Reflections: Week 15 and 16

And alas, here is our last reflection, and to think we thought it would never end....

Week 15

This week started off with everyone doing their final advocacy project post! We had to come up with a project that went along with our issue, that would encourage people to vote for the bills to pass! Some people came up with really great ideas! Also, during week 15, on Tuesday Sue Whitney author of JunkMarket came and talked to us! She was an amazing lady, with an amazingly creative mind. We each got a copy of her book Junk Beautiful Outdoor Edition, which was so grateful of her! I've already looked at mine at least a dozen times (And the fact that there's like 9 flamingos in there, just makes me give her even more thumbs up!)

On Thursday we got to go outside and just enjoy the environment for our last day of class... after my let's show this school that we're smoke free extravaganza... embarrassing! It was so much fun to just sit with the class and hear what everyone had taken away from the class! Great!


Week 16

The only thing we really had to finish up for this week, was doing our group members online learning activities, and posting about our results and thoughts about them. I learned so much from doing these activities, and it was really great to be able to think about them!


I have learned so much in this class, and it really is weird to think about the fact that we won't be getting together for two hours each week to talk about the environment. This class needed every single person in it, and I am very glad that I got to know so many of you so very well. Have an amazing summer everyone!!!

Eye Opener: Learning Activity Results

Here are my results from my fellow group 1 members advocacy project activities! Great job everyone!


Steve Goes Green


Section 1:

1. Pteromerhanophobia - The fear of flying
2. Tachophobia - The fear of speed
3. Wiccaphobia - The fear of witches/witchcraft
4. Autophobia - The fear of being alone
5. Bathmophobia - The fear of stairs/steep slopes
6. Glossophobia - The fear of speaking in public
7. Chronomentrophobia - The fear of clocks
8. Cacophobia - The fear of ugliness
9. Leukophobia - The fear of color white
10. Mysophobia - The fear of dirt and germs

Section 2:
1.Fear of Cooking-Mageirocophobia
2 Fear of Birds-Ornithophobia
3 Fear of houses-Domatophobia
4 Fear of needles and points- Aichmophobia
5 Fear of clowns-Coulrophobia
6 Fear of cats-Elurophobia
7 Fear of the sun-Heliophobia
8 Fear of gaining weight-Obesophobia
9 Fear of strangers/ foreigners-Xenophobia 10 Fear of large things-Megalophobia

I had always known that there were a lot of phobias, but definitely never heard of most of these! It's crazy to hear what people are scared of. I looked it up, and I have podophobia, a fear of feet! I hate hate hate hate feet. So gross! Anyways, Good activity Steve!

Shar's Virtual Environment

Basement: Mold growth, Carbon Monoxide from appliances, Don't use ozone creators in your household. I was most surprised by the ozone creator, the solution was to eliminate the source of the problem all together!

Laundry Room: Dryer Steam, The dryer did surprise me because I had never heard of someone who doesn't have the steam going to the outdoors! The solution was just to have the steam go outside!

Kitchen:Gas Stoves produce nitrogen dioxide! You can fix this by making sure to have a range hood which will help collect the fumes.

Living Room: Wood smoke contains harmful substances. The solution is to keep your fireplace well maintained and have the chimney cleaned once a year.

Garage: Exhaust from a car creates carbon monoxide. The solution to this is never leave a car running in the garage!

Bedroom: Mold growth! It's important to find the source of humidity and rid it!

Bathroom: Cleaning supplies have harmful gases. Read and label all cleaning supplies and always follow the directions when using them.

Roof: Water damage through the ceiling can promote mold growth. Always get leaks fixed asap!

This activity was really fun. I hadn't thought of a lot of these problems as allergen pollutions! I was most surprised by the fact that mold can grow in about any room!

Kaileigh's Nature Log

What are the types of long term care policies?: I was surprised the most by this that there are absolutely no policies that will cover medical expenses fully.

What do policies cost? The policy cost varies depending upon ones: age, benefits, and deductible periods.

I think that long term coverage and care needs to be a nationwide policy! I never realized that Medicare did not cover long-term health care, and I really think that this is a problem. I also did my advocacy project on health care availability and affordability, and I think that it is something that everyone needs and deserves!

Choh's Changing Environment

DOWN
1. Fetal
3. OLDER
4. 1978
5. Myth

ACROSS
2.Gasoline
4. 1940
6. Paint
7. Sperm
8. 80%
9. Dust

Our landlord actually gave us a speech about lead poisoning when we first signed our lease for our house! She left us pamphlets and brochures about it, and made sure that we were aware that our house was built before 1950 so there could be lead present! I'm not sure if she's actually ever had it checked or not, but this is something that she seems pretty passionate about, so we try to be as safe as possible!

Christens Environmental Health

I definitely thought there was some major bias going on in this video! However, it definitely proved it's point! Health insurance is such a huge topic (so huge that 3 people out of our group 1 chose to do their advocacy projects about it!) It's good to know the facts, and what's happening with it! Everyone deserves affordable health care!


GREAT JOB GROUP 1

Share and Voice: Green Toilet Paper

As I was sitting in my bed tonight, working on final projects and papers, and dealing with a cold. I realized in a short amount of time, the amount of tissues that I had used. I then wondered if there was any ways in which to go more environmentally friendly with my everyday tissue use, like Kleenex, and toilet paper?! I did a little googling, and found some pretty interesting answers.

First of all I found out from Grinning Planet, that a lot of companies are pushing that forests get cut down, when that is the last thing that needs to happen to make things like Kleenex, toilet paper, and paper towels. Kimberly-Clark is one of the largest companies making waste on the forests. This company not only sells tissue items at retail stores, but also to big end retailers like schools, governments, and institutions.

According to this website, the most environmentally friendly tissue item companies are!
Seventh Generation
Green Forest
Marcal
Natural Value
Earth Friendly

So next time you're out shopping for "the essentials" take a minute to really help our our environment!

Advoacy Project: Healthcare Availability and Affordability

Purpose: To educate on the importance of having affordable and available health care for everyone in Minnesota.

Overview: My issue that I chose was about making health care available affordable to all Minnesotans. At first I was struggling to find an activity that was interesting, however, then through HealthPartners, I found an interactive “Care of Cost” activity. Here, you can go through different health procedures you may need done, and find out how much they cost! You can look at an annual planner, treatment costs, or procedure costs. (To see the procedure costs you need to be a member, so for the purpose of this I chose to do treatment costs) I thought I was amazing to see how much each minor condition can cost in the treatment costs section! This will help with my purpose, seeing how much these conditions can cost, can maybe show us how rough it would be to not have health care available to us, and see in the long run that low income families would not be able to treat so many minor illnesses. So, run through this activity and see how much your everyday illnesses can cost you without health insurance! (I understand that putting an amount or too much information can be not very secretive, so don’t feel like you HAVE to put your results…. Maybe just reflect)

For more information on health care availability and affordability check out these websites

HealthPartners
Minnesota Health Information
Minnesota Department of Health
Minnesota Department of Human Services

Good Luck!

Reflection: Week 13 and 14

I could lie and tell everyone that I won't talk about how we're almost done with school... but I won't lie..

I cannot even believe that we are almost done with the semester! This is absolutely the craziest thing I have dealt with in a long time. whoa!

Week 13

We started off Week 13 but watching Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard. This short movie was about how everyday "stuff" that we use, hurts the environment more than we think! Every piece of "stuff" has to go through extraction, production, distribution, consumption and disposal. I had definitely never thought of half of the things that Annie mentioned, let alone realized how bad like everything that I use is for the environment! I liked this video also because I think it'd be good for a lot of different age groups, I loved it, but yet I think you could show it to middle schoolers and they would understand and get the point of it, while still finding it fun. We also kept up with our advocacy projects during week 13, and did an issue overview on the bill that we chose. This was to help familiarize ourselves with our topic that we chose, and to make us think from a variety of angles of information. Then, on Thursday we hit up Bagley Nature Area for some Navigational skills exercises! This was probably my least favorite part of this class so far, and not because I don't love being outside, because I do... but because I'm a horrible navigator, and felt very lost throughout the exercise! Thank goodness I had a good group (Sara J., Autumn M., and Katie N.) so even if we didn't know what we were doing, we could laugh and have a good time!

Week 14

On Tuesday we had a speaker from the Civil Engagement Office here at UMD come in and talk about his career in environmental health. I really enjoyed this talker, although for the life of me I can't remember his name (and I feel really really bad!) I enjoyed learning a little big more about Americorps, because it's something that I've thought about joining, but definitely need more information about. We then wrote a letter for our advocacy project to a representative. This was a new experience for me, and it was hard at first, because I didn't want to sound ridiculous when trying to get my point across. Everyone's turned out really great though! On Thursday we had a junking day in class, definitely one of my favorite days so far! Lots of great ideas from Group 1 ;) and of course all of the other marvelous Groups in our class!

I continue to learn so much throughout the course of this class... it's too hard to pinpoint a few couple things! I will be mucho sad when this is over!

Share and Voice: Dave at Super One

I took a trip to Super One Foods today to visit Dave the manager and give him our Thank You card (which after a long wait, finally got done!) ! I spoke with him personally, and although he looked really confused, and really wanted nothing to do with speaking with me, he smiled! And I'd say a smile is a good thing! I'm so glad that he donated these bags, I brought a few with me to do a little light grocery shopping when I was done, and I realized that carrying these "Green" bags are a heck of a lot easier than carrying a paper bag with no handles as well! So three cheers for Dave for helping out our Environmental Health Class!!

THANK YOU'S

Thank you Shar for taking such a great class picture! As seen above, it really turned out nice :) And also Thank You rest of our class for signing and adding to our beautiful Thank You Letter! Most of all, Thank You Dr. V for making this happen!

Advocacy Project: Letter to Public Official

Heather B.
3333 Flower Drive
Rose, MN 55555

April 28, 2009

Representative Thomas Huntley
585 State Office Building 100
Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Blvd
St. Paul, MN 55155

RE: Support for Bill: HF2256

Dear Representative Huntley,
I urge you to support Bill HF2256, which would require health care availability and affordability guaranteed for every Minnesotan, Minnesotan Health Plan, Health Board, Health Fund, Office of Health Quality and Planning, ombudsman for patient advocacy, and inspector general for the Minnesota Health Plan established, and money appropriated. I believe that requiring health care availability and affordability for every Minnesotan would be very beneficial to all citizens.

This issue is affecting many Minnesotans every day. In doing some research, I found that 40,000-46,000 Minnesotans would enroll for an insurance program if it was affordable and available. Making health care easily accessible will be benefit all involved. Keeping people healthy and disease free will enable them to go to work, and help participate in everyday life. Even more beneficial will be the fact that children will be healthier, and be able to go to school and receive the education that they need to succeed in life.

I understand that this issue may be expensive and many taxpayers may not be happy with having to pay for other people’s health care, but I honestly think that the benefits outweigh the negatives. I found that it would take an estimated $159 million for everyone to get insurance, but in the long run and with a lot of organizations help, it will be beneficial.

I’m going into Community Health Education, and a lot of times in that career, I will be working with people who have little or no money. We focus a lot on preventative health care, and people who don’t have money are less likely to partake in prevention programs, because they don’t have the proper resources and money to get there. Knowing that they have what they need to participate in these programs is important and would help everyone stay healthier.

I hope that you support this issue, and that you will vote YES to Bill HF2256 to require health care availability and affordability guaranteed for every Minnesotan, Minnesotan Health Plan, Health Board, Health Fund, Office of Health Quality and Planning, ombudsman for patient advocacy, and inspector general for the Minnesotan Health Plan established, and money appropriated.
If you need any additional information, don’t hesitate to contact me, Heather B, at (555) 444 9999. I am willing to help advocate for this issue, and show how important that this issue is.

Thank you for your time.
Heather B.