Posting towards students

This post goes out to the students who wish to take this class.  First off I would have to say that this class is pretty straightforward and easy considering you take the time to complete the work.  Just make sure you turn in the work on time.  As well as make sure you go to class when you're supposed to, but that should be pretty obvious.  Other than that just make sure you take the chance to do the best you can.

Housing in Robeson County

As something that was mentioned before housing in Robeson County has also seemed to have caught my interest.  A majority of individuals are living in areas or homes where they are paying off a mortgage.  Also a majority are also living by means of getting loans.  I feel that this is a huge problem especially for those who are living off of loans.  At this point in time nothing can be done and the problem persists and continues to be a big problem.  In time however this will only increase and many more people will eventually sink into debt for the numerous amount of loans they fill out.

Ancestry in Robeson County

One thing that has caught my particular interest would have to be Ancestry in Robeson County.  From looking at the results a majority of people that are born and raised in Robeson County are mainly American Indian Tribes.  A primary example of American Indians would have to be the Lumbee Indians.  With a percentage of 28 they are considered as the majority within this part of the US when compared to others.  This is truly surprising and with that being said I hope to discover more about this some time in the near future.

Health Ratings in North Carolina

Something else that seems to catch my attention would be the health ranking in Robeson County.  As of right now the current rating is set to 100.  In this particular area based on the stats it seems to be home to a lot of those who are heavy smokers as well as those whom are extremely obese.  What surprises me the most about these health factors would have to be the excessive drinking and and rate of sexually transmitted infections.  Teen birth rate also seems to be at around 83 and while it may not seem like a lot, it actually is pretty high in number.  With this I'm going to stop at this for now and I'll update on this later on.

Cancer Profiling in Robeson County (Continuation)

To continue on a previous post, I've decided to take a glance at the cancer profiling from Robeson County once more.  In 2007, around 17,425 individuals in North Carolina died from cancer and 261 in Robeson County.  When compared to each other Robeson County was 21.4% had died from cancer and 23.0% from North Carolina as a whole.  For those whom are uninformed, cancer can be considered as being a group of around more than 100 difference species.  However, they are generally seen as being uncontrolled growth and the risk varies and increases based on age as well as gender.  As of right now cancer is seen as being the leading cause of death for those under that age of around 85.  With this being said it can be concluded that cancer takes a majority of lives in North Carolina.

Robesonian Theft

Taking another look at the Robesonian I decided to check out the crime reports once again that were listed in the month of November and once again it seems that the majority of crimes come from theft.  Ranging from around $600 to as low as around $400 people are still getting robbed.  However the amount of items stolen seems to be fairly high.  Also as of right now it seems that the amount of crimes in this regard is only increasing by every day.

Inspirational Video

The only thing that I could come close to finding a video related to stress with music would have to be the following below.  It represents violent situations which occur out of the spur of the moment due to pent up stress.  Instead of taking it out on others, there are other ways to deal with this.  Since this was the only video I could really fine, this would probably mean I would be the first to create a stress education video.

Inspirational Text

For my inspirational text it was found as being a little difficult for me.  However, in the end I managed to find something that is quite common, although effective.  Not only is it effective, but it is well described and thought out.  And with that being said it should benefit those who seem to have a hard time coping with stress.  Especially for those who feel that it's just "too much" while attending college.

Article: http://helpguide.org/mental/work_stress_management.htm

Healthy eating in North Carolina

For this post I've decided to take a look at how North Carolinian's are taking care of their health.  I'm not merely talking about health as in healthcare, but health as in healthy eating.  Many citizens today are known for eating extremely unhealthy foods that's not necessarily needed.  As of this current point in time, North Carolina is ranked as the 35th among U.S. states in term of overall health.  Recently there was a newly created Health North Carolina 2020 health objectives which addresses all aspects of health.  Mainly the goal of this is to improve the health status of every North Carolinian.  So far it has been deemed as successful and to this day they are still working to improve the health of the citizens of North Carolina.

Project #3

Just wanted to say that I'm looking forward to finishing up this last project.  I've managed to figure out how I'm going to present my project.  As well as what type of content that I intend to incorporate into it overall.  Hopefully this will be a true learning experience for me.  Being that my topic is going to be stress in general it may be a tad bit difficult to say the least.  However I intend to find a way to work through it all somehow.

Heart Attacks in Robeson County

Something that's peaked my interest lately is the number of heart attacks that has currently occurred in Robeson county.  Currently the rate of heart disease is 36 percent higher than the rate of the entire state of North Carolina.  Also the heart attack rate is 56 percent higher than that of the state of North Carolina.  Honestly I wasn't expecting the rate of heart attacks as well as heart disease to be this high here in Robeson county.  In a survey it was also revealed that 11.6 percent of residents from the tri-county area are knowledgeable of stroke symptoms.  This was something surprising to me that I wanted to post and I shall make another post regarding this when I gather more information of this issue that's currently present.

Annotated Bibliography

I managed to complete my Annotated Bibliography and and I have to admit that it was a true learning experience for me.  I've manged to learn about issues that revolved around stress that I didn't know before.  Also I learned how it ties into anxiety and how it generally can get mistaken as being the same thing as stress.  If I had a chance to do this project again then most likely I probably would.  With that being said I'm happy to say that I enjoyed this project as a whole as it was a new learning experience for me.

Homelessness in America

A topic that's caught my attention would be homeless individuals in America.  Major findings has reported that the state of homelessness in American continues to increase.  For example from there was an 3% increase from 2008 to 2009, or in other words the homeless population increased approximately 20,000.  Homelessness was also increasing in subpopulations such as families, individuals, chronic, and unsheltered.  As a whole 31 out of 50 states and the District of Columbia had an increase in the amount of homeless people.  At the rate that this is going homelessness around the world will continue and possibly double up in the future.

Finding Sources

Just a small update on the sources used for my Annotation.  So far I've managed to find everything that I have needed.  I just need to find some more sources to help me so I can provide strong points for the paper.  So far things are coming along nicely and I plan to have a well-written and well-thought out paper.  Everything is going according to plan thus far and it's staying that way.

Annotation #1

Annotated Bibliography

Works Cited

Wei, M, TY Ku, and KY Liao. "Minority stress and college persistence attitudes among African American, Asian American, and Latino students: Perception of university environment as a mediator." Cultural Diversity & Ethnic Minority Psychology17.2 (2011): 195-203. CINAHL Plus with Full Text. EBSCO. Web. 17 Oct. 2011.

Summarize:

This article primarily talks about stress and college life as a whole and how it affects minorities. Including, but not limited to African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino students it explains the stress levels in students. While everyone in college experiences a different level of stress it mainly focuses on that of minorities as they have additional stress merely because of their minority status. Also due to the stereotype that faculty has low expectations for them because they have low intelligence. Since African American's, Asian American's, and Latino's struggle with college persistence, they were used in a proposed mediation model. As minority students begin to experience more and more minority stress they begin to think of the universities overall environment negatively.

Analysis:

This source is mainly used to show how minorities under pressure would act. Although I have many more sources I could have used I preferred this one as it helped with getting the main point across effeciently. Going off of this will also help me with creating new questions that can be asked, answered and added to what I have thus far. Although the source is not from a credible news source, it might not be completely acurate. And with this in mind I will continue to look more into this and see what else can be tied into it.

Reflection:

Honestly I feel that this source fits into my research, mainly because it's being used as the starting point for my research. Thanks to this source it allows me to follow up and think of other questions about stress and education. I can truthfully say that this source has been extremely helpful to me as it allowed me to further investigate further. I will continue to look for more sources to better benefit the main topic at hand. By gaining more sources, I hope to explain how stress causes students to act in a particular way in a educational evironment.

Health Care Reform

Last updated on the 28th of September, I've decided to watch over what's been occurring with the Health Care Reform.  For those unfamiliar with the Health Care Reform, it is a bill which expands Medicaid for lower and middle class American families.  It was also the largest achievement of President Obama's first two years in office.  This post is merely acting as an insert for those who are unaware of what the bill is, or what it does for that matter.  This will also be discussed into further detail within the next post.

Cancer Cases

Another thing that seemed to catch my eye would be the number of deaths caused by Cancer as altogether.  Cancer had replaced heart disease as the leading cause of death in North Carolina.  In 2006 the mortality rate had shown that heart disease dropped to second place as the cause of death.  Overall the death rates for North Carolina since 1990 has declined by more than 30 percent, but the numbers are still high.  Overall I have to say that I'm a bit surprised and I'll continue to keep a watch for this as time progresses.

Update on Research Proposal and topic used

This is just something that I wanted to add in conjunction with my research proposal.  Firstly I have to say that I have managed to gain proof from a source about stress.  My source is a high school student whom explains that he is indeed stressed out due to the workload since he's in his last year of high school.  Talking to him helped give me more confidence towards my research proposal and the topic that I've chosen.  Quite possibly there's a chance that I might be able to find more subjects who feel the same way.  And this concludes my small addition regarding my topic for my Research Proposal.

Crime Rates & The Robesonian

Deciding to take a look at the crime rate once again as mentioned in the Robesonian I've noticed a pattern.  Firstly there seems to be around 4 or 5 crimes in a month from comparing all the results.  Not only that, but a majority comes from theft.  This is merely an add on to my previous post I made on crime earlier last month.  First off I have to say that I'm pretty surprised and I didn't think that the crime rate would be this high in such a small area.  However this is the crime rate that's within an entire county, not so much a small city, so I really shouldn't be surprised.  I might possibly get back to this topic, but for now I'm going to put this to a close.

Research Proposal

 For my research proposal I intend to write in regards to stress. To elaborate further, it will be the stress levels of students and how it affects their progress in the classroom itself. With the main research question being "Would people with lower education suffer more or less stressful days?". With this question being asked it also ties into how much of an impact does it have on their health. Also can it be asked on whether these stress levels are caused randomly or not randomly at all. It also depends on the quality of the information gathered. At this point in time I also have many other questions that could be asked, but as of right now I did not use them in order to keep things simplified.

The reason behind such a topic is that I wish to find out the reasons why some students tend to perform poorly in the classroom. Reasons behind this can include reccuring problems in the students household, to many other factors which leads to an excessive amount of stress. To me I personally feel that this ties in completely with wellness and health as a whole. Find the reasons behind stress, to get an understanding of why the student performs poorly. Although no worldwide solution can be created from this, by understanding the reasons behind stress and the cause, it can help the individual lead a much more healthier lifestyle. Personally it interests me because I have a family member who is stressed most of the time and due to the stress and the problems that come with it, he has decided to give up on school altogether.

Personally I already know that a majority of college freshman encounter serious levels of stress before college even begins. This comes from the fact that there is so much work to do during their senior year of high school. Looking at a percentage of the students involved in a test, women were found to be the most stressed, while men were the least stressed. A gender gap was also found where about more than 60 percent of women seek mental health services from the year of 2011 alone. Reasons behind this were the fact that women were more prone to explaining how they feel, while men on the other hand don't socialize about their feelings or even express stress.

With this in mind, I intend to find out information regarding students of a particular school or area, whilst gathering data on the ratio between men and women as a whole. Also how and if a number of the men and women seeked out help during the first signs of stress. And how they coped or intend to cope with the stress altogether. Although I metioned students I also intend to look not only at the college level, but at the high school level as well. In order to find said information, I intend to wholeheartedly dedicate my time to look for resources online and whever else that is deemed appropriate.

Food Deserts

Another thing I should mention, but I also took the time to look in Food Desert's and how horrible they are.  It seems pretty crazy how they slap low prices on fast foods, while the prices of produce is relatively high.  Hopefully there'll be a change in the future as I find it horrible how something like this even exists.

Class update.

Just a small update on what's been going on in class.  So far our first Portfolio has already been turned in and we have started working on a research project proposal.  The proposal is to be 500 words in length and I will be writing up my draft for it later on in the day.

Unemployment Rates in Robeson County

As my last post for the day I've decided to spend the last little bit of time looking up the unemployment rates in Robeson County.  Overall Robeson County has a population of 130,598 people with a growth rate of 5.98%.  With that being said there is a 12.20% unemployment rate in Robeson County and the current US average is 9.10%.  With that being said, basically the job growth rate is currently in the negatives as of this point in times.  And jobs have recently decreased by 0.31%.  If newer job opportunities don't open up in Robeson County in the future, then the future of Robeson County could possibly suffer.  And with that I'm going to wrap up this post.

Crime rates in Robeson County

For this particular entry, I've decided to take a look at the crime rate in Robeson County.  In 2004 it was reported that there were 16 murders, 31 rapes, 126 robberies, 330 assaults, 1767 burglaries, 1210 thefts, and 342 auto thefts.  Going right into 2005, those numbers have increased and when compared to the amount of crime in 2010 the numbers have increased significantly.  While I cannot include all the different rates it has been totaled to about 5965 crimes per 100,000 residents.  That may not seem like alot, but I can assure you that's alot of crimes.

Portfolio Reflection

A bit late on this entry, but this time I plan to talk more about my Portfolio 1 progress.  So far I have managed to complete the interview as well as draft a timeline for said interview.  The timeline itself needs some small tweaks before it is finished.  The same thing can be said about my reflection, just some minor tweaks.  Through the time I used during this portfolio I have learned much more about healthcare and Robeson County as a whole.  So far I haven't struggled with anything.  If I were to do this project over again, I would use a different person to interview to gain an alternative perspective of healthcare and Robeson County.  Doing this a second time would also give me an idea on what I should do to make it just as good as the last one.  This pretty much sums up my progress with the portfolio!

Robeson County Health Ranking

Another thing that's caught my interest would be the overall health rankings of Robeson County as of this point in time.  Out of 100 counties Robeson is marked as being number 98 and 100.  The reason for being marked down twice is something I don't quite understand myself, however I can say that the reason from being all the way at the bottom of the list comes from numerous factors.  Premature death, poor health percentages, low birthrates, smoking, obesity, drinking, as well as Social and Economic Factors and Pollution play a major role in the reason behind this rating.  Even though this is from 2010 there are still many areas which need to be filled in.  While I can't seem to find the 2011 report, I'm sure that the only thing that can be expected would be something extremely drastic.

Pregnancy and Stress

After we watched a video regarding pregnancy and stress last week I decided to look further into this ordeal.  According to an article on Medicine Net, Dr. Calvin Hobel have gotten closer to unlocking the mystery behind women and stress.  Stress not only increases risks that would lead to pre-term labor, but also many other problems could occur with the child after its birth.  When pregnant mothers begin to experience stress while pregnant, this could also lead to the baby developing stressful issues after birth.  While stress plays a big role, the question that comes to mind is what stress response is responsible.

Current Interview Process

This is just a rather small update regarding the interviewing process and how far I've managed to come.  Currently I've already completed the actual interview and the audio file is prepared.  Overall it went pretty well, I'm not particularly used to having an interview session, but I tried my best to make sure that the person I chose for the interview was as comfortable as possible.  The best advice I can give is to just don't be so nervous, just stay as calm as possible and the words will come out naturally.  I don't have any questions that I would like to be asked regarding the interview process as a whole so with that I am going to end this entry!

STD Data and Statistical Reports

Deciding to look further into STD's in general as a whole in the US.  I managed to find a great resource that is highly informal.  Basically it tells of the rates in a certain year quarterly, where there is 4 quarters in a year.  Comparing the 1st and 2nd quarter from this year, the highest point for males tends to be between the age of 20 and 24.  For females it is also the same, however it is four times as much as the males.  Resulting in females having being the primary suspect of having Chlamydia.  The reports also contains information regarding other diseases.  And as always I'll leave a link to the resource for anyone else who wishes to use it.

Resource: Data and Statistical Reports

Why Place Matters: Building the Movement for Healthy Communities

Reading the assignment regarding healthy communities, I can agree when it mentioned that communities rely heavily on the current state of the economy.  Without money, communities won't have the money required for centers, and health services.  In Robeson County there are more places to go to get food and only few places for recreation.  Obesity rates also play a role in Robeson County as well and as of 2007 the rate was around 36.1%.  With this being said it is safe to say that the community is definitely unhealthy.

I feel that there should be more places for recreation, or if that's not possible at least reduce the amount of restaurants in the area.  There's also the option of reworking the restaurant to serve healthier foods.  But doing that would result in a loss of customers since the restaurants wouldn't be the same.  Also if the community doesn't show signs of wanting to change for the better then more than likely doctors wouldn't want to live in said area.  If you think about it, what kind of doctor would want to move into a bad community?  With that I'm going to conclude this by saying it all comes down to the community.

Syphillis Studies Tuskegee and Guatemala

Between the period of 1932 to 1972, many African American men in Tuskegee as well as Guatemala were deliberately infected with a venereal disease known as Syphilis.  The men in Tuskegee were the first to get infected.  After a cure was found none of the men received it and with that being sad the amount of time left to live shortened greatly.  Imprisoned men from Guatemala were also often given infected prostitutes as "gifts" so to speak.  With that being said this is truly horrific and nobody should be forced to go through something such as this, especially without that person's consent.  If the men of Tuskegee were informed of the situation and given proper administration of medicine as well as compensation, many laws as well as guidelines wouldn't have been violated.  Honestly I have to say that I'm shocked about this whole situation as a whole and never would've expected something so cruel such as this to take place.  Articles pertaining to the above can be found below as always.

Articles:
U.S. Public Health Service Syphilis Study at Tuskegee
U.S. Apologizes for Syphilis Tests in Guatemala

Americans and Obesity

I realized that obesity can also lead to unhealthier lives and decided to look into it further.  Taking a look at the statistics given by obesityinamerica.org, which ties in to cdc.gov shows that one-third of U.S. adults are considered as being obese.  As a kid personally I was extremely fat, but I managed to lose all of that weight somehow.  Obesity runs in my family on both my dads side and my mothers side of the family so I understand what it's like.  If almost 75 billion in medical expenses was used for obesity in 2003, one can only imagine how much that would change if statistics were given for this year.

'In Sickness and Wealth' video response

I just wanted to post my thoughts on the video that we watched in class and what I thought about it.  Overall the video was interesting to me as well as very informal.  It made sense that the life expectancy of citizens living in unsafer areas would be quite low.  While those who lived in better areas who had more money lived a much longer life by a couple years.  I'm still a bit surprised at the life expectancy rates as a whole and I didn't actually realize that America was found as being the unhealthiest country.  Even odder that we spend all our time advancing into the technological world, when a majority of people don't even have the proper healthcare that they need to lead more healthier lives.

Health Care Status

Studying up on the health and wellness in our own county, it seems that there will be a certain percentage of individuals who lack health care and thus won't be able receive the aid they need.

From reading "Health Status and Health Care Access of Farm and Rural Populations" (Link located below), in certain rural areas many residents have higher rates of heart disease and other disease in general compared to others.  The primary concern for lack of said healthcare access came from the cost of healthcare as a whole. Simply put some were able to afford it while other's were not.  As for the health care concerns in rural areas, it is mainly because the population is essentially older, having low income levels as well as lower education.

Even though the statistics and information was gathered in 2009, if one were to compare health care overall from 2009 and 2011.  Would the amount of health care access to residents have decreased or increased?  While I haven't looked too far into this myself I hope it's the latter.

Link: http://www.ers.usda.gov/Publications/EIB57/EIB57_ReportSummary.pdf