New Brandeis intern excited to join NCL team – National Consumers League

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By Rebecca Groner, Brandeis Intern

Rebecca Groner just completed her sophomore year at Brandeis University. She is studying Health: Science, Society & Policy, and will receive minors in Social Justice & Social Policy and Business. Groner has studied a variety of topics to support hands-on approaches to policy change, and her main interests lie in public health and health policy.

When I’m not learning about the American health care system or studying Spanish to prepare for my semester abroad in Chile, I am performing with my improv comedy troupe at Brandeis. I also spend time volunteering with service projects in the Boston area. Every week, I volunteer at a soup kitchen near Brandeis and provide peer counseling for Brandeis students. I am looking forward to honing the skills I have learned from the stage, classroom, and counseling office and applying them to advocate for American consumers.

I learned about the National Consumers League while exploring social justice advocacy organizations with internship opportunities. My interest piqued as I read about the NCL programs implemented to tackle issues of food safety and healthy food access in Washington, DC and beyond. As a Health undergrad, I am interested in working on healthy food initiatives and raising patient awareness about insurance and medications. I am excited to learn more about and work on each of the issues NCL works on to protect consumers. Last summer, I volunteered in 10 different cities across America, from Los Angeles to Louisville, and learned about a variety of consumer and worker’s issues. I plan to utilize the knowledge and experience I have gained from these service opportunities during my internship at NCL. In high school, I became passionate about fighting for worker’s rights and volunteered with a local organization in Chicago to advocate for living wages for hotel employees. I hope to revive my passion for workplace advocacy and join NCL’s fight for worker’s rights.

NCL has done great work to improve the food environment in American communities. NCL’s survey on corner stores in the D.C. area was interesting for me to read because I have surveyed corner stores in Baltimore, MD, Watertown, MA and Westchester, NY. I became passionate about healthy food availability while taking a summer course on public health and nutrition at Johns Hopkins University. During the course, the professor took the class to a food desert in Baltimore to make food maps, in which we surveyed the area’s food options. We also took note of the types of food offered at the dozens of corner stores, searching for food with nutritional value. It was difficult to find fresh produce in the corner stores, and I found the same issues while surveying the food options in downtown Watertown. To combat the lack of fresh food availability in this neighborhood and in other parts of Boston, I worked with a diverse team of students at the Brandeis University Heller School for Social Policy and Management, to form the business model for an affordable home-delivery meal kit service designed to promote balanced, easy-to-make meals. This service shares a similar mission to NCL: empowering American consumers and guiding families toward making healthy and smart choices. NCL’s survey report demonstrates that healthy food programs and policies are essential for improving the health of residents in low-income communities and promoting social and economic justice.

I was inspired by the plans of action outlined in “Wasted: Solutions to the American Food Waste Problem” while working on a paper about food waste and food recycling efforts. In addition to this report, the information NCL provides about food safety was helpful to my research on what is being done and can be done to prevent food waste. I support NCL’s work to engage and motivate consumers to reduce their food waste and shift their attitude toward the value of food. I firmly believe that the U.S. should work on NCL’s goal: reduce food waste by 20-25 percent in the next ten years.

I am incredibly excited to join the NCL team and to be a part of the Brandeis World of Work Social Justice Fellowship this summer. This unique opportunity bridges my academic pursuits with my passion for pursuing social justice and provides me with the experience of working at an influential non-profit organization. I’m looking forward to attending events with the NCL team to learn more about the process of policy-making and creating awareness about consumer issues. NCL realizes my vision for a better, healthier, and safer America and takes action. I am thankful to be a part of the processes that the NCL takes to make change and improve the lives of consumers.

Honey bees our canaries in the coal mine? – National Consumers League

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For the past five or more years I’ve read with sadness and trepidation about the reduction in pollinating bee populations. This startling news seemed like the ultimate canary in the coal mine warning. Bees are dying out because of something awful we are doing to our environment, but what is it that we are doing?

Recently, I was reading a newsletter by Trillium Asset Management, a socially responsible investment company whose board I once served on. Through this newsletter, I learned about the hardware and home improvement store, Lowe’s, phasing out neonicotinoids  (or otherwise known as “neonics”) to help preserve the bee population. Ever heard of them? I hadn’t either. But apparently, neonics are a pesticide that has sped up the decline of bees. Neonics are used in pesticides and affect the central nervous system of insects, which results in paralysis or death. Past studies have identified the neonicotinic residues from these pesticides can accumulate in pollen and nectar of treated plants and may pose as a risk to pollinators, including bees.

Trillium says they are a leading contributor to the global decline of bees. To its enormous credit, Trillium forced Lowe’s hand by introducing a shareholder resolution and having discussions with the company starting in 2013. Trillium withdrew the resolution when Lowe’s came to the table to talk about eliminating neonics from its retail stores.

Lowes agreed to a six-point plan of action, including educating consumers through in-store distribution of EPA and Pollinator Partnership pesticide brochures and the placement of product tags, which explain the importance of bee populations to our ecosystem.

We all owe Trillium Asset Management and Domini Social Investments for their exceptional work and ability to leverage investor concerns and passions about the environment in order to help maintain the balance of our ecosystem to protect all creatures.

How many straws until the camel’s back is broken on data breaches? – National Consumers League

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John BreyaultAnother day, another data breach. The data breach roulette wheel this times landed on health insurer CareFirst. Who loses? The 1.1 million consumers whose names, birth dates, email addresses and CareFirst subscriber ID numbers are now in the hands of cyber crooks.

First things, first, what’s the risk to consumers? The mostly likely effect is that consumer affected by the breach may be on the receiving end of convincing-looking phishing emails. These attacks are designed to trick consumers into clicking on links or attachments that install malware or send users to phishing websites. The phishing emails (and possible telephone calls) are likely to reference CareFirst in some way, and may even masquerade as notifications about the breach itself.

Bottom line: If you are a CareFirst customer, the first place you should be going to get reliable information about the breach and what CareFirst is doing about it is www.carefirstanswers.com. The website has been set up by CareFirst to give affected customers up-to-date information about the breach and what steps they can take to mitigate their risk, including taking advantage of free credit monitoring and identity theft protection CareFirst is offering via Experian.

With that out of the way, there are a number of key questions that regulators, legislators and advocates should be asking in the coming days and weeks.

First, why are health insurers being targeted? CareFirst is the third major health insurer to disclose a breach in the past six months. There are troubling signs that the breaches at Anthem in February, Premera in March and now CareFirst are part of a coordinated attack on U.S. health insurers, possibly by state-sponsored hackers. Regardless of the origin of the hack, it’s clear that medical information is especially lucrative for thieves. According to cybersecurity experts, stolen medical info is worth 10-20 times more than stolen credit or debit card data goes on the cyber black market. With 2.3 million Americans falling victim to medical identity theft in 2014, it’s not hard to see why medical information presents such an attractive target to cybercriminals

Second, why did it take 10 months to notify consumers? According to CareFirst, the intrusion into their network was first detected in June 2014 and “immediate action” was taken to contain the threat. However, it was not until April 2015 that the company discovered that the crooks had exfiltrated their systems with stolen data. With nearly 10 months lead time, cybercrooks had ample time to create mischief with the stolen data before CareFirst notified consumers. Why did it take so long to find out that data was actually lost?

Finally, would more stringent data security standards or data breach notification laws have reduced the risk of this breach? There is no way to make a system 100% safe from hacking. However, far too many companies only invest significant resources in protecting their customers’ data after a hack, not before. This leaves millions of consumers at risk of breach-fueled fraud as companies elect to invest elsewhere while they wait for a hack to force them to spend on data security. What kind of incentives and/or penalties should Congress and Executive Branch consider to shift the cost/benefit equation for companies towards spending on data protection before a breach? NCL’s 2015 Data Security Agenda is a good roadmap for policymakers looking for consumer-friendly answers to these important questions.

The CareFirst breach is yet another straw on the pile of reasons why consumers can’t wait on businesses to take care of the data security problem on their own. It’s time for leaders in Washington to step up and pass real data security reform before the next straw breaks the camel’s — and our — backs. In the meantime, here are tips consumers can use to reduce the risk of identity theft.

Guest blog: A new venture for collaborative solutions – National Consumers League

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lee_lynch.jpgThis guest post was originally published at Reservoir Communications Group’s blog.

What do you get when you put representatives from more than 30 of the nation’s leading patient-focused health organizations, companies and government agencies in a room, amidst a sea of sometimes-competing priorities that are specific to each of those organizations? Cacophony? Stalemate? Not at all, at least not during the National Consumers League’s (NCL) inaugural Health Advisory Council meeting.

I had the pleasure of being a part of this meeting last week and while I have worked with nearly all of these organizations — individually and through coalitions – at one time or another, it is somewhat of a rare thing to engage with all of them during a coming together that may lead to solutions to seemingly insurmountable issues.

NCL has a history of NOT shying away from tough issues. Whether the issue is protecting the rights of child workers, improving treatment adherence, tackling consumer fraud, or improving consumer literacy, I’ve always thought their motto should read, Bring It On.

Through NCL’s new Health Advisory Council, they are looking to leading consumer, patient, health care professional, industry and government voices to help them determine what major health-focused issues need to be better addressed and could be addressed collaboratively.

The Health Advisory Council is very much at the beginning, but at the start, members and participants advised that the following were major issue areas that aligned with their own organizations’ interests:

  1. Medications — both Rx and OTC — were top of mind:  Adherence, management and general safe use of medications, as well as safe use of antibiotics
  2. Coverage policies and impact on access to care and medications was also an area for collaborative opportunity
  3. Defining and optimizing the respective roles of health care providers especially those of nurses and pharmacists —was a shared area of interest
  4. Improving both patient and HCP communication skills was also of common interest

As a communicator, I found it interesting how virtually every one of these top issue areas has communications at the center. Whichever topics NCL and its Health Advisory Council members choose to collaboratively pursue  — whether it be safe use of medications, enhancing access to care and treatment for diverse populations or people suffering from chronic conditions, fully recognizing the potential role nurses and pharmacists could play to improve value across the system, or tackling the need to improve communications between patients and HCPs in order to raise the overall level of coordinated care — communications, if successfully applied, will be a major part of the solution.

Some of the problems discussed seem larger than life. But many of the organizations in the room have a history of trying to tackle that which seems impossible:

A number of state-based organizations — such as the North Carolina Alliance for Healthy Communities and Ohio Pharmacists Association and researchers from Duke University and the University of Minnesota — are also involved and can help ensure that any possible approach is also localized in nature.

It’s too early to tell in which direction the NCL Health Advisory Council will head, but nothing ventured, nothing gained. More to come as the Council shares perspectives and concerns with one another and advises the NCL on what areas are worth pursuing — and solving — on behalf of America’s consumers.

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Lee Lynch is founding principal at Lynch Advocacy Solutions, LLC and strategic counselor at Reservoir Communications Group. Her experience extends across advocacy, public relations, public affairs, issues management, marketing, and journalism. For more than a decade, Lee led the Edelman Alliances group – a dedicated team she founded that engaged hundreds of influencers and third-party organizations to find unique ways to collaboratively link organizations, corporations and governments to achieve mutual goals. 

Bravo! FTC’s “Start With Security” initiative announces seminar on data security – National Consumers League

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Federal Trade Commission Chairwoman Edith Ramirez this morning announced the next step in the FTC’s efforts to craft data security guidelines for businesses. As part of its “Start with Security” program, originally unveiled in March, the Commission will hold an initiative at the University of California on September 9. This follows on the heels of the February 13 Summit on Cybersecurity and Consumer Protection at Stanford University.NCL has long advocated for the FTC to take a leadership role in the federal government on data security and is very pleased about this announcement. We applaud the FTC for taking this step to improve data security and help businesses protect consumers.

While details of the September meeting aren’t yet fully known, we do know a few things about the Commission’s “Start with Security” program. At the IAPP summit in March, FTC Bureau of Consumer Protection Director said that the program’s goal is to provide businesses with resources, education and guidance on data security. Chairwoman Ramirez (who NCL will be honoring in October, incidentally) elaborated on this theme, stating that the initiative will be aimed at bringing together experts on data security to share best practices, particularly for small and medium-sized businesses.

The focus on data security at small-to-medium sized businesses is a logical choice for the agency. Its ongoing legal tussle with Atlanta-based LabMD illustrates challenges the Commission faces as it seeks to enforce data security obligations on small businesses. Such entities are often ill-equipped to adequately protect the growing amounts of sensitive personal information they are collecting.  This is an incredibly important issue. As NCL’s #DataInsecurity Report found, nearly 6 in 10 data breach victims indicated that their trust in retailers decreased following a breach. For a small business struggling to stay afloat, losing the confidence of customers due to a data breach can mean the difference between keeping the lights on and a “closed” sign on the front door.

So what can the Commission hope to accomplish at its September meeting? In the interests of promoting consumer data security, we propose that the meeting agenda cover some basic data security policy topics, such as:

  • Is there a sufficient flow of information and best practices on breach trends, emerging threats from hackers, etc. being shared by the FTC with business that are entrusted to store consumer data? If not, how can this improve?
  • The Online Trust Alliance estimated that 90% of data breaches in 2014 could have been prevented if basic security measures had been taken. With this in mind, how can businesses be incentivized to make sure they are taking the basic steps to protect their data?
  • Small and medium-sized businesses often lack the budget and/or expertise to craft robust data security protections, yet they are increasingly collecting large amounts of sensitive data about their customers. What requirements should be placed on a pizza parlor, for example, when it comes to data security?
  • We often hear that it’s not “if,” it’s “when” when it comes to data breaches at businesses. However, it seems that businesses, particularly small-to-medium sized businesses, aren’t prepared to protest against the data breach threat. Is this accurate? If so, what can the FTC do to change that mindset?
  • Government data security mandates can only do so much to create a climate where data security is taken seriously by business. What flexible, market-based incentives exist to promote data security? Is cyber-insurance the answer?
  • There is no shortage of cybersecurity firms offering high-priced solutions to small-to-medium sized businesses. Are there free or low-cost solutions that businesses can take today that will measurably reduce their data security risks (e.g. enable multi-factor authentication, create stronger passwords, encrypt sensitive data)?

The “Start With Security” initiative is a good opportunity for the FTC to promote solutions that businesses can take to reduce their data security risk. However, absent reforms in Congress to tackle tough issues like data breach notification and a comprehensive data security standard, education can only do so much. We hope that the Commission will use the September 9 forum to highlight the impact that breaches continue to have on consumers and businesses and to push Congress to pass real data security reforms.

Florida takes national LifeSmarts title in 2015 – National Consumers League

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This post originally appeared on LifeSmarts.org. LifeSmarts is a program of the National Consumers League.

What an exciting conclusion to our 21st year! Florida topped Rhode Island by the slimmest of margins – just 2 points – to win the National LifeSmarts Championship last week in Seattle, WA.

Congratulations to coach Kathy Loggie and her LifeSmarts team from Paxon School for Advanced Studies in Jacksonville, Florida. Team members Harrison Andrew, Joseph Cain, Aaron Routzong, Evan Spaulding, and Captain Nicholas Pellegrino are to be commended for the consumer smarts they demonstrated throughout competition.

Team members each received $1,000 post-secondary education scholarships from Amazon.com and Western Union, and Microsoft Surface Tablets.

I also want to commend the other top-placing teams who competed deep into the national championship:

Second Place: Rhode Island; Barrington High School, Barrington, RI

Coach: Samuel Schachter

Captain: Matthew Lamontagne; Team members: Steven Forte, Brian McGartoll, Teddy Ni, and Eli Shea

Third Place: Hawaii; ‘Iolani High School, Honolulu, HI

Coach: James Rubasch

Captain: Justus Wataru; Team members: Noah Asada, Matthew Azama, Norton Kishi, Bailey Sylvester

Third Place (tied): Michigan; Fenton High School, Fenton, MI

Coach: Bruce Burwitz, Co-coach: Andy Cocagne

Captain: Jacob Goodman; Team members: Andrew Celini, Katherine Hiller, Kelsey Krause, Zachary Williams

To begin to appreciate the broad consumer knowledge students gain by participating in LifeSmarts, here are a few of the questions the Florida and Rhode Island teams tackled in the national finals:

  1. When college students apply for financial aid, they should complete this form to determine their family’s expected contribution to their education: (Answer: FAFSA; Free Application for Federal Student Aid)
  2. Why is texting while driving considered the most dangerous form of distracted driving? (Answer: It requires visual, manual, and cognitive attention from the driver; drivers have to take their eyes, hands, and mind off of the road)
  3. How do consumers react when consumer confidence is going up? (Answer: Consumers spend more freely)
  4. Name one advantage of using DRM? (Answer: Fights copyright infringement; helps ensure digital content is legitimate)
  5. Harmful “germs” or disease-causing microorganisms are called: (Answer: Pathogens)
  6. Name two ways consumers can help conserve water in the yard: (Answers: Irrigate more efficiently; use water-wise plants; improve the soil; harvest rainwater; use graywater instead of potable water on plants; design a more water-efficient landscape)

We often remind students and coaches that they are all winners in LifeSmarts. We sincerely believe it. I hope that the journey to learning more about consumer issues has been a fantastic one for all of our competitors this year!

Remember: LifeSmarts resources remain available year-round at LifeSmarts.org, and competition begins again after Labor Day!

Equal Pay Day – National Consumers League

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Sally GreenbergWhat does Equal Pay Day mean in America? It’s a time for reflecting on why women still less than their male counterparts. In 1963, when President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, women earned 59 Cents for every dollar earned by men. That number in 2013 has inched up but still lingers at 78 cents. That’s too bad, because women are the sole bread earners in millions of families and the lack of parity in pay hurts them and their children.

What does Equal Pay Day mean in America? It’s a time for reflecting on why women still less than their male counterparts. In 1963, when President John F. Kennedy signed the Equal Pay Act, women earned 59 Cents for every dollar earned by men. That number in 2013 has inched up but still lingers at 78 cents. That’s too bad, because women are the sole bread earners in millions of families and the lack of parity in pay hurts them and their children. As the House Minority Leader says, “When women succeed, America succeeds.”

The Economic Policy Institute reports that the higher up the economic ladder, the greater the disparity. In 2014 women in the 95th percentile of female earners made 79% of the wages earned by men, while women in the lowest 10th percentile made 91 cents for each $1 earned by men. Not surprising that 2/3 of minimum wage workers are women. What surprised me is that women with college degrees earn 78% of their male counterparts and women with advanced degrees earn 74% of what men make. And in traditionally female occupations, men even make more there! Male registered nurses out-earn female nurses by an average of $5,100 per year. This seems like rank sexism to me, and we could begin to change it with new laws in place.

And yet, in 2010, 2012 and 2014, the leadership in Congress blocked consideration of the Paycheck Fairness Act, which President Obama supported, and NCL and many other groups have campaigned for. That legislation would extend pay-equity rules to federal contractors and update the Equal Pay Act.

Women’s pay equity shouldn’t be a partisan issue. All families, whether Democratic, Republican, Independent or unaffiliated, will benefit when women earn more. This week’s Equal Pay Day is a fine time to raise these issues again – increasing the minimum wage has strong support in red as well as blue states. Equal pay for women should be right behind it. 

The legacy of César Chávez on César Chávez Day – National Consumers League

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Reid MakiDo you ever think about people from the past you wish you could go back in time to meet? At the top or near the top of my list is César Chávez, who was born on March 31 in 1927. César died in 1993 a few months before I started working for a farmworker organization, the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs (AFOP).

For the last 22 years, my work with that AFOP and then the National Consumers League and the Child Labor Coalition has involved trying to obtain equal protection for farmworker children under US labor law. The legacy of César cast a big shadow on our efforts. His success in raising the public consciousness gave all of us hope in the advocacy community that we might help Americans to care about migrant farmworkers and their plight and the conditions endured by their children working in the fields beside them.

César was born in Yuma, Arizona in an adobe home on his parent’s ranch, which eventually was lost during the Great Depression. His family joined the exodus to California where they began work as migrant farmworkers and faced many hardships. The family would pick peas and lettuce in the winter, cherries and beans in the spring, corn and grapes in the summer and cotton in the fall.

Poverty forced César to drop out of school in the 8th grade to work in the fields. After he returned from a two-year stint in the Navy, César returned to California, married and eventually had eight children. Through much of the 50s, he worked for and eventually headed the Community Service Organization, a Latino civil rights group. In 1962, he and Dolores Huerta cofounded a group that would later come to be known as the United Farm Workers (UFW) of America.

In the fertile California fields around him, César saw workers performing back-breaking work for wages that kept them in poverty. In 1965, he helped lead the five-year Delano grape strike. He also led the historic 340-mile protest march of thousands of striking farmworkers to the state capitol in Sacramento, inspiring many Americans. The union reached out to consumers and asked them to boycott grapes in support of the workers—an estimated 17 million Americans joined the boycott. Eventually, the growers were forced to recognize the union and raise workers’ wages. Around the country, other farmworker unions formed to advocate for farmworkers.

In the early 1970s, the UFW won passage of the California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, allowing farmworkers to bargain collectively.

Throughout the late 1960s and early 1970s, César inspired the public by conducting a number of personal fasts, including one lasting 25 days, as part of his advocacy. Senator Robert Kennedy famously visited César to help draw attention to farmworker conditions.

César also espoused non-violent tactics used by Martin Luther King and Gandhi. His leadership and sacrifice helped a lot of average Americans to empathize with the struggles of migrant farmworkers. He helped give power to the powerless.

Today, in Washington, the Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack and the U.S. Department of Agriculture honored the legacy of César by naming the department’s primary interior courtyard after him. César’s daughter, granddaughter, and son-in-law spoke in a public ceremony about the unfinished work that remains, including the deportation of hundreds of thousands of farmworkers, the lack of immigration reform, the worsening conditions for many rural workers and the need to advance rural cooperatives accessible to Latino workers.

One of those pieces of unfinished work that we at the Child Labor Coalition (CLC) and the National Consumers League are very much involved in is closing loopholes in U.S. child labor law that allow children, as young as 12, to work unlimited hours in US fields. This week we met with Secretary of Labor Tom Perez, leaders from the White House, and 16 representatives of tobacco companies and tobacco growers to discuss child labor in US tobacco fields.

Child labor in US agriculture concerned César. In his 1984 Commonwealth Club address in California he tried to warn the public about unfinished work:

“Child labor is still common in many farm areas. As much as 30 percent of Northern California’s garlic harvesters are under-aged children. Kids as young as six years old have voted in states, conducted union elections, since they qualified as workers. Some 800,000 under-aged children work with their families harvesting crops across America. Babies born to migrant workers suffer 25 percent higher infant mortality rates than the rest of the population. Malnutrition among migrant workers’ children is ten times higher than the national rate.”

César continued:

“All my life, I have been driven by one dream, one goal, one vision: to overthrow a farm labor system in this nation that treats farm workers as if they were not important human beings. Farm workers are not agricultural implements; they are not beasts of burden to be used and discarded. That dream was born in my youth, it was nurtured in my early days of organizing. It has flourished. It has been attacked.”

Today, on the anniversary of his birth, we are inspired by the life of César Chávez and are committed to increasing wages for adult farmworkers so that parents are not compelled by poverty to bring their children to the fields with them.

We are committed to change US child labor laws so that they do not discriminate against Latino children.

We envision a future in which the sons and daughters of migrant children have the same educational opportunities as other children and are able to fully participate in the American dream.

As César and his beloved farmworkers often chanted, “Sí, se puede – Yes, we can!”

Breast milk for sale? – National Consumers League

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The New York Times reported recently (“Breast Milk Becomes a Commodity, With Mothers Caught Up in Debate”) that companies are buying breast milk from mothers, condensing it down and selling it to hospitals for treatment for extremely premature infants in intensive care. The milk is tested for viral infections, nicotine, drugs of abuse, dilution, and adulteration. The women supplying the milk must take blood tests for infectious disease, provide notes from the doctor saying they and their baby are healthy, and must furnish DNA samples, which helps to ensure that the milk is theirs. All of which is good public policy and makes sense.

Breastfeeding is good for babies and good for mothers. Kids who are breastfed have much lower incidence of allergies and a recent Brazilian study found that they have higher IQs and are more likely to earn more. For moms, breastfeeding seems to reduce the incidence of cancer.

There’s been a lot of chatter after the Times article about selling breast milk. Another mother weighed in as well, in a piece called “Give Breast Milk,” noting that Prolacta Bioscience and Medolac are two companies that buy the milk, fortify it, concentrate it, and sell it to hospitals.  While they pay very little for the milk  – apparently $1 an ounce, compared to what they sell it to hospitals for, $180 an ounce. Sounds like an awful big mark up, even for what they do to make it effective for treating preemies.  I have no problem with women selling their breast milk, but they should just get paid decently for it. 

Which brings me back to the original issue. Anything that gets more women to breastfeed is – in my view – a good thing. So paying for breast milk, especially from healthy women of limited means, seems like a fine idea. Men are paid for their sperm; why shouldn’t women sell their breast milk?  And as the obesity epidemic grows, breastfeeding can burn up to 900 calories a day and help women take off their pregnancy weight very fast. All of which seems like a win-win: Mom breastfeeds her own baby, that’s good, and then make a little extra money by pumping and selling the milk, which eventually gets used by premature infants struggling to get bigger and healthier.

I realize that not everyone agrees. The Black Mothers’ Breastfeeding Association is quoted in the article saying, “We are very concerned that women will be coerced into diverting milk that they would otherwise feed their own babies.”  Fair enough, but what if paying women for their milk increased the number who breastfeed significantly? I think that is worth the relatively benign downside the critics have cited. We just need to ensure that women are getting a fair price for their breast milk contributions.

The LifeSmarts Safety Smart connection – National Consumers League

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This post originally appeared on LifeSmarts.org. LifeSmarts is a program of the National Consumers League.

For the past two years LifeSmarts has partnered with Underwriters Laboratories (UL) on its Safety Smart® Ambassador program to provide a way for LifeSmarts students to give back through community service. LifeSmarts students become Safety Smart Ambassadors by delivering interactive safety messages to younger children in their communities.

We predicted that the program would be a hit, and that our Ambassadors would learn right along with the children they mentored. We were right on both counts!

Last year LifeSmarts participants in 20 states became Safety Smart Ambassadors. They made more than 200 presentations, educating 4,000 young children.

One Ambassador told us, “Safety Smart is truly an amazing program…  The children that I have had the honor to teach were so interested and appreciative of the information I conveyed via this program.  This program was not only beneficial to the children, but to me as well as I have learned to be confident and assertive in front of people, whether age 5 or 50.”

Our appreciation to UL for this opportunity was summed up by one of our Ambassadors who said, “I want to say thank you to Underwriters Laboratories for getting to do the wonderful Safety Smart program.”

Become a Safety Smart Ambassador!

The resources provided by UL and LifeSmarts make this program easy to use – beginning with the coach lessons plan, a logistics checklist, videos featuring Timon and Pumbaa from Disney’s The Lion King, and four step-by-step lessons that are fun and easy to teach. Titles include:

  • Goes Green!
  • Healthy & Fit
  • Online!
  • Honest & Real!

In a nutshell

The Safety Smart Ambassador program is:

  • Quick and easy: each lesson is designed as a 30-minute presentation
  • Fun: Timon and Pumbaa resonate with young children
  • Educational: Everyone learns
  • Satisfying: LifeSmarts participants give back, serve as mentors, and demonstrate leadership
  • A great fit: The program helps you meet service learning and community service requirements
  • Turnkey: Everything you need is in one place

Wait, there’s more! Apply soon for LifeSmarts Safety Smart scholarships

Four motivated LifeSmarts students who become Safety Smart Ambassadors will win $750 post-secondary education scholarships. To apply, students complete the scholarship application  and submit it with a PowerPoint that highlights their Safety Smart presentations. Ambassadors will illustrate what they learned and what the younger children gained from the Safety Smart Ambassador experience.

Applications for the LifeSmarts Safety Smart scholarships are due by 5 p.m. Eastern, Friday, April 11, 2015. Students may submit an application based on presentations made from May 1, 2014, through April 11, 2015.

Scholarships will be announced on April 18 at the National LifeSmarts Championship in Seattle, WA. Students do not need to attend Nationals to be eligible. All LifeSmarts students in grades 9-12 may apply.

For more information

Visit the Safety Smart page on the LifeSmarts Web site or contact Lisa Hertzberg, LifeSmarts Program Director: lisah@nclnet.org.