HUD expose reveals troubling problems – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

Government agencies can be a tremendous boon to consumer protection. Examples abound: the Food and Drug Administration pulls a dangerous drug off the market or forces the recall of products contaminated with salmonella or E. Coli. The Federal Trade Commission holds a hearing on cramming on phone lines, and the Consumer Product Safety Commission looks at hazards to children from lead paint or dangerous toys.

Despite their good work, all government agencies need oversight from Congress, an Inspector General, a local town counsel, or state legislature in order to operate effectively and efficiently.

That clearly didn’t happen with the federal housing agency, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). The Washington Post’s recent expose on HUD’s utterly lackadaisical oversight and squandering of precious federal dollars used for housing projects is depressing. HUD allowed local housing agencies to dole out millions to troubled developers who started but didn’t finish jobs, leaving poor and middle class citizens in dire need of housing assistance without any recourse.

Twenty-eight thousand so-called affordable housing projects have had work started but have ultimately been left standing and are incomplete. In Prince Georges County outside of Washington DC, a nonprofit development company received $750,000 in 2005 to build dozens of homes. Six years later not a single house has been built. No one knows what happened to the money. It seems that HUD has a penchant for giving money to developers that have no land, permits, financial capacity, or commitments for private financing.

What I don’t understand is this: anyone who has had the good fortune to get a government grant is also faced with a pile of papers and dates and reports to comply with. This is a result of ensuring that those spending government funds – taxpayer funds – are held accountable. Why don’t those rules apply to developers who deal with HUD? What happens to the oversight of federal agencies that deal with the poor and disenfranchised? And where is Congress when it should be doing that ever-important oversight job?

None of this is good for the reputation of government, which, as I said at the outset, is empowered to protect the interests of all of the citizens and is critical for consumer protection because the market will never perform that function. We hope the Washington Post expose will help to turn things around at HUD and ensure that those who most need housing protections get the services they need.

National Consumers League applauds legislative fix for the court’s anti-consumer ruling in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion – National Consumers League

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May 18, 2011

Contact: NCL Communications, (202) 835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, DC–The National Consumers League’s Sally Greenberg issued the following statement praising the introduction of the Arbitration Fairness Act (S. 987 and H.R. 1873), which would eliminate forced arbitration clauses in employment, consumer, and civil rights cases, and which would effectively override the Supreme Court’s recent decision in AT&T v. Concepcion:

In April, a 5-4 majority on the Supreme Court ruled in AT&T Mobility v. Concepcion that corporations are now free to write contracts that bar consumers and employees from banding together to challenge corporate misbehavior in class-action lawsuits or even group arbitration. That terribly unfortunate anti-consumer and anti-worker decision gives corporations the ability to decide on their own which civil rights and consumer protections they want to obey, knowing that there will be no effective means available to their victims to find redress. Even worse, it has effectively removed any incentive for corporations to operate fairly and equitably toward their customers and their workers.

The Supreme Court decision undermines decades of progress and protections for workers and consumers. We will not be deterred, however. The earliest leaders of the National Consumers League, Florence Kelley and Frances Perkins, faced numerous Supreme Court decisions that undermined their reformist efforts. Ultimately, Kelley and Perkins prevailed, winning basic protections that banned child labor and set in place maximum hours laws for workers and minimum wage protections.

The National Consumers League strongly supports effort to reverse this very unfortunate Supreme Court decision in Concepcion. The Arbitration Fairness Act has been introduced this week by Senators Al Franken (D-MN) and Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) in the US Senate and Rep. Hank Johnson (D-GA) in the House of Representatives. NCL calls on Congress to act swiftly to undo the catastrophic damage done by the Court, end forced arbitration in civil rights, consumer, and employment disputes, and restore the ability of every citizen to use the courts to find justice.

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About the National Consumers League

The National Consumers League, founded in 1899, is America’s pioneer consumer organization. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. For more information, visit www.nclnet.org.

How safe is your football helmet? Study finds troubling answers – National Consumers League

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Football is an inherently rough sport, with takedowns, pile-ups, and tackles all in the name of the game. That’s why football players are required to wear protective gear such as shoulder pads, helmets, and mouth guards. But how do we know if the required equipment does a good enough job of protecting a player’s body from injury? That’s a question a new Virginia Tech study sought to answer when it used more than a decade’s worth of data of more than a million head impacts at Virginia Tech football games and practices, in order analyze to analyze 10 commonly used helmet models. The results were distressing—two models popular among teenagers allow high rates of concussions.

The Riddell VSR-4, a discontinued model still worn by about 75,000 high school and college players, and the Adams A2000, were the lowest-ranked models and carried the highest risk of concussions. Virginia Tech is using the results of the study to create a National Impact Database, that, for the first time, will allow consumers, coaches, and players to go to a website and see which helmets offer the most protection against head injury.

The alarmingly poor performance of several common helmet models is only further proof of the need to pass the Child Sports Athletic Equipment Safety Act. The bill, which NCL strongly supports, would require football helmet manufacturers to develop a voluntary safety standard that address concussion risk and the needs of youth players. The standards would be reviewed by the Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC), which could issue mandatory safety rules if the voluntary standards are too lenient. The legislation also has a provision that would require independent third party testing and certification of adult football helmets if the voluntary standards prove insufficient.

The rough and tumble nature of football puts players of all levels—from the junior league novice to the NFL superstar—at risk of a developing a concussion and players who sustain multiple hits can suffer long-term brain injury. There is simply no excuse for risking the safety of teen players, many of whom use the sport as a pathway to higher education and scholarships, when there is a fix as simple as a well-designed helmet.

Wal-Mart: A convenient recalculating of executive compensation – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

It seems that when it suits the head of the company, methods of calculating executive compensation can be changed. Wal-Mart chief executive Michael Duke has replaced the metric for determining executive compensation from same-store sales – defined as stores that have been open at least a year – to total company sales. Why? Because not surprisingly, same-store sales have declined while overall sales have increased 3.4 percent for the fiscal year. This is all documented in Gretchen Morgenson’s recent column in the New York Times.

So Duke will receive $18.7 million in compensation this year. What’s disturbing is that Wal-Mart has issued statements over the past several years about why same-store sales was such an important measure of performance. But since those sales are down, suddenly the goal posts have changed. One observer says that Wal-Mart’s decision to throw out same-store sales figures as a measure of executive compensation is “a failure to admit failure.”

In addition (and even more disturbing), Wal-Mart has decided to end its profit-sharing programs for lower-level workers. Sam Walton, who founded Wal-Mart, took great pride in these programs for workers. Many who knew Sam Walton don’t believe he would have supported the anti-worker, cutthroat strategies adopted by Wal-Mart’s executives over the past two decades. But we won’t see any such leadership from the current head of Wal-Mart, not when he has shown himself able to re-jigger the formula for determining his compensation to ensure he makes close to $20 million.

Overcoming obstacles on the path to prescription medication adherence – National Consumers League

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When it comes to managing a chronic health condition, taking your medication as directed seems like a simple no-brainer. With this idea in mind, many of us find the poor national adherence rate shocking—three out of four, or 75 percent, of Americans are non-adherent, resulting in an estimated 125,000 deaths and up to $300 billion dollars in healthcare costs each year.

Yet as patient and heart health advocate Ron Michaud explained at the recent Script Your Future launch event, managing his heart disease, blood pressure, and diabetes requires juggling 13 different medications and 24 pills taken four times a day, everyday.

Michaud made it clear that he wouldn’t be here today without a strong support system to help keep him on track.

“I’ve needed my doctor’s support, my wife’s support, and some tools to manage my medication adherence,” he told a packed auditorium at George Washington University Hospital. “If today’s medications were available when I began my journey with heart disease, and I used my adherence tools, I might have avoided some of the heart attacks and surgeries I have undergone.”

U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin was on-hand to explain how the Script Your Future campaign was created to provide just the kind of support patients like Michaud need. ScriptYourFuture.org offers visitors free text-message medication reminders, sample questions to ask health care professionals, lists and charts to keep track of medicines, videos on how to properly use certain medical devices, and fact sheets on chronic conditions like asthma and high cholesterol.  There is also a feature that lets users create a personalized pledge to adhere to medications for themselves or a loved one.

Aside from the dynamic website, the campaign will include regional launches and educational events in target markets like Baltimore, Cincinnati, Birmingham, Providence, Sacramento, and Raleigh.

“I am proud to be a part of the Script Your Future campaign,” said the Surgeon General. “As America’s doctor, I want to keep this significant public issue at the forefront and am committed to working to raise awareness about how clinicians can help their patients.”

Dr. Benjamin stressed that health care professionals, as well as patients, have a critical role in improving the national adherence rate. Dr. Benjamin shared an emotional story about a former patient named Donna who was continuing to experience seizures despite taking all the medicines her doctor prescribed. Only after asking Donna to draw all her medications on paper, did Dr. Benjamin realize that Donna couldn’t read and was relying on her pills’ shapes and colors to identify them—she ran into trouble as soon as she received multiple prescriptions of pills of the same color from her pharmacist.

The critical need to educate health care practitioners about how to talk to their patients is why the campaign also includes a site dedicated to health professionals.  The site includes a variety of interactive tools such as tips on how to begin honest conversations with patients and journal articles on adherence and how it can be improved.

By encouraging health professionals and their patients to work together, the campaign hopes to help those living with chronic conditions live, longer healthier lives—the ultimate goal of patients and doctors alike.

 

NCL officially launches the Script Your Future campaign! – National Consumers League

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Yesterday, NCL launched the Script Your Future campaign to a packed GW Hospital auditorium. NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg gave the opening remarks and introduced keynote speaker, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin.

Fellow panelists included Assistant Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Dr. William Shrank, Assistant Professor at the University of Maryland School of Pharmacy, Cherokee Layson-Wolf, and patient and Heart Health Advocate, Ron Michaud.

NCL Executive Director Sally Greenberg, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Regina Benjamin, and patient and Heart Health Advocate Ron Michaud

ScriptYourFuture.org, the campaign’s centerpiece site, went live and audience members were introduced to the website’s many features, including free text message medication reminders, sample questions to ask health care professionals, lists and charts to keep track of medicines, videos on how to properly use certain medical devices, and fact sheets on chronic conditions like asthma and high cholesterol.

NCL also debuted two campaign television spots: a PSA featuring the Surgeon General and the motivational, patient-focused “I Will” ad.

For a more complete run through of yesterday’s launch, please click here. If you’d like to view the live stream of the launch, visit our Facebook page by clicking here.

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NCL unveils the Script Your Future campaign! Watch live! – National Consumers League

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NCL is proud to announce that Script Your Future, our national public education campaign, launches today! The campaign is designed to help consumers take back their health by helping them take their medicine as directed.

The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, will help kick off the campaign at The George Washington University Hospital. Watch the live stream on our Facebook page or on our Ustream page starting at 11 am!

Non-adherence, or failing to take medicine as directed, is a growing problem in the Unites States. Research shows that three out of four Americans are non-adherent and approximately 125,000 deaths per year in the U.S are linked non-adherence.

To combat this troubling trend, the centerpiece of the first-of-its-kind, multi-year campaign is the www.ScriptYourFuture.org website, which provides tools to help patients follow their prescribed medication schedule. The site includes a variety of helpful features such as free text message reminders, sample questions, medication lists and charts to keep track of medicines, and fact sheets on common chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure.

Today’s launch introduces the consumer face of the campaign. A companion site with adherence tools for health care professionals, www.ScriptYourFuture.org/HCP, was launched in March.

For more information on the importance of medication adherence click here to view the briefing paper co-authored by NCL and Duke University.

U.S. Surgeon General joins with NCL to launch medication adherence awareness campaign, Script Your Future – National Consumers League

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May 11, 2011

Contact: NCL Communications, (202) 835-3323, media@nclnet.org

Washington, DC—Today the National Consumers League (NCL) launches a new public education campaign, Script Your Future, to raise awareness among patients about the consequences of not taking medication as directed. Three out of four Americans are non-adherent, meaning that they fail to take prescribed medicines as directed by their health care professionals.

“There are many different reasons why people don’t take their medicine as directed, from concerns about side effects to the out-of-pocket costs of prescriptions. But the consequences for patients are the same. Non-adherence puts patients, especially those with chronic conditions, at risk for serious complications,” said Sally Greenberg, executive director of NCL, the nation’s oldest consumer group.

The U.S. Surgeon General, Dr. Regina M. Benjamin, helped kick off the campaign at The George Washington University Hospital, calling America’s medication adherence problem a public health concern, significant enough to warrant the widespread interest of health care stakeholders that resulted in the launch of Script Your Future.

Medication adherence is part of the Surgeon General’s Prevention Focus. “Our national challenge is to prevent poor health outcomes and to become a healthy and fit nation. One way is for the health care community and patients to come together to address the serious issue of medication non-adherence,” said Dr. Benjamin. “As a family physician, I know that conversations between clinicians and their patients are key to patients understanding why taking their medication correctly is so important, particularly in chronic health conditions such as diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure. The tools offered through NCL’s Script Your Future campaign empower patients to talk with their health care teams about their medication questions and concerns.”

The centerpiece of the first-of-its-kind, multi-year campaign is a website, www.ScriptYourFuture.org, which provides tools to support patient efforts to adhere to their prescribed medicine. Tools include free text message reminders, sample questions, medication lists and charts to keep track of medicines, and fact sheets on common chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma and high blood pressure. A companion campaign site with adherence tools for health care professionals, www.ScriptYourFuture.org/HCP, was launched in March.

Script Your Future is supported by a coalition of nearly 100 public and private partners and sponsors, including health care professional groups, chronic disease groups, health insurance plans, pharmaceutical companies, business organizations, consumer groups, as well as researchers and government agencies.

The campaign was informed by research outlined in a new briefing paper, “Medication Adherence: Making the Case for Increased Awareness,” co-authored by Hayden B. Bosworth at Duke University Medical Center, and the National Consumers League. Bosworth is a research partner in the national effort and is based in Durham, N.C., one of six regional city markets where the campaign will pilot campaign activities, research and advertising. The other regional markets are Baltimore, Md.; Birmingham, Ala.; Cincinnati, Ohio; Providence, R.I.; and Sacramento, Calif.

The briefing paper defines medication adherence and reviews specific research on the problems that occur with non-adherence; the growing focus on the issue by both the U.S. and global health communities; and the qualitative research commissioned by the National Consumers League that informed the Script Your Future campaign.

“Poor medication adherence is costing Americans their good health, and is costing our nation an estimated $290 billion each year in avoidable healthcare costs,” said Steven C. Anderson, IOM, CAE, chairman of the Board of the National Association of Chain Drug Stores Foundation. “Improved adherence will contribute to lower overall health care costs and increased quality of life. Script Your Future focuses national attention on this issue and helps pharmacists and other health care professionals support consumers in taking their medications as prescribed.”

Throughout the next three years, the campaign will provide materials through partnerships with pharmacies, hospitals, medical offices and clinics, and health insurance plans; host community events and health fairs; and evaluate medication adherence awareness through research.

To learn more about the campaign, view campaign advertising and materials, and the briefing paper, “Medication Adherence: Making the Case for Increased Awareness,” please go to www.ScriptYourFuture.org.

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About Script Your Future and NCL

Script Your Future is a campaign of the National Consumers League (NCL), a private, non-profit membership organization founded in 1899. Our mission is to protect and promote social and economic justice for consumers and workers in the United States and abroad. The National Consumers League serves consumers across the country by providing government, businesses and other organizations with the consumer’s perspective on a range of concerns – including health care and medication information. As an advocacy organization, NCL is working to educate consumers and key health stakeholders on the importance of taking medication as directed. For more information about this campaign, visit www.ScriptYourFuture.org, and for more information on our other areas of focus, please visit www.nclnet.org.

What Bin Laden’s death means to women – National Consumers League

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By Sally Greenberg, NCL Executive Director

When President Obama went on TV to announce that Osama bin Laden had been killed by American Navy Seals, I was in Los Angeles at NCL’s national LifeSmarts competitions. Over the last few days I’ve been thinking about why this is such a critically important event for me, my friends, and colleagues. After all, as the Executive Director of the National Consumers League, I’m a consumer advocate and a labor supporter; we don’t work on foreign policy issues unless they affect child labor. Last I checked, Al Qaeda’s issues weren’t affecting child labor issues. So, how could his death have any real relevance to what we do at NCL?

But last Monday night, as I met three other working women in Phoenix for dinner to prepare for an important meeting the next day, I realized the answer to why bin Laden’s death is so significant: because a world ruled by bin Laden and his followers in Al Qaeda represents a life of repression and subjugation for women and girls.  That my colleagues and I have the freedom to pursue careers, travel, raise children and earn a living is a world unknown to the women in bin Laden’s world.

In fact, bin Laden took refuge in Afghanistan when it was run by the Taliban, the notorious regime that, immediately upon taking power, forbade girls to go to school. Bin Laden had a close working relationship with Al Qaeda. Under the Taliban, women were barred from working outside the home, precipitating a crisis in healthcare and education. Women were also prohibited from leaving their home without a male relative—those that did so risked being beaten, even shot, by officers of the “ministry for the protection of virtue and prevention of vice.” A woman caught wearing fingernail polish may have had her fingertips chopped off. All this, according to the Taliban, was to safeguard women and their honor.

So the death of Osama bin Laden means that the key iconic leader of this repressive, anti-American political movements gone. So as four working women – my three dinner companions were all very accomplished women –  sat at a lovely Phoenix restaurant on Monday and discussed the news of Osama’s death, I took satisfaction in the freedoms we women in the Western world enjoy but so often don’t stop to appreciate.

Moin Kahn’s Tragic Death May Help other children in India – National Consumers League

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By Reid Maki, Child Labor Coalition Coordinator, National Consumers League

Moin Khan isn’t a name known by most Americans, but it should be.

Moin Khan went to work in New Delhi at age seven—one of several million child laborers working in India (estimates by advocacy groups of the number ofchildren working in India range from 44 million to 100 million, according to the U.S. Department of Labor).

Moin’s case stands out though because he had a particularly brutal employer—his uncle, Kalimullah Khan —allegedly beat him to death with a blunt weapon on April 16 because the boy was working too slow.
Moin was only 10 when he was murdered.

Three years earlier, the Moin left his home on a train and traveled to New Delhi, about 300 miles away, in a deal arranged between the uncle and the boy’s grandfather. For the last three years of his life—for the rest of his life– Moin did not see his parents. He worked tirelessly, rolling bidis or beedes—thin cigarettes popular in India. Imagine a seven-year-old bent over 14 hours a day working feverishly at a repetitive task and you may start to sense what Moin’s new life was like. But the reality was even worse than you might imagine.

“Kalim was a really bad man. He beat up all of us if we made the smallest of mistakes. His punishments were severe,” said a seven-year-old boy rescued when Khan was arrested.

“He would put hot iron rods into our pants or he would hang us upside down from the fan or even throw us hard on the floor,” added the boy, one of five children who worked in the factory. “We were not allowed to go out or talk to anyone.”

On the day he killed his nephew, Kalimullah Khan beat all five children he “employed,” including Moin’s brother who is mute. Employed is in quotes because many child laborers in India do not get paid. Many are, in fact, slaves.

The sad details of Moin’s life were only discovered because a mortician noticed horrible bruises all over the young boy’s body and called authorities.

One wonders how many more children are being abused like Moin.

In the wake of Moin’s death, vigils have been held in New Delhi and a bright light has shown on exploitative child labor which is technically illegal in India. To improve enforcement, authorities just announced that they will be adding a hotline in New Delhi. India also banned child labor in circuses last month.

The public and officials in India are increasingly aware of child labor horrors. Moin Kahn did not intend to make his tragic death stand for something, but it has.

Readers interested in child labor should visit the web site of the Child Labor Coalition (CLC), which is co-chaired by the National Consumers League and the American Federation of Teachers. News from the CLC may also be followed under the Twitter name ChildLABRcoaltn.