Travis County Commissioners Court
March 28, 2006
Item 3
Number 3, approve proclamation recognizing the week of April 3rd through April 9th, 2006 as public health week in Travis County. Good morning?
>> good morning.
>> should I read the proclamation.
>> please.
>> it reads: whereas the safe and healthy development of children is critical to the future of Travis County, with the early years of our children's lives, so very critical in determining their later health, happiness and success, whereas in order to raise healthy and well educated children, families rely on the help of schools, child care providers, health and nutrition programs, recreation facilities and other community services to provide a network of invaluable support, to the needs and aspirations of children and their families here in Travis County, and whereas the Travis County Commissioners court recognizes its responsibility to all children and families to robustly serve their health care needs and to work together with local public and private agencies and does hereby urge all citizens to observe the week of April 3rd through 9th, 2006, as a time to emphasize and support public awareness of the health needs of our children and how these needs may be met through community involvement and care. Now, therefore, be it resolved that we the Travis County Commissioners court do hereby proclaim the week of April 3rd through 9th 2006 as public health week and all of Travis County and recognize the efforts of public health professionals to assure the health and future of our community in designing healthy communities to raise healthy children and to hereby state our firm support and appreciation for all that public health does for this great county and I move approval. Good morning.
>> good morning, judge, Commissioners. David lurie with the Austin Travis County health and human services department. With me is shannon jones our assistant director for public health and human services, also our medical director. By the way, we are thinking that perhaps we need to get a health department mascot, we are going to give that consideration. That's pretty impressive. Well, we would like to thank you very much for this proclamation designating the week of April 3 through 9 as public health week. As you know the role of public health is to promote wellness, protect our community from epidemics and environmental hazards, you have over 500 dedicated employees working within the health and human services department to do that for our community. As you also pointed out nationally emphasis this here is on children's health, so our themes over the weekly be such things as parenting, improving children's health, increasing physical activity, improved nutrition, also focusing on safety and injury prevention as it relates to children and promoting clean air for our children and raising a generation of healthy individuals in our community. So I would like to ask dr. Valadez to comment briefly on some of our child health related services and also shannon will talk about that as well as it relates to public health and our community services, also some of the owe vents that we have planned for public health week. We really appreciate the proclamation. Dr. Valadez.
>> thank you, david. Good morning, judge, Commissioners.
>> good morning.
>> this is a fantastic time to reflect on -- what the public health is doing in your community, particularly keeping children healthy and safe. Every day we have our nurses and staff working in our immunization clinics providing immunizations over 44,000 in the last year to keep our children safe from vaccine preventable diseases. We also have a -- a very new initiative through the centers for disease control and prevention, a cooperative agreement to reduce the burden of asthma diabetes and obesity, called steps to a healthier Austin. This initiative has over 23 partners, including several school districts, Pflugerville and manor. As an example, the work that we have done through our behavioral survey, I will tell you in those two school district, we have about approximately one out of four high school students at risk of overweight or are overweight. Approximately almost 16% recorded having asthma and almost 50% reported not having sufficient physical activity. So what we are dealing with those school districts is providing and actual funding positions, school nurse coordinator, in both of these school districts to create a comprehensive school health program that will begin to address health issues, but also to promote the healthier policies such as nutrition policies, vending machine policies, better food, working through food service, physical activity initiatives to make those children healthier. We also of course do that throughout eastern Travis County. Through these 23 partner agencies and have been doing so, actually in our second year, actually our third year, two and a half years into the project and are making great strides in that. So those are just some examples of what we are doing to promote health. We are also working with our public health prevention program, preparedness program to protect this community from bioterrorism or as you heard recently pandemic influenza, staff I working every day to work and respond rapidly.
>> can you tell me basically I know you did say you was working with the independent school districts. Can you tell me if there's going to be an effort to return physical education back to the school system. When we came up, we had an array of activities under physical education. Even in grade school, junior high, high school. I知 just wondering are they going to return that philosophy back in those type of programs back to the school system to actually have a physical education that's part of the curriculum in the schools? Has there been any effort to do a lot of that?
>> I think what we understand is that currently under state law as mandated 135 minutes of pe, of physical activity during the school week and physical education is part of that, I wouldn't feel comfortable speaking on behalf of school districts because I知 not as familiar with those policies. But my understanding is because of the state law mandates that it is occurring.
>> anyway, go ahead -- just go ahead.
>> I知 sorry.
>> I知 just saying that -- that what I知 -- understand what I知 hearing is that there is not enough physical activity in the school system. Now, I don't know what enough is. But I do know that we had type intensive physical education where we ran, gave a whole bunch of different stuff out on the playground, stuff like that. You could actually see that physical activity when you went by an elementary school for example on a lot of the stuff. I知 just wondering is the time -- I really don't know, that's why I知 posing the question, I don't really know. Does the time involved in -- in measurable amount of time where it has an impact, an effect on the health and well-being of the person, in school, that's what I知 trying to drive and get an answer to. But you said that you are not familiar with the i.s.d. Program, per se, but just look like there's a void, maybe I知 just missing something.
>> no. I think that we recognize that -- that over time we have seen a reduction in physical activity within school systems as they compete with other curricular activities, whether it's music, art or other subjects and -- and may -- may be in fact partly responsible for some of the health items that we see over the years. What we want to do is work with the school district to make sure that activity is occurring, all students are able to participate in safe and healthy activities and we estimate really it's approximately 30 minutes a day, five days a week, with -- we get you to that moderate to vigorous level of physical activity. Which is required for that cardio protective effect. In other words to reduce your risk of heart disease over your lifetime. And so -- so but even -- even 30 minutes, three times a week, would be sufficient to do that as well. Obviously it's kind of like a medicine. The higher -- the more the dose, the more of response and in this case the dose being the amount of time and physical activity. So what we will hope to do is work with the school districts, Commissioner, to encourage and assure that children are participating in these programs and getting that -- that physical activity that you speak of.
>> Commissioner Daugherty.
>> dr. Valadez, tell me, I think that's an interesting, the whole subject of matter of obesity, overweight children I mean we all know that it's really a combination of exercise and what you are eating. In your opinion, is it -- is bad food better than an inadequate amount of food? I mean if you are -- if you have a child that doesn't have the ability to have much nutrition. You really ponder in your mind, good food, nutritious food versus something that fills you up. In your opinion, how would you respond to that?
>> I think that I would respond to say that really work with families and the school district to provide nutritious food. The school services have made significant changes to meet nutritional requirements stated by usda. I think what I would say is that I would want the quality of the food because it does matter what you eat and the type of calories that you eat make a difference in your diet and in your health. So I would strive for healthier quality of food in -- even if the quantity was less. You would be far better off than unhealthy food.
>> you would rather have fruit put out for children than doughnuts.
>> absolutely, absolutely.
>> yes.
>> speaking of nutrition, our women and infant children's program is part of the initiative we are undertaking in terms of public health week to be talking and educating about nutrition. Not only what we eat, also how we prepare what we eat, the volume of what we eat, the quality of what we eat as dr. Valadez says. During the public health week we will be doing several things to training women as well as children as well as their spouses, how they should eat, the importance of nutrition in long life. In addition to that we have our mobile van which will be out in the targeted areas of unincorporated Travis County, city of Austin and also the other municipalities within the county, to actually do screenings and activities targeted at populations, particularly those of color to target and increase the sustainability of life. With emphasis on nutrition, the importance of screening, important of health literacy and education. One of the things that we find as we look in public health, what we can do more to educate about the importance of prevention. Many of us believe that the time we go to the hospital is because we're sick. Our emphasis on trying to keep people out of the hospitals. So therefore during that effort our mobile van will be out putting emphasis on prevention and finally with regards to importance of -- of understanding the importance of how we prepare food, prepare our meals, many of our people get sick because they do not know how to prepare a meal. Therefore a lot of emphasis on how to handle food, food safety, those other activities will be part of what we will do, dealing with the public health week.
>> thank you, anything else?
>> did we get a motion on that? Any more discussion? All in favor? That passes by unanimous vote. Thank you all very much for coming by.
>> thank you all.
>> we will try to do our part next week.
>> thank you very much should we have this beautiful proclamation.
>> it's not edible.
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Last Modified:
Wednesday, March 29, 2006 10:48 AM