Comment to Dinora's Blog"Teen Pregnancies"

As I read Dinora's Blog of "Teen moms need help", I found an article that Texas is one of the states that are leading high percent of teen pregnancies. Couples of teenagers facing several negativities such as lack of sex education, regrets, baby murders, disappointing to Parents, worries of financials, lost their plans, so on.

The article mention that this issue is the first time in 15 years and they are unsure why this happening this time. Statistically, "Sixty-three out of 1,000 girls become pregnant in Texas between the ages of 15 to 19 comparing to the national average is 43 out of every 1,000, which is a higher rate than many other countries."

Interestingly about what Dinora post in her blog that the Senate Bill 592 which has passed a preliminary vote, would apply to mothers ages 16 and older who are already mothers that they will give birth control methods to them without parent's permit. Somewhat, Dinora against the idea and present a good point that the teenagers already had sex and will repeat the sexual activities as well. She suggested why not place them into unwanted pregnancy. However, in my opinion, I somewhat disagreed. If the senate passed this bill and give out the birth control contraceptives to those teens, I think it is a great idea because first, teenagers may not afford it. Second, it is difficult to ask parents' permit but teenagers decided to have sex so that their decision and the birth control methods should be part of it. Third, it prevents them getting pregnancy again!

I would like to add something from what I learned during my teenage year. My school offered sex education course and explained every single birth control contraceptives so we can learn if we happen to be interested to use. In additional, we watched couple of films that demonstrated teen mothers and their experiences. The teen mothers explained her experiences of what they had been thru in negatives, positives, mistakes and regrets. We got impact from that and learned not to live their way. We learned from their mistakes by not using their mistakes to repeat in our lives. On the other hands, my concern those teenagers in 21st century could be very different generation and different concept of this.

One thing I do not understand, we are in 21st century and nowadays, those cultures in America are somewhat opening their minds to any issues. We should not be afraid to face to parents about this issue. Correct me wrong, maybe this is still little too early but right now, parents are starting to educating their children at the young age and hoping that generation would make a big different.

Texas ranks 14th of preterm babies

Can you imagine, Texas ranked 14th for preterm babies? "San Antonio has the dubious distinction of having the highest percent of low birth-weight and premature babies among the largest cities in the state."Imagine this cost: "Hospital costs for a premature baby average about $79,000 and can be as high as $1 million." The sad part about this is "Women usually are enrolled in prenatal care programs about four months before they deliver and then lose Medicaid coverage 60 days after a birth." Sometimes it is not easy to have no health insurance to cover.

In this article, "State must tackle early birth rate" of My San Antonio discussed about ranking Texas as 14th for preterm babies. That statement had gotten my attention and got me stunned. I wondered how this huge state would let that happen. Now Texas needs to take care of that and prevent growing percent of preterm babies to worse especially the costs. It got me wondering, what happen? Lucky, the state and the Texas lawmakers are sensitive to this need and focusing on this issue.

The legislatures are currently pending to addressing this issue by requiring the Health and Human Services Commission to develop a concept paper. The Human Service Commission are asking the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services to establish a pilot program in Bexar County to extend the government-funded health coverage for women who have given birth to premature or low-weight babies. The Texas lawmakers are considering recommending the idea of extending "Government-funded health-care benefits for 18 months to women who have given birth to premature babies to ensure they maintain good health and help prevent subsequent preterm births." If Texas lawmakers use this strategy, then this could help to reduce percent of statistic for preterm babies. This would benefits for those mothers' health and babies’ health sake. The risks of the babies' health would increase a child’s mortality rate and increases the odds for mental retardation, vision problems and cerebral palsy.

This article is worth to read because first, it showed that legislatures do concern about this as health safely issue. Second, we should pay attention and find a way to help those low-incomes mother to make the best out of this. Even thou, this may be very costly but if this succeed, then the percent will decrease, the mothers and babies would be healthier.

Comment to classmate's blog,"When in [Texas]"

I would like to make a comment to my classmate's blog, "When in [Texas]" regarding making Austin greener by using bicycle and recycling. At first, I totally supported the idea of making a town/city greener, or even more a state or entire of USA Greener. Of course, we cannot make the Whole United States greener, but we have to give it time gradually slowing. I wish we could automatic change the whole United States to greener. We know we cannot do that because if we do that then it would change the people and confused them.

However, back to the point- What is the next step of making Austin Greener- using bicycle. That is a great idea of adding bicycle. The question is will we succeed to use bicycle automatic or probably not going to happen since we are so used using car and faster transportation. There are pros and cons of using Bicycle. We do not have to pay gas! We just simply fill up the air in the bicycle tires. The less risks of collision if we use bicycle- it would be much safer for us as human. We would not have to worry about getting speed ticket or other kind of tickets. We would definitely save ourselves money from gas and tickets, collisions, so on. In addition, most important, the air would be much greener if use bicycle more often. Lastly, we as the human being, would be much in shape and healthier by riding bicycle. We could have live much longer!

Secondly, making Austin Greener by recycles as usual but the new idea is to create a new bill by giving someone ticket if did not recycle. Ouch!I did not like the idea of using ticket to charge us. That would hurt at first but at least it is like kicking our butts to recycle. I personally think it would be okay to create the bill for the ticket part because doing recycle is as easy as you think about it. It only takes few minutes to recycle. In addition, using the ticket will help and encourage people to recycle. In the end, the people will realize how healthy and useful, greener this would be and then they would be thankful for this. Otherwise, if someone got ticket and paid for it- that is a good thing, we the people need the money to fix up whatever we needed. Therefore, it is a definitely a great start to create a bill to have ticket someone that did not recycle and using bicycle as greener transportation.

To T's blog, I like his topic and how he post about recycling and using bicycle. He did pointed out good ideas and suggestions. But one thing, I was not crazy about the idea of charging us as ticket but as I thought about it, either way it had to wake us up and realizing about the global and saving our lives. If we didn't use the ticket, what other punishment would we use as?

A New Bill to increase doctors in Texas?

Since Texas considered as a huge state within approximately million of people living there, there is a concern risen. The state has about 254 counties and about 114 cannot meet the national standard for one doctor for every 3,500 people. Meaning along the border or in country-farm land, there is not much doctors around, only most doctors available in rural and incities.

So right now in this article, the legislatures and state representative are working on this and perhap making a new bill. They are also focusing on reffering to clients to young, attractive doctors. The Legislatives encouraging the young doctors to open their practices along the border and/or the country areas as well.

The young doctors who just graduated with a big debt of loan to pay off, wanting to work and find a job to pay off their loans. Mostly the young doctors are in the most population areas such as incities and rural areas. There are not much doctors near the border or in country area since not much populations there. For those young doctors, I understand they need the job bad to pay off the loan debts since the economy is bad. I would do the same thing but at the same time, we the people need to focus on the people's health. We cannot just abandon their health and focus on the economy.

I do believe that Texans should be and should do this by opening the offices for doctors and among other medical field along the borders and in country areas. That way, it shows they are paying attention and cares of people's health. It may or may not boost their income of paying off their college debts.

Anti-Trans Fat Bill

In few coming weeks, the lawmakers of Houston state Rep. Carol Alvarado and state Sen. Eliot Shapleigh, D-El Paso, will discuss the new bill which would outlaw restaurant use of certain oils, shortenings and margarine aka trans fat by September 2011. The trans fat is considered as bad cholesterol. There are other states that had already passed a law to ban trans fat such as New York City and California. If the bill become law in Texas, Texas would join those two states to ban trans fat and being healthy state. So they are focusing to ban trans fat by September 2011.
The author, Charles Kuffner, post a blog about banning trans fat on "Off the Kuff" website. The author got the article from the Chronicle-"Bill would have trans fat taken out of eating out" by Alan Turner. Alan Turner discussed in the article, explaining about how bad trans fat can affect your health especially bad cholesterol and setting up a new bill to ban trans fat so these people in Texas can be healthy as well.
Charles Kuffner mention that he agreed with Alison Cook that mention that there are foods that has adequate of trans fat on the shelf in the grocery store. So there's saying such as hypocrite. On other hand, for the restaurant, its reasonable to cook with Tran fat free products.
Charles's blog direct to any audience that are Texas residents who likes to go out to eat, and being health-conscious. Charles did use little of this and that of evidence such as he mention about Alison Cook . His statement seems supportive of anti-trans fat. We all want to be healthy, anyway.

more restrictions on use of tanning salons by teens

As we are in 21st Century, we are more aware of risks for Skin cancer by the sun and the tanning salon. Right now than in the past, more people are avoiding the risks from the sun as using sun block with high SPFS (30, 45, etc.). On the other hand, some of us are being denial and being stubborn to continue using the lower SPFs by being sun bathing and/or continue attending to tanning salon. Even thou we are aware of the risks.

The Austin American Statesman commentary piece entitled "Legislature tries to draw tan line for teenagers". This article focuses the concerns on teenagers using tanning salon. The legislature and among other people felt they wanted to stop increasing the risks for teenagers' health of skin cancer. They are thinking of a way to limit this by using doctor's note and/or parents' permit by depend on the range of ages (13, 16, 18, etc.)...

State Rep. Burt Solomons, R-Carrollton wanted to put limit on Teenagers but not bans the tanning salon. They wanted the teenagers to be aware of the risks and facts before they proceed to make decision. Dr. Sharon Raimer, president of the Texas Dermatological Society, considered this as no reason to use tanning bed due to the health reason. So if they decide to set up a bill, this could affect the economy and their tanning businesses.

The author is showing the State Rep. Burton Solomon, Dr.Sharon Raimer and the tanning business owner making the argument. The senate wants to limits the tanning for teenagers to use, the Dr. Sharon Raimer has strongly concern and see this unnecessary for teenagers to use tanning. Both of them wanted to set up a bill to limit teenagers' use of tanning. The business owner concerned about business and economy use. The author uses this argument to inform the audience about setting up the bill for teenagers and show that the people care about teenagers' health.

The basic argument is to set up the bill for teenagers' use for tanning but with limit using doctor's/parents' permit but the downside is the tanning business might get less profits. The author used evidences from State Rep.'s and Dr.Sharon Raimer's comments and facts toward to the argument.To my opinion, I think that's a wise idea to set up a bill in 21st century especially focusing on the teenagers' health. It is like we have more control on teenagers since they are under 18. That way we care about their health and hoping the risks in future will decrease. On the other hand, I understand about the social with group of wanting to use tan for several reasons and the tanning business as well.

I wanted to point this out as this person has a good point: "Rep. Lois Kolkhorst, R-Brenham, said it well: "Sometimes I have a hard time telling businesses what they can and can't do, but this is a public health issue". This does have a good reason to set up a bill toward to public health issue.

Texas Schools Shut Down?

Since the economic is so bad, it affects other things. Now it affects the school systems. The AISD are discussing about shutting down the schools. The community, business companies and parents are now participating to save the schools and find different way to save instead shutting down the schools. Not only this community facing this, there are about more than 20 state wides are facing this issues. Soon, the lawmakers are scheduled to debate if they should change the law.

I felt this article is significant to us because we as adult, paying the bills and taxes. Our taxes goes to school systems as well. So we have a right to know where our taxes goes to. We also have a right to know about the education system and see how the process goes. This article could use our attention and our participate to save the schools if there are a way.

http://www.news8austin.com/content/your_news/default.asp?ArID=234390