Patt Morrison for Tues, 7/27/2010

PATT MORRISON SCHEDULE

Tuesday, July 27, 2010

1-3 p.m.

 

CALL-IN @ 866-893-5722, 866-893-KPCC; OR JOIN THE CONVERSATION ONLINE ON THE PATT MORRISON BLOG AT KPCC-DOT-ORG

 

1:00 – 1:40

OPEN

 

 

1:40 – 2:00

Navigating L.A.’s Food Deserts Part II: solutions from the bottom up

Changing the options available at local corner markets and liquor stores—of which there are tens of thousands of in LA—is one way around complicated zoning and economic challenges that make it difficult to build large, full-service supermarkets in underserved areas. These corner store conversions, or “market makeovers,” as they’re sometimes called, have high success rates because they work within the community and with its resources to improve access to healthy foods.  Sometimes it’s as easy as moving the junk food to the back of the store and ensuring that there’s at least some access to fruit and vegetables.  In a similar effort, community gardens equip neighborhoods with the tools and skills they need to make a small and immediate difference themselves.  While urban gardens and farmers’ markets will never take the place of full-service grocery stores, they are an important and growing step toward food independence.  Made hip again by the likes of First Lady Michelle Obama, there are many programs that encourage and incentivize new urban gardens.  The gardens act both as a source for fresh produce and a classroom for children who learn the importance of eating healthy.  While supplemental to households at the very least, could the urban garden movement actually ease the pressing demand for market options?

 

ON TAPE

Guests:

Aurora Flores, project manager for Healthy Eating, Active Communities (HEAC), which has been working on “Market Makeovers,” in South and East LA

Contact is

 

• So far HEAC, in partnership with an activist/video group called Public Matters, has “made over” the Coronado Meat Market and Bakery (4228 Avalon Blvd Los Angeles, CA 90011-5623 ) and Los Compadres market (128 East Martin Luther King Junior Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90011-2652); they are now working on a third store, El Azteca (4031 South Main Street, Los Angeles, CA 90037-1021), which recently received Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA) Façade Improvement Program funds for a complete interior and exterior renovation.  

 

Magali Bravo, a youth ambassador for Healthy Eating, Active Communities (HEAC)

She helped transform her local corner market through HEAC’s Market Makeovers program while she was a student at Accelerated School’s Wallis Annenberg High

CALL HER@

 

• Born in Mexico but raised in South L.A.
• 19 years old
• Involved with HEAC for about 4 years.
• “One of the main reasons I'm in HEAC is because I want to learn how to get healthy and stay healthy! I also want to help my little brother and my other siblings. I want to make my community better. It’s really depressing seeing fast food restaurants everywhere. I want to make a difference now when I'm young so that when I have my own family, my children will have better food options than I did.”

 

Jenny Scanlin, Project Manager, Community Redevelopment Agency (CRA)

CALL HER

 

• I personally have worked in redeveloping low-income communities in the Bay Area and Los Angeles for over 15 years
• I have developed a comprehensive work program for our redevelopment agency to address the public health needs of South Los Angeles through improving the built environment. This program has been successful in bringing 6 Fitness Zones to the community; 3 supermarkets (Fresh and Easy, Superior, and Northgate Gonzalez); expanding our façade improvement program to include “convenience store conversions” creating new refrigerated and wet space for produce and dairy in local markets; constructing a permanent home and providing operating funds to SEE-LA for the Central Avenue Farmer’s Market; and rehabilitating Mercado la Paloma to support its initiative to offer a business incubator model that encourages local restaurant entrepreneurs to provide fresh, ethnic food to the community.  
• We are also partnered with Occidental College and Esperanza Community Housing to complete a Caltrans Environmental Justice Grant researching food access issues in South Los Angeles. We are surveying the current formal and informal options available to the community and will be making recommendations on improvements to the transit and retail system to ensure options for fresh food are more accessible and available.

 

 

Pompea Smith, CEO, Market Manager, Sustainable Economic Enterprises of Los Angeles (SEE-LA)

           

Nicole Gatto, Director, Milagro Allegro Community Garden; MPH, Ph.D. Post-Doctoral Research Fellow, UCLA, Department of Epidemiology

 

 

2:00 – 2:30

Who’s responsible for the over 90,000 misdiagnosed cancer cases?

The fear that settles in after you’re diagnosed with cancer is rarely of misdiagnosis and more of the cancer spreading, the chemo and radiation, and the thought of dying.  But for women diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ, or D.C.I.S., their mastectomy or radiation treatment may have been treating a non-existent cancer.  According to a 2006 study by Susan G. Komen for the Cure, over 90,000 patients diagnosed with D.C.I.S. may have been misdiagnosed.  It’s an absolutely terrifying finding, but why exactly are doctors making this mistake?  Some cite the small amount of breast cases doctors actually read, which has prompted the College of American Pathologists to require pathologists to read over 250 breast cases a year.  And what about all the women diagnosed with D.C.I.S., who opted for double mastectomy out of fear?  Were these people wrongfully suffering deep psychological stress and surgery because of a misdiagnosis?

 

 

Guests:

Representative of the College of American Pathologists

CALL:

 

Diana Rowden (WOW), Vice President for Survivorship and Outcomes for Susan G. Komen for the Cure 

CALL HER: 

 

WEB:

New York Times article Prone to Error

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/20/health/20cancer.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all

 

2006 Study by the Susan G. Komen for the Cure

http://ww5.komen.org/uploadedFiles/Content_Binaries/PathologyWhitePaperB2.pdf

 

Mybiopsy.org

http://www.cap.org/apps/docs/reference/myBiopsy/index2.html

 

 

2:30 – 2:40

OPEN

 

2:40 – 3:00

Sam Kean’s “The Disappearing Spoon” exposes the wild world of the periodic table

While the periodic table may evoke groans from high school chemistry students, there’s a whole other side to the 118 elements that’s not going to burn your skin.  “Alice in Wonderland’s” Mad Hatter and many milliners were truly crazy from their overexposure to mercury.  That pesky cadmium that’s in McDonald’s toys and Miley Cyrus jewelry can make your bones as fragile as peanut brittle.  Sam Kean lays out all the unknown history of the periodic table in his book “The Disappearing Spoon,” such as the origins of the elements’ names and the curious lifestyles of the scientists who discovered them.  With these 118 elements, there’s more than meets the eye than exploding Mentos and Diet Coke.

 

Guest:

Sam Kean, writer for Science magazine and writes “Blogging the Periodic Table” for Slate; 2009-2010 Middlebury Environmental Journalism fellow; author of “The Disappearing Spoon: and other true tales of madness, love and the history of the world from the periodic table of elements”

 

WEB-PLEASE LINK:

Sam Kean's Slate blog "Blogging the Periodic Table"--link the blog for when he's in studio!

http://www.slate.com/id/2258112/entry/0/

 

Buy it on Amazon: “The Disappearing Spoon”

http://www.amazon.com/dp/0316051640/?tag=kpcc-20