Health

There’s not much difference between an average life and an above average life. So, don’t settle for average and you’ll be successful in whatever you do.

That was the message TV host and author Josh Shipp had for an audience of young adults – and former young adults – that filled Centennial Hall yesterday afternoon (Wednesday).

Shipp urged students from high schools in Juneau and Haines to take personal responsibility, look at every obstacle as an opportunity to get better at something, and be dedicated to success.

“Success simplified? How did they do it?,” said Shipp. “Number one, they got started. Number two, they did not quit. Is that simplified? Yes. Is it true? Yeah.”

Shipp talked about his own path to success. Born an orphan, he bounced around to 14 different foster homes, was sexually abused, tried to commit suicide, and finally became the overweight class clown.

He credits his last set of foster parents and one of his teachers for helping him realize his potential.

“Completely changed my life, completely rocked my world,” he said. “I believe every young person is one adult away from being a success story. One adult away. An adult who doesn’t see them for who they were – the obnoxious, class clown, foster kid. But someone who sees them for who they could be – the leader, the communicator, or whatever that is.”

Besides being a teen motivational speaker, the 30-year-old Shipp is host of the TV show JUMP SHIPP on the Halogen network. He’s also author of the book The Teen’s Guide to World Domination. He spoke as part of the Pillars of America Speaker Series, sponsored every year in Juneau by the Glacier Valley Rotary Club.

The series continues next Wednesday with retired Air Force Lieutenant Colonel Kevin Sweeney, whose plane was shot down during Operation Desert Storm.

A major Southeast social-service agency has a new top official.

Jean Strafford will take over as executive director of Catholic Community Service on May 1st.

The Juneau-based nonprofit provides assistance to senior citizens and families, offering transportation, meals and child-care services to Southeast residents. It also runs the capital city’s hospice program.

Strafford has been Catholic Community Service’s finance director since last summer. She also held that post from 2001 to 2005. In addition, she worked for the Sealaska Corporation, the Juneau Economic Development Council, and Juneau’s municipal government.

Board Vice President John Greely says that experience made her the strongest finalist.

“She’s been our financial wizard there for quite a few years and knows the ins and outs of the agency and has the confidence of the employees. So she seemed to be the logical choice,” he says.

Strafford takes over from Rosemary Hagevig, who is retiring after 14 years on the job.

No significant changes are expected. Greeley says funding is a major challenge.

“We’re sort of waiting for the shoe to drop in Washington D.C. with some of the agencies that are our major grantees. We’re hoping that for the next year or so the funding will be stable enough that we don’t have to restructure a lot of our programs,” he says.

Catholic Community Service has 200 employees and 250 volunteers. It was founded in 1974.

With the U.S. Supreme Court hearing oral arguments in the health care reform case this week, the debate over access to affordable insurance is hotter than ever.

A new PBS documentary airing on Alaska One television tomorrow (Tuesday) examines low cost, quality health care in the United States. U.S. Health Care: The Good News finds that communities with the most affordable care have a system in place to cover the most people.

It’s the third film on health care made for public television by journalist T.R. Reid, who was in Alaska last week speaking to the Juneau and Anchorage World Affairs Councils. Casey Kelly has this report.

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T.R. Reid’s interest in health care came about when he was working as a Washington Post foreign correspondent in Tokyo and London in the 1980s and ‘90s. He and his wife were initially concerned about the quality of health care abroad. Their concerns quickly disappeared.

In Japan, for example, Reid says you can tell just how important patient care is by the way the nurse calls your name in the waiting room.

“The receptionist or the nurse comes out and says, ‘[Speaks in Japanese].’ And that means: ‘Has the highly honorable Thomas Reid honored us with his presence today.’ Right away you feel better,” Reid says.

Kidding aside, Reid’s interest led to two PBS Frontline documentaries, and a book about health care in the U.S. The first film – Sick Around the World – examined how other countries provide low cost, quality care for every citizen. The second – Sick Around America – looked at people in the U.S. struggling to get and keep insurance.

Around the time he completed the second film and book, Reid began to hear from viewers who wanted him to look at areas in the U.S. where good, affordable care is readily available.

“Then PBS came to me and asked me if I would make that movie – good, reasonable cost health care in the United States. And I said, ‘Yeah. Sounds like a very good topic. But how do you find it?'” says Reid.

Watch High Quality Care at Low Cost on PBS. See more from U.S. Health Care: The Good News.

It turns out researchers at Dartmouth College have been comparing Medicare billing records in communities across the United States for more than 20 years. In his new film, U.S. Health Care: The Good News, Reid visits parts of the country where the “Dartmouth Atlas of Health Care” says costs are the lowest.

“And guess what?” he says. “The low cost counties have just as good results as the guys charging three times as much.”

Reid says specific services – like a doctor’s visit or surgery – cost pretty much the same no matter where you live. He says the biggest difference from one community to another has to do with efficiencies. For instance, a doctor in Miami – where health care costs are nearly twice the national average – will see a patient with high blood pressure once a month. In Seattle, where costs are below average, the same patient is seen once a year.

“So you’re paying twelve times in Miami for the treatment you would have gotten once in Seattle,” says Reid. “And the system, our system, pays those bills.”

Whether in the U.S. or abroad, Reid says he’s never found a perfect health care system. But he says anything would be better than the patchwork system the U.S. has now. One thing he did find is that parts of the country with the best quality, lowest cost health care, have doctors and hospital administrators willing to lead the way.

“We met doctors all over the country in this film, who said to us, ‘I have an obligation to preserve the physical health of my patients. But I also have an obligation to preserve the fiscal health of my community.'” he says.

Reid met with the board of directors for Juneau’s city-owned Bartlett Regional Hospital last week. He also met with the board during a previous trip to the Capital City, and Chairman Bob Storer says members are big fans of Reid’s work.

In recent years, Storer says the board has become more conscientious of rising health care costs.

“There is a growing sensitivity that some of the procedures that we do offer at the hospital are well above alternatives in Seattle,” Storer says. “We talk about that, we hope to be able to reduce those kinds of costs. It’s not going to happen overnight.”

But Storer says Juneau’s population size and isolation mean there will always be challenges to providing affordable care.

“One of the issues we have is pharmaceuticals,” says Storer. “We have to keep a greater supply on hand, as an example, because it has to be available immediately, and it’s not a drive down the street.”

Reid says the only sure way to get lower health care costs is to make sure everyone is covered. He says it’s done in other first-world countries, and on average they spend about half of what the United States’ spends per capita on health care. And he says it doesn’t have to be done with a government takeover.

“You can definitely do this in a private system,” says Reid. “Many countries do – Germany, Switzerland, Belgium, Netherlands, Japan. They do it, arguably, with less government involvement than we have.”

Reid’s film, U.S. Health Care: The Good News airs Tuesday at 8 p.m., and re-airs Wednesday morning at 2 a.m. on Alaska One.

Certain packages of Ocean Spray Craisins have been recalled due to possible contamination by small, hair-like metal fragments.

The popular dried cranberries are distributed throughout Alaska, but the state Department of Environmental Conservation reports no illnesses or adverse reactions.

The recall covers 5 oz, 10 oz, 48 oz bags, as well as 10 pound bulk packages with “Best by” dates between October 27th, 2012 and November 11, 2012. The “Best by” date will be followed by the letter M on affected packages. The UPC number for the 5 oz packages is 00293-000; for the 10 oz packages it’s 29456-000 and 29464-000; for the 48 oz packages it’s 00678-318; and for the bulk packages it’s 03477-000.

Consumers who have purchased any recalled Craisins are urged to throw them away, but save the UPC label and “Best by” date, and contact the Ocean Spray Consumer Hotline at 1-800-662-3263 for a coupon replacement.

The number of sexually transmitted gonorrhea infections in Alaska has decreased, according to the State Section of Epidemiology.

Gonorrhea went down 23 percent for the first three quarters of 2011, with 770 laboratory confirmed cases, compared to more than a thousand for the same time last year.

The decrease was seen statewide, except the Interior. Fewer cases occurred among all racial groups, with the most sizeable reductions among white and Alaska Native populations.

HIV/STD Program Manager Susan Jones says the gonorrhea numbers may be down due to increased awareness of the disease, when it reached almost epidemic proportions in recent years. Emphasis also is being placed on expedited partner therapy, where sexual partners can receive treatment without going to a health care provider.

Despite the decrease, Alaska still has one of the highest rates of sexually transmitted diseases in the nation, ranking third in 2010.

Holy Trinity Episcopal Church and McPhetres Hall publically celebrated the new facility last Sunday. Amanda Compton joined the approximately 150 to 200 community members who attended the event.