Reduce Poverty and Improve Health

I was doing some online research this weekend, looking for cite-able sources about the connection between improvements in people’s socioeconomic status and their health outcomes when I stumbled across a piece of scholarship I simply had to share with you.

Many of us might not know a great deal about Thomas Frieden, the head of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control. Dr. Frieden is responsible for providing the expertise and tools that people and communities need to protect their health.

Turns out, the guy is incredible – has turned the CDC around, shedding bureaucracy and replacing it with action and efficiency. He also happens to be the author of the brilliant piece I found in my searches yesterday: “A Framework for Public Health Action: The Health Impact Pyramid.”

So what was so brilliant about this article? Frieden clearly lays out the reality that “addressing socioeconomic factors has the greatest potential to improve health.”

Did you get that? The thing that we can do as a society to best improve health and health outcomes as a nation will be to reduce poverty which Frieden tells us will:

• Improve immunity

• Reduce crowding and exposure to communicable microbes

• Improve nutrition, sanitation and housing options

• Increase educational levels, and nutritional options

• Reduce cardiovascular disease, some cancers, and diabetes

• Reduce drug use and violence

• and Lower vulnerability to extreme weather conditions.

Well, ok then. We’re done. We’ve solved it. All we need to do is to reduce poverty and improve baseline socioeconomic status. Let’s all get on that.

Actually, we’re already on it. You’re already on it. Each need we meet on the Benevolent site is bringing that person – and his or her family – one step closer to economic stability and sustainability. Each time you read and share one individual’s story of striving, you’re meeting and introducing others to the real people behind the numbers and maybe, just maybe, we’ll build momentum to change the conversation about policies and supports.

So, next time you hear a conversation about health care in our country, or about entitlement programs or funding for safety net supports, remember that those are actually the same conversation. We cannot continue to put low-income families in impossible situations and expect them to succeed with less and less of a foundation from which to build.

We cannot hope to see improved health, decreased obesity, drops in diabetes and heart disease rates, or drop-offs in community violence until we address the underlying reality. It’s about poverty. It’s about resources. It’s about how our civic constructs promote or inhibit people’s progress towards their goals and out of hardship and risk.

Thanks to each of you for being part of the solution. Remember to share the stories of striving and challenge you see on the Benevolent site out to your friends and family over Facebook, through email, etc. The more we introduce people to the real people impacted by low-income and hurdles to taking their steps towards stability, the more we change people’s understanding of the issues, needs, and constructs surrounding poverty in our country.

- megan kashner, founder & ceo

Why These Needs?

Some of the needs on the Benevolent site don’t seem to conform to the over-a-hurdle type of need, like a tuxedo to enable someone to work as a banquet waiter or a sewing machine for a seamstress. Where do needs like beds, clothes, and school uniforms fit in?

Time after time, I’ve seen people forced to make decisions that impede their own progress towards greater sustainability because they need to meet basic needs of their households.

We know, for example, that Anne would have continued to purchase one cheap air mattress after another as they popped over and over, because that was all she could afford with her cash flow. Her goal, however, is to save up so that she and her son can get their own apartment. She was spending more on air mattresses over the course of a year than what it took to get her a bed through Benevolent. Staying with a friend while she gets back on her feet, now Anne is in a better position to reach for her goal and save the money to get her own place.

Facing basic need challenges while pursuing the next level of sustainability has the power to derail someone completely.

Monique is an interesting example of this potential. She is working and in college and asking for help with school uniforms and school supplies. The uniform is a good example of something that pops up in someone's life and can actually derail her. Monique bought her son a uniform for this school year in August, but by December he had outgrown it - something she didn't foresee or save up for.

I've seen mothers in this situation do one of several things…

• go to a payday loan store with catastrophic results
• borrow money from someone unscrupulous,
• get a second job and have to quit school,
• have sex or stay in a relationship for money,
• move into an unsafe or unhealthy place to save on rent.

These are things have happened in the lives of people I’ve worked with across a variety of settings. I’ve also seen (this was back in 1991) a mother who could afford only one school uniform for each of her children and so, like Anne buying air mattress after air mattress, this mom went to the laundromat every school night to wash her kids’ school uniforms.

Over time, of course, the things people do to meet basic needs or their skipping critical needs like vision-care can cost more than an up-front investment to meet the need would cost, but without taking one of the drastic steps above, how would the low-income adult get access to the liquid funds to pay the up-front cost?

That’s where we come in. That’s where we get to be a part of the story and to bring dignity and self-determination back into reach for those who invite us in.

Will our helping Monique with this unforeseen school uniform expense help keep her in college and on an upward path? We can’t know for sure. What we can know is that the person who knows her and validated her need has faith that Monique knows what she’s doing, what she needs help with, and how essential this help is to her ability to stay on her path. Our faith in Monique’s determination of her own most pressing needs might be the key to her continued success towards her goals.

- megan kashner, founder & ceo