embrace their baldness

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Brennan Johnson

Ladies, now is the time, greater than ever, to embrace your skin, including the hairstyles you select to wear.

Brennan Nevada Inc.New York’s only Black, female-led PR and media agency serving technology corporations, startups and enterprise capitalists, today is excited to announce the new podcast show “Bald & Buzzed with Brennan” founded by Brennan Nevada Johnson. A media specialist, this podcast continues and expands our work to reach new and diverse area of interest audiences. Brennan is a descendant of Carter G. Woodson, the founding father of Black History Month, who created the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, launched an educational profession, and published greater than 20 books on Black history. Brennan Nevada Inc., PR and media agencies are keeping Woodson’s legacy alive by telling Black and BIPOC stories to corporations that do not typically have access to best-in-class PR and storytelling services.

This new media enterprise will create content and space exclusively for people without hair who haven’t yet been accepted or celebrated due to outdated beliefs, stigmas and stereotypes imposed by society. With the premiere of the primary season in November, Brennan will host thought-provoking conversations in a news program format, in addition to interviews with inspiring people who have shaved their heads to discuss a wide selection of topics related to business, culture, love, sports, entertainment and sweetness, fashion, personal funds and more.

This podcast will showcase Brennan’s passion for storytelling while instilling confidence and reinforcing the advantages of being bald and engaged in every aspect of on a regular basis life. Bald by selection for over 13 years, Brennan has been published in lifestyle and consumer media akin to , promoting this unique and powerful hairstyle while debunking and debunking myths about having no hair.

“I’m so excited in regards to the official debut of Bald and Buzzed with Brennan. I’m obsessive about baldness, fashionable hairstyles and the media. Why not mix it and supply listeners with the perfect conversations and experiences by rewriting the narrative on how media, society and types interact with bald people? Our mission is to turn what has all the time been portrayed as negative or frankly depressing into positive! Having little or no hair is a life-style, sexy, luxurious and attitude that can be the most important focus of our show. The world needs to know the way cool it is to shave your head.”

Podcast listeners can subscribe and tune in each week as Brennan updates you on every little thing you wish to know to stay awake to date with the most recent news. In addition, Brennan will interview bald and fit pioneers from various industries to encourage viewers to live beautifully and boldly with a bald head. As the name of the podcast suggests, it’s an entendre because buzz can mean many things – haircuts, news, being drunk, gossip, etc.

For more on Baldy and Buzzed with Brennan, subscribe to them YouTube pageto watch the most recent episodes.

This article was originally published on : www.essence.com
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