Relaxing Regulatory Controls: Vendor Advocacy and Rights in Mobile Food Vending

Author(s):  
Ginette Wessel

Beginning in 2008, city policymakers across the nation became increasingly involved in regulatory debates and policy revisions surrounding mobile food vending. Despite vendors’ abilities to reactivate neglected urban areas and increase food access for underserved neighborhoods, many issues related to unfair competition, public health and safety, and prejudices continue to dominate regulatory frameworks that limit vendors’ entrepreneurial freedoms and spatial opportunities. Using three regulatory conflicts between food vendors and policymakers, this chapter highlights the motivating factors that can guide regulatory decision-making and the ways vendors destabilize and shape formal mechanisms of regulatory control. Topics include public health, restaurant protectionism, and cultural injustice at both state and city levels. This research suggests that despite rigid regulatory policies and the variety of economic, social, and political factors that influence governments’ responses to mobile food vending, active municipal investment in the public realm combined with vendors’ grassroots efforts can generate just policies. The chapter concludes with a discussion on the significance of vendor advocacy and the supportive roles of food vending organizations across the United States to illustrate the ways vendors increase social justice in cities.

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 452-463 ◽  
Author(s):  
Tracynda L. Davis ◽  
Jon H. Standridge ◽  
Alan J. Degnan

Water parks are a rapidly growing element of the United States tourist industry. To reduce incidence of abrasion and impact injuries in such parks, designers are searching for padding materials that can withstand the harsh oxidative environments of chlorinated water. Although padded features help reduce physical injuries, they may also compromise the microbiological safety of water attractions. This study describes bacteriological testing performed on 31 different pad materials, play features and pools from 10 Wisconsin water parks. Materials and surrounding pool waters were sampled and tested quantitatively for total coliforms, Escherichia coli, E. coli 0157:H7, enterococci, staphylococci, heterotrophic bacteria, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, using standard methods. Each location was sampled during three visits, and results were averaged. Pool waters were within acceptable levels of target organisms and disinfectant residuals, but target organisms were found on water features, even those submerged in chlorinated water. Bacteria were detected more frequently in pools using pad materials compared with pools without. These findings provide data that will help the public health community understand the relations between designs, materials and maintenance of water features. Additionally, the information will help state regulators and owner/operators develop guidelines to improve public health and safety at water parks.


2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 333-355 ◽  
Author(s):  
George J. Annas

In public health practice, the concepts of health and safety are often conflated. However, protecting and promoting health is radically different from protecting and promoting safety. Since 9/11, the distinctions between health and safety have changed and are in the process of merging. In our terrorism-obsessed world, public health has been increasingly militarized and enlisted, often without protest, into the service of protecting the safety of the public and the security of the nation. But safety and security are the proper purposes of law enforcement and the military, not of public health. More importantly, using public health to combat terrorism is often counterproductive to the population's health, and undermines human rights. Using the Ebola epidemic of 2014, this Article suggests how the post-9/11 reframing of public health goals as including disaster preparedness and counterterrorism, and the new military metaphors we have adopted to describe public health, have deformed our public health agencies, and have made them less trusted by the public. In turn, these agencies are therefore less able to prevent and respond to new infectious diseases. The United States' response to Ebola gives us an opportunity to reconsider the merger of public health and public safety domestically and globally. This Article suggests that a deeper commitment to human rights, especially to the right to health, has the theoretical and practical strength to act as a countervailing force and refocus public health on the health of populations rather than on safety and national security.


2021 ◽  
pp. 237337992098726
Author(s):  
Siobhan Hickling ◽  
Alexandra Bhatti ◽  
Gina Arena ◽  
James Kite ◽  
Justin Denny ◽  
...  

COVID-19 has altered public health higher education and its impact on pedagogy will be felt long into the future. In response to social distancing measures, teaching academics implemented a number of changes to curricula. It is important to better understand and begin to evaluate these changes, as well as set a course for future changes to public health curricula both during and after the pandemic to best enable transformative learning. Teaching academics have an understanding of academic hierarchies and student perceptions and are well placed to provide insights into current and future changes to pedagogy in response to the pandemic. A survey was developed to examine changes that academics had made to their teaching in response to COVID-19. Responses were received from 63 public health teaching academics from five universities in Australia, the United States, and Canada. Public health teaching academics rapidly implemented a number of changes to their teaching, including alterations that enabled online teaching. The great majority of changes to teaching were related to tools or techniques, such as synchronous tutorials delivered in a video meeting room. There remains further work for the public health pedagogy community in reevaluating teaching aims and teaching philosophies in light of the COVID-19 pandemic. This could include examination of the weighting of different topics, including communicable diseases, in curricula. A series of questions to assist academics reformulating their curricula is provided. Public health teaching evolved rapidly to meet the challenges of COVID-19; however, ongoing adaptation is necessary to further enhance pedagogy.


Author(s):  
Olukayode James Ayodeji ◽  
Seshadri Ramkumar

The COVID-19 pandemic has been one of the biggest public health challenges of the 21st century. Many prevalent measures have been taken to prevent its spread and protect the public. However, the use of face coverings as an effective preventive measure remains contentious. The goal of the current study is to evaluate the effectiveness of face coverings as a protective measure. We examined the effectiveness of face coverings between 1 April and 31 December 2020. This was accomplished by analyzing trends of daily new COVID-19 cases, cumulative confirmed cases, and cases per 100,000 people in different U.S. states, including the District of Columbia. The results indicated a sharp change in trends after face covering mandates. For the 32 states with face covering mandates, 63% and 66% exhibited a downward trend in confirmed cases within 21 and 28 days of implementation, respectively. We estimated that face covering mandates in the 32 states prevented approximately 78,571 and 109,703 cases within 21- and 28-day periods post face covering mandate, respectively. A statistically significant (p = 0.001) negative correlation (−0.54) was observed between the rate of cases and days since the adoption of a face covering mandate. We concluded that the use of face coverings can provide necessary protection if they are properly used.


2009 ◽  
Vol 3 (S2) ◽  
pp. S160-S165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeanne S. Ringel ◽  
Melinda Moore ◽  
John Zambrano ◽  
Nicole Lurie

ABSTRACTObjective: To assess the extent to which the systems in place for prevention and control of routine annual influenza could provide the information and experience needed to manage a pandemic.Methods: The authors conducted a qualitative assessment based on key informant interviews and the review of relevant documents.Results: Although there are a number of systems in place that would likely serve the United States well in a pandemic, much of the information and experience needed to manage a pandemic optimally is not available.Conclusions: Systems in place for routine annual influenza prevention and control are necessary but not sufficient for managing a pandemic, nor are they used to their full potential for pandemic preparedness. Pandemic preparedness can be strengthened by building more explicitly upon routine influenza activities and the public health system’s response to the unique challenges that arise each influenza season (eg, vaccine supply issues, higher than normal rates of influenza-related deaths). (Disaster Med Public Health Preparedness. 2009;3(Suppl 2):S160–S165)


PEDIATRICS ◽  
1967 ◽  
Vol 40 (3) ◽  
pp. 527-528
Author(s):  
Charles J. A. Schulte

ON JANUARY 1, 1967, the Cancer Control Program will become part of the National Center for Chronic Disease Control within the Public Health Service's new Bureau of Disease Prevention and Environmental Control. Our primary mission is to stimulate and encourage the application of currently available techniques of cancer prevention, cancer detection, and cancer control to the community at the grass roots level. If this will be the case after the reorganization remains to be seen. Figure 1 shows the new organization of the Public Health Service. By way of illustration, I think it would be well to briefly outline a few of our activities. An area of heavy emphasis has been the use of the Papanicolaou smears for cervical cancer control. These programs have been responsible for developing certified cytotechnology training schools, supporting and training large numbers of cytotechnicians. In addition, we are supporting some 90 hospital-based cervical cancer screening projects across the country. A program to encourage the general practitioner to screen his private patients in the office is jointly sponsored by the American Academy of General Practice and the Cancer Control Program. The very grave problem in the United States of smoking and carcinoma of the lung is the major responsibility of tile National Clearinghouse for Smoking and Health, a part of the Division of Chronic Diseases which developed out of the Cancer Control Program. We are engaged in a number of developmental projects, such as the flexible fiber optic proctosigmoidoscope. We hope to be able to produce a proctosigmoidoscope that will reach the splenic flexure.


Author(s):  
Janice Arceneaux ◽  
James Dickens ◽  
Wanza Bacon

Established in 1889, the United States Public Health Service Commissioned Corps (Corps) is one of the seven uniformed services and is part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The Corps is committed to protecting, promoting and advancing the health and safety of the nation with a history that dates back over two centuries, beginning as the U.S. Marine Hospital Service. Today, the Corps responds and serves in many areas impacted by natural disasters, disease outbreaks, terrorist attacks and public health emergencies. Corps officers have deployed to provide assistance during national public health emergencies (e.g., hurricanes, bombings, flooding and wild fires); to combat the Ebola epidemic in West Africa; and to provide humanitarian assistance in Latin America and the Caribbean. Corps deployments impact not only service members but also their families. This article offers a brief overview of the Corps and discusses how deployments impact families. Family resiliency and future implications for research and practice will also be examined.


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