We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.
—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Saturday, February 27, 2010

Rural Living May Be Hazardous To Your Health

from Civil Eats. What I found particularly useful in this article was a link accessing a study of healthy living by county for the US. The study was recently released by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. So, check out how healthy your county is.
There are many threads you can pull from the data that contributed to the study’s rankings, including statistics about health behaviors (alcohol and tobacco use, obesity rates), social and economic factors (education, employment, income, community safety), health care access and quality, and environmental factors, including air quality and access to healthy foods.