Blog -5

Lisa Leslie 

 

 

A Former professional basketball player, the first WNBA player to win regular season MVP, and a member of the gold winning Olympic team. Mrs. Leslie is currently an owner of the Sparks team where she shares her knowledge and skills about the game to others through her Lisa Leslie Basketball & Leadership Academy (Leslie, 2013). She is the spokesperson for the National Alliance of Breast Cancer and Covidien, a healthcare company (Pace, 2010). She became the spokesperson for the National Alliance of Breast Cancer after attending a breast cancer awareness seminar with her mom who later found a lump in her breast which was later found out to be benign (Pace, 2010). Mrs. Leslie wanted to become an advocate for breast health awareness, especially since African Americans are affected at a higher rate, because she wanted to reach people to make them aware of this disease (Pace, 2010). I consider her an inspirational women because she continues even after retirement to inspire people to be leaders along with staying fit and healthy. She also invests her time in charitable causes bringing awareness and helping to encourage people of all walks of life, lastly she is a full-time mother and wife with all of these things she is doing for the community this spells amazing in my book and I wanted to share her experiences on my blog for everyone to see.

Lisa Leslie. (2013). The Biography Channel website. Retrieved 11:19, May 05, 2013, from http://www.biography.com/people/lisa-leslie-12816766

Pace, G. (2010). Leslie helps raise cancer awareness. Retrieved from mm  http://www.nbcnews.com/id/35780236/ns/us_news-giving/t/leslie-helps-raise-cancer-awareness/

 

 

 

Blog Assignment 4

How to reduce the risk of assault in Women

Posted By Jeannine

Many women are victimized by assault and rape in the United States every day. According to the online text every two minutes someone in America is sexually assaulted and 1 out of every six American women are victims of an attempted or completed rape (Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine [SARSSM], n.d.). To reduce the risk of being raped or of getting assaulted women need to stay alert and be aware of their surroundings, avoid isolated areas when alone, and carry a cell phone or a whistle (Alexander, LaRosa, Bader, & Garfield, 2010). Women can also take self defense classes, carry pepper spray and a stun gun, in the event of an attack, so that they can flee from their attacker. Watch out for relationships that are controlling, because this could lead to being pressured or forced into having sex. Make sure that when you say no, that your body language and verbal language are in line with that answer. Please don't play games with these men this is a serious matter you can end up hurt. The items outlined above will greatly reduce the chances of women being assaulted or raped.

 

Alexander, L. L., LaRosa, J. H., Bader, H., Garfield, S., & Alexander, W. J. (2010). New Dimensions in Women’s Health (5^th ed.). Sudbury, MA: Jones and Bartlett.

Sexual Assault Response Services of Southern Maine. (n.d.) Sexual Assault and Rape Statistics, Laws, and Reports. Retrieved from http://www.sarsonline.org/resources-stats/reports-laws-statics

 

Blog Assignment 3

 

 

 

I am in constant contact with someone who has mental illness and for the purposes of this blog we will name her Mrs. Allen. In the case of Mrs. Allen she struggles with the chronic mental illness called paranoid schizophrenia. Mrs. Allen. is an African American black women in her late 50’s who got displaced from New Orleans due to her home being destroyed by the Hurricane.  In the case of Mrs. Allen she struggles with the chronic mental illness called paranoid schizophrenia. This illness has impacted her life significantly because when I go to pick her up she leaves me standing outside for about 5 minutes after looking out the window 2 or 3 times. This condition keeps her locked up in her house 24/7 and from being with her loved ones. According to her family, before this horrible event she weighed about 250 pounds and now she barely weighs 100 pounds because she is so paranoid that someone is trying to poison her. This illness has affected her ability to work, eat, and give love to her family. I have been told by her family that she was plagued with this illness after the disastrous Hurricane Katrina. This information inspired me to find out how many people suffered mental illness after encountering this horrible event.  I found in doing my research that hurricane survivors whose homes were either badly damaged or completely destroyed had higher rates of Moderate Mental Illness (MMI) and Severe Mental Illness (SMI) (Sastry & VanLandingham, 2009). The results also showed that the residents of New Orleans had high levels of mental illness. The sample in this study showed that nearly 40% had probable mental illness 1 year later and half of these illnesses were severe (Sastry & VanLandingham, 2009). This study went on to say that these rates were substantially higher after Hurricane Katrina than before the storm and that blacks had higher rates of SMI than whites. I have learned from being around Mrs. Allen that mental illness definitely causes a lot of stress in the family and this compounded with her not being on medication just makes her symptoms even more unbearable.

Sastry, N. & VanLandingham, M. (2009). One year later: mental illness prevalence and disparities among New Orleans residents displaced by Hurricane Katrina. Retrieved from http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2774198/

 

By Jeannine

 

 

Blog 2

Option #1 Imagine a parent of a pre-teen who is about to have “The Talk” with him/her. Please write the scenario (where/when/how) the talk would take place and exactly what the parent should say. Include any resources the parent might recommend to the pre-teen, or questions (and their answers) the parent should anticipate.

Characters: Brandi (daughter) Mrs. Russell (mom)

Place: Living Room

Time: Noon

In the morning, while eating breakfast Mrs. Russell heard her daughter Brandi’s ringtone go off on her phone. Mrs. Russell went inside her daughter’s room to cut off the ringer.  After cutting off the ringer, Mrs. Russell decided to check the text messages in her daughter’s phone and found that her daughter had asked a question to her friend on what it feels like to kiss a boy. Mrs. Russell waited until her daughter woke up and decided to have a conversation on the birds and the bees.

Brandi woke up around 11:00 and Mrs. Russell told her daughter that she needed to talk to her in the living room around noon. She tells her daughter that this conversation will probably make her feel a little awkward; but that this is normal and that they need to discuss these types of things. Mrs. Russell starts out by asking her daughter if any of her friends have ever discussed sex before and what did she know about sex already? Brandi is very shy and doesn’t really know that much about sex plus she feels very uneasy in speaking with her mother on this topic. Mrs. Russell notices the tension and decides to break the ice with her daughter by openly discussing the time that her mother had discussed the birds and the bees with her and that this helped her feel more comfortable. Brandi felt a little more comfortable after hearing this story and Mrs. Russell was able to ask her another question. The question was what body parts were involved with sex? Brandi was not able to correctly name the body parts involved because she felt funny saying this in front of her mother, but Mrs. Russell openly explained the body parts and also recommended the website called http://www.iwannaknow.org/teens/index.html.  

Mrs. Russell asked if she had ever thought about having sex and if so did she know about contraception? Brandi said that she had never thought of having sex, but that if she ever did that she would talk to her mother first before actually engaging in that type of behavior. At the end of the conversation, Mrs. Russell stated that she was always open to discuss anything at any time with her daughter.

Blog Assignment 1

The present state of healthcare in the United States for poor and single family homes continues to be an everyday stressor. The stressors of being in a low income home, having bills, and not being provided medical benefits,  definitely is contributing to the unhealthy state of this society. In the video, Mary discussed her small budget for food each month and that her choices are limited because she has bills to pay to support her family (Unnatural Causes, 2008). Mary's family consists of 3 teenagers and a disabled husband and that sometimes the needs of the family causes her to take away money from bills, or food in order to provide for her family (Unnatural Causes, 2008). Mary also stated that these poor neighborhoods die early opposed to the more affluent neighborhoods but that they do the best they can with what they got (Unnatural Causes, 2008). Poor nutrition and having low or no income is contributing to the present state of more people dying in the United States. According to the text, 45.7 million Americans were uninsured for all of 2007 (Alexander et al., 2010). The text indicated that low income people have a higher rate for not being insured and that the family incomes below 10,000 dollars a year constitutes for 35.7% of the uninsured people (Alexander, LaRosa, Bader, & Garfield, 2010). Lastly, the text indicated that the uninsured are more likely to have poor health and also are less likely to have access to care and that they die more prematurely then people who have insurance (Alexander et al., 2010).

 
In conclusion, poor nutrition and low income families contributes to the premature deaths that we have in the United States. The healthy food choices are allowed by the government to be more expensive which causes poor people to choose the bad choices in the grocery store continuing this vicious cycle of poor health. I feel like we as Americans have a civil duty to make sure that all people get the healthcare and knowledge needed to survive in this world and if we don't intervene and ensure healthy choices are lower than the bad choices there will not be a new generation to hand the baton over to.

 

 

Alexander, L. L., LaRosa, J. H., Bader, H., & Garfield, S. (2010). New Dimensions in Women’s Health, 5th edition. Sudbury, MA: Jones & Bartlett Publishers, Inc.

 

Unnatural Causes. (2008). “There’s no small stuff”: being poor in Louisville.    Retrieved from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dshh1JLO3ps&feature=related

 

Bio Statement

Hello to everyone in this fabulous class called Perspective on Women’s Health, my name is Jeannine and I am a mother of two boys and one thing you might not know about me is that both of my boys were born on the same day, May 31st. I know based off the information that was given to you that you think I have twins but I don’t. One of my boys was born in 2004 and the other one was born in 2009. I really don’t have any time for hobbies because I am a full-time mother, student, and worker at a call center, but in my spare time I enjoy listening to music.

       I’m pursing my Bachelor of Science degree in the Health Studies program. In being a woman, I am very sensitive to the needs of women and so my expectations for this class are to find ways on how to efficiently advocate change for women’s health all over the world. I look forward to this semester and I hope everyone achieves there goal in getting an A in this class.