For the first time in over 30 years, we have a chance to overhaul school lunches in this country. Late last week, with the help of MomsRising members across the country, the U.S. Senate passed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act.[1] We’re halfway there! The U.S. House is our next step, and we have to move [...]
I’m starting to feel like a broken record, but I guess that’s what happens when you really care about something. Children are a vulnerable population. They eat more food, breathe more air, and drink more liquids per pound than adults. They are also more curious exploring the world around them in more tactile ways than [...]
Under health care reform, all employers are required by law to accommodate the needs of breastfeeding employees. But ignorance about breastfeeding still prevails in the workplace. Here are the basics that every employer should know. Please send it to your boss, your HR director, and anyone who is in a position to support women breastfeeding when they return to work.
Part 2 Privatizing profits and socializing costs. Businesses are adept at passing along the true costs of their pollution onto the rest of us. Parents and the health care system pick up a tab of $54.9 billion a year for four childhood disorders: lead poisoning, cancer, asthma, learning and behavioral disorders. Special ed (half the [...]
Part 1 The BP Gulf oil catastrophe is not the worst environmental disaster in U.S. history, contrary to news headlines. The hugeness of the blow-out captures our attention, but the worst pollution actually takes place here in our ordinary lives, in hardly noticed events that add up day after day. Of course BP gets a [...]
Why do we write about, talk about, meet about and in general complain about children’s chronic illnesses in the U.S. when statistics show that, year by year, we Americans are living to an ever riper old age? That’s a favorite gotcha question, intended to squash or at least minimize the impact of the damage we [...]
Many of our employers and coworkers remain woefully ignorant about breastfeeding; without realizing it, they put us in situations that can be thoroughly humiliating.
Part 1 As soon as a teenage girl walks into her pediatrician’s office, he will suggest another vaccination, to be delivered through a series of shots spaced out over six months. This time the vaccine is Gardasil, intended to protect her from being infected by the human papilloma virus, HPV, which might cause cervical cancer [...]
It’s time again for the annual Fourth of July family picnic. Picture this: You’re minding your own business eating your corn on the cob when over walks your cousin (the one who’s nine months pregnant and in a very bad mood because it’s much too hot). She remarks, “The country is going to hell in [...]
California MomsRising members have been keeping an eye on the budget. That’s why we dropped by the Capitol on May 19th to deliver member messages attached to funny glasses and a letter urging our legislators to fight against proposed cuts to kids’ health programs, including the possible elimination of vision benefits from the Healthy Families Program. We also met with CA Senator Gloria Romero, Chair of the Senate Education Committee, to talk with her about our work.
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