47 area nonprofits among recipients
The Missouri Foundation for Health (MFH) has approved grants to 47 St. Louis area nonprofit organizations totaling $6.8 million. The funding supports programs to improve health care for thousands of Missourians and focuses on programs that address such issues as obesity, low health literacy, mental health and substance abuse and health interventions in non-traditional settings.
Ten organizations receive MFH grants through its Healthy & Active Communities Initiative, which addresses the prevalence of obesity among Missouri residents. Grants fund programs that encourage healthy environmental changes (walking trails and community gardens), provide obesity prevention education and improve local health policies in schools and workplaces.
The MFH Health Literacy Initiative provided two-year grants to four organizations that work toward improving health literacy in Missouri citizens and health professionals.
Nine organizations received three-year funding under Mental Health and Substance Abuse to address the emotional and physical problems affecting Missouri citizens with mental and substance abuse issues.
The MFH Health Interventions in Non-Traditional Settings funding program awarded two-year grants to 24 St. Louis area faith-based and small secular organizations that address the health needs of many in their communities.
SLU receives $1 mil CDC grant to study fetal alcohol syndrome
Saint Louis University researchers received a three year, $1,040,000 grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to expand their efforts to educate doctors about the risks of drinking during pregnancy and fetal alcohol syndrome.
“Drinking during pregnancy increases the risk of birth defects, which have lifelong consequences and can easily be prevented,” said Leigh Tenkku, Ph.D, assistant professor of family and community medicine at Saint Louis University. “It is very important to get the message out to health care professionals and to include this information in academic training settings.”
Research has shown that health care professionals’ advice is one of the most influential factors in determining whether or not women drink alcohol during pregnancy. Yet many health care professionals are uncomfortable talking to their patients about alcohol use, are unsure about current guidelines or lack the necessary resources, Tenkku explained.
SLU established the Midwest Regional Fetal Alcohol Syndrome Training Center (MRFASTC) in 2002 in conjunction with the University of Missouri-Columbia and St. Louis ARC to educate health care professionals and students about fetal alcohol syndrome recognition, diagnosis, treatment and prevention.
The grant will enable the Center to create satellite faculty teams in eight Midwest states Missouri, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma, Iowa, Arkansas, Illinois and Indiana. They plan to work with identified academic health center faculty, Area Health Education Center (AHEC) programs and other organization to create the satellite teams.
The University of Arkansas, University of Oklahoma and Nurses for Newborns will collaborate with SLU on the project.
Functional vision, memory problems part of hidden disabilities after stroke?
Following a stroke some survivors may be left with damage to their brain that makes it hard for them to interpret the environment around them.
“Difficulty eating, dressing, and navigating in complex environments occurs due to a ‘hidden disability’ affecting functional vision. Although a stroke survivor’s eyes may be healthy, he or she may have trouble ‘seeing with the brain,’” said Dr. Anna Barrett, an associate professor of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, and Neurology and Neurosciences, at the UMDNJ-New Jersey Medical School.
“A person may become unable to perceive and act while eating, getting dressed, or moving around in the home or other very familiar surroundings. Worse, people with this visual-spatial disability usually don’t know why they are making mistakes. They don’t realize they have problems with functional vision, and so they can’t tell others.”
Barrett’s research involves studies that target diagnostic and treatment strategies to make these “hidden disabilities” visible so they can be treated,” she said.
According to Barrett, more than half of stroke survivors also have memory difficulties, which make it hard to manage appointments, medications and to multi-task. Survivors may not know why they are having trouble resuming independence and returning to work.
Barrett suggests the following warning signs might identify a “hidden disability” of functional vision in an individual who is recovering from stroke:
• Repeatedly bumping into one side of the body while walking through doorways
• “Staring off” in one direction, particularly toward the right side of the body, or generally making poor eye contact
• Involvement in a driving accident since the stroke or experiencing strange sensations when riding as a passenger (a feeling that the car is “running off the road”)
• Having trouble finding things on one side of the body or in one place (“losing” the toilet paper when you sit on the toilet).
Miss Black USA hosts juvenile diabetes DVD for schools
“You Can’t Catch Diabetes from A Friend” is a 10-minute video to be shown in area schools in November for Diabetes Awareness Month. Kalilah Allen-Harris, Miss Black USA is a Type 1 diabetic and gives words of encouragement to youngsters who live with juvenile diabetes. She is joined by several children and parents who describe how they live with diabetes and go about their daily activities. The DVD is a project of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation.
Study links sleep, memory problems in older African-Americans
A landmark study led by North Carolina State University researchers shows that African-American seniors who have trouble falling asleep are at higher risk of having memory problems n raising the possibility that identifying and treating sleep difficulties in the elderly may help preserve their cognitive functioning. The study is the first to examine the link between sleep and cognitive functioning in older African-Americans.
The study, led by NC State psychology Ph.D. student Alyssa A. Gamaldo, shows that older African-Americans who reported having trouble falling asleep tended to do much worse on memory tests than those study participants who did not have trouble falling asleep. Gamaldo says that the difference was particularly apparent in tests related to “working memory,” which is the ability to multitask or do two things at once. The study examined 174 subjects between the ages of 65 and 90.
“If we can better understand how sleep quantity, as well as quality, influences general cognitive functioning, perhaps we could better maintain memory throughout life n including later in life,” Gamaldo says.
The study, “The Relationship Between Reported Problems Falling Asleep and Cognition Among African American Elderly,” will be published in the November issue of Research on Aging.