Archive - 2011
October 29th
#Occupy a Credit Union
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Sat, 10/29/2011 - 18:26I grew up in a small town. There were two banks in town. One was the savings bank, and the other one was the national bank. The savings bank had one branch which was on Main Street. I think the national bank had two branches. We used the savings bank.
These banks were run by people in town, parents of my classmates in the local schools. It was pretty simple back then. I had a little deposit book and later got a checking account. There weren't ATMs back then.
My father also had an account at the credit union where he worked. If I recall properly, that is where he saved money for the kids college education.
If you had problems with any of these financial institutions, you sat down with the people running them and discussed the issues over coffee.
Things have changed a lot since then. Some of the changes have been good, others, not so much. Some people have suggested that in these current times, progressives are the ones being reactionary, trying to move things back to how things used to be, and I don't completely disagree. The local banks and credit unions were in my mind a good thing, and it's time to revisit them.
For a previous car loan, we used Charter Oak Federal Credit Union. I don't remember much about them other than we got a good car loan and paid it off. Pretty uneventful. Charter Oak grew out of the Shipbuilder's Federal Credit Union, initially run by an employee of Electric Boat.
When that car died, we bought another car, and this time got a loan from Connex Credit Union. Again, I don't have a lot to go on. They've been around since 1940 and grew out of a credit union chartered to serve SNET employees in the greater New Haven area.
On thing that I found interesting is that both Charter Oak and Connex, as well as probably half a dozen Connecticut Credit Unions are members of the the Credit Union Service Center (CUSC) Network, providing additional places to access the credit union.
The on Friday, I went to the Middlesex Chamber of Commerce Expo where two other credit unions had booths. One was American Eagle Federal Credit Union in Connecticut, not to be confused with American Eagle Credit Union. The later is a division of Annheuser-Busch Employees' Credit Union.
American Eagle Federal Credit Union, I am told, is the oldest and largest credit union in Connecticut, growing out of the East Hartford Aircraft Federal Credit Union which was formed to meet the needs of Pratt & Whitney employees. Their 'about' page says, "The Great Depression allowed credit unions like EHAFCU to prosper by providing secure alternatives to banks, since many banks failed under the economic hardship of the times". It is interesting to see how things have changed and how they've stayed the same.
The other credit union at the Expo was the Nutmeg State Federal Credit Union. They started a little bit after the American Eagle Federal Credit Union, originally by employees of Southern New England Telephone. I had a great discussion with representatives of each credit union and there were a few common themes.
When I asked how the different credit unions compared, and what differentiated one from another the all spoke about how they would never say anything negative about other credit unions in the state, all of which are great. When pushed, they spoke mostly about minor differences like branch locations and various types of services available.
Both of the credit unions all free ATM withdrawals via the SUM network.
There are a lot of other credit unions in Connecticut. Some are only for specific members. You can see a list at the Credit Union League of Connecticut.
Do you use a credit union? If so, which one? How do you like it? Have you heard anything particularly good or bad about any of them? Let me know.
October 28th
#FF @JanetLSameh @CommanderCory @stefanoBossi @ncscadsurvivor @healthblawg @CSHHC @HealthJusticeCT
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Fri, 10/28/2011 - 20:50This week, for Follow Friday, I'm doing shout outs to people who have recently mentioned me. Starting off the list is @JanetLSameh, who describers herself as "Passionate about using all forms of communication technologies for better health outcomes". She tweeted, "TY 4 great convos'. My regular readers will not be surprised that I would get into great conversations with @JanetLSameh.
Next on my list is @CommanderCory. His profile says, his "passions include poker, music, movies and MMA". Well, that doesn't match all that closely to my passions, and most of his tweets have been about Foursquare and Empire Avenue. However, one of them was a recommendation that people invest in me on Empire Avenue, so I'll add him to the list.
Another friend from Empire Avenue is @stefanoBossi. He is an artist, graphic & web designer, and photographer who had a similar post about investing in me.
The fourth person on my list is @ncscadsurvivor. She has a follow friday tweet about people who were at #MayoRagan and #mccsm. She was on a panel about Spontaneous Coronary Artery Dissection, something I had never heard of until I went to #MayoRagan. One of the best phrases from the conference was from the panel she was on, "patient initiated research". It is a great idea I hope to see spread.
Another person on @nscadsurviror's tweet was @healthblawg. He retweeted it, thanking her. He was also at #MayoRagan and is well worth following.
Back in Connecticut, @CSHHC mentioned me in a Follow Friday tweet, particularly in terms of the upcoming #hcsmct breakfast tweet up. I work for a different community health center, and as far as I know, I've not met the person how tweets for @CSHHC, but I look forward to meeting them at the tweet up.
Next on the list is @HealthJusticeCT who is really pulling together this #hcsmct Tweetup. We've met to talk about health care social media in Connecticut. I look forward to working together with her on a lot more events as we go forward.
So, that's my Follow Friday list for this week.
October 27th
#occupyoakland 'Breaking News'
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 21:25sfbreakingnews SF Breaking News
Google: "We received a request from US law enforcement to remove YouTube videos of police brutality." bit.ly/t1MNhj #OccupyOakland
This 'breaking news' points to a Google Website about requests to remove information between January and June of 2011. There is nothing to link it to Oakland, and it pre-dates #OccupyOakland. Sloppy.
Floridagordon Florida Gordon
BREAKING NEWS: Oakland Police Chief Batts Resignsbit.ly/o7Hbss #occupyoakland #ows
This points to an article from about two weeks ago when Oakland Police Chief Batts resigned. Again, nothing breaking here. The Washington Post story from October 13th, goes into more details about the long history of problems with the Oakland Police Department
Jordan takes over amid a rising violent crime rate; after the City Council recently tabled three crime-fighting initiatives; and a judge threatened to put the department under federal control because it has not yet met the terms of the corruption settlement in 2003.
Maybe it's time for the Oakland Police Department to be put under federal control.
Remember, when reading tweets, dig a little deeper, things may not always be what is being tweeted, and the interesting stories may be beneath the surface.
Voting and Healthy Outcomes
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 19:45When I started working at the Community Health Center, I connected with people at the National Association of Community Health Centers (NACHC)and starting learning about their programs.
One program that caught my attention was the Community Health Vote Campaign.
NACHC has initiated the Community Health Vote Campaign to encourage and assist Health Centers in developing and implementing local programs to educate their patients and their families about public policy issues affecting their access to health care and to increase significantly voter registration and participation in the nearly 7000 communities in which Health Centers are located.
Since my wife works for Common Cause, it seemed like an interesting way we could tie our work together. I suggested that my wife do a voter registration drive and the one of the health centers and suggested to people at NACHC that they might want to connect with Common Cause nationally. I met some resistance, and it took me a while to get a sense of the concern.
It boils down to this. Voter registration should be some special drive done every once in a while at a community health center, it should be a normal part of way the health center works. Essentially, the intake and screening of patients should include a question, are you registered to vote? Those patients that are eligible to vote should be encouraged to register and vote, and where possible, registration forms should be part of the stack of forms a new patient fills out, no different than filling out an insurance or HIPAA form.
Thinking about it, it makes a lot of sense. An important part of successful primary care is to empower patients to take better care of themselves. This may include quitting smoking, losing weight, or working on developing a better self image. Voting is part of this. It is a way to take a little more control of ones life.
This led me to an interesting thought. Is voting a social determinant of health? There are various factors that determine health outcomes for various populations. How easy is it to get health food? What opportunities are there in the community to get exercise? These are often related to racial and economic disparities in health.
Thinking it through, it seemed like there should be a correlation. There is correlation between poverty and poor health outcomes. There is a correlation between poverty and low voter turnout. So, is there a correlation between low voter turnout and poor health outcomes?
The topic came up in a Tweetchat today, so I finally decided to try and find some data that would help me answer this question. I went to the website, County Health Rankings. From this site, you can download health data on a county by county basis for any state.
I then did a bit of searching to find voter turnout records and found Wisconsin Voter Turnout By County. Combining all of this into Excel, I could do a little analysis.
First, some caveats. I looked at correlation. Remember, correlation does not necessarily imply causation. One could argue that low voter turnout causes poor health outcomes, that poor health outcomes causes low voter turnout, or that while the two are related, there is no causation one way or another.
The data I have is limited. In this case, I’m looking at 72 counties in Wisconsin. It would be great to look at this on a much broader basis. Also, there are time issues. The voter turnout is for the 2010 election, yet different parts of the health data comes from different time periods.
Nonetheless, I was struck by some of the results. The correlation between health outcome rank and voter turnout rank was .34. The correlation is even stronger, when you compare percentage turnout to the standardize health scores, in this case -.45 (where the lower the score, the higher the ranking).
Looking at health factors, it became even more pronounced with a -.56 correlation factor. Digging deeper, certain underlying factors jumped out. Health factors had a -.52 correlation, social and economic factors had a -.47 correlation. My understanding is that there is other research supporting the correlations between social and economic factors and voting turnout, so this was not a surprise. The bigger surprise is that mortality rates where correlated to voter turnout at -.45, while morbidity was only correlated at -.33
Digging further into the factors, the correlation between unprotected sex and voter turnout was -.58. Income was -.46, smoking -.36, diet and exercise -.32, and alcohol use -.25.
What was also particularly striking was access and quality of care metrics. There was no correlation between access to care and voter turnout (0.01). Yet when you look at the quality of care, there was a strong correlation, or -.46. That is, if you live in an area with higher voter turnout, you live in an area with a higher quality of care.
There is plenty more data that can be dug into and it looks like it may well be worth the effort. Here in Connecticut, it might be possible to get a larger set based on towns. It might also be interesting to look at this on the international level in terms of health outcomes and voter turnout.
While the data may not be definitive, it does reinforce my belief that voter participation is a social determinant of health that needs to be investigated, and while it is being investigated, it seems like medical providers should be encouraging all their patients to become civically engaged, for the sake of democracy, and perhaps for the sake of their own health.
#NaNoWriMo Pregame
Submitted by Aldon Hynes on Thu, 10/27/2011 - 03:09It is 3 AM, and I should be sleeping, but an idea has emerged in my mind, and I'm having problems getting back to sleep, so I thought I would share it as a quick blog post and see what people think.
November is National Novel Writing Month, NaNoWriMo. I've taken a crack at it a couple different times, completing 50,000 words the first year, starting off on a wrong track on another year. Last year, as I was transitioning to my new job, I didn't tackle it.
Part of my wrong track was a semi-autobiographical novel about transitioning from being a Wall Street technology executive to being what I am now. At the time, I was in the middle of the transition and not sure where it was leading. It was much more raw and harder to write so I set it aside.
Since then, I've been getting into more and more discussions about living your life as if it were a novel that you are writing. So, I am thinking of writing an autobiographical novel based on what happens during the month of November.
I'm thinking of sharing it as blog posts as I go. That's 1,667 words a day for 30 days. That is less than my average before starting my current job, but more than my average since.
I have a busy month in November, which is both good and bad. It will give me more to write about, but less time to write.
I also have a concern. The people around me, my family, my friends, my neighbors, and my co-workers, haven't consented to be in a online written version of my novel and I don't want to say things that would upset them. On the other hand, it is an important part of the story.
So, I am writing this, partly to ask permission. Let me know your thoughts about what you feel comfortable with me writing about you, if you want to be excluded from the project, or what is in or out of bounds.
