This study compares the efficacy of a school-based program to an equivalent home-based program with 2,250 third grade students in 31 urban schools in Minnesota in order to detect changes in dietary fat and sodium consumption. The school-based program, Hearty Heart and Friends, involved 15 sessions over five weeks in the third grade classrooms. The home-based program, the Home Team, involved a five-week correspondence course with the third graders, where parental involvement was necessary in order to complete the activities. Outcome measures included anthropometric, psychosocial and behavioral assessments at school, and dietary recall, food shelf inventories, and urinary sodium data collected in
In 2007, Massachusetts instituted a universal coverage health plan that requires all citizens to purchase insurance. I argue that there is nothing wrong in principle with the use of an individual mandate to force citizens to secure health insurance. I argue that state neutrality is not tenable on this issue. Then I proceed to show that even if state neutrality were viable, it is not a violation of state neutrality (thought of as neutrality of intent) to force citizens to insure themselves with the primary purpose of securing the normative good of health. I adapt recent work on universal medical coverage to demonstrate that such a mandate is in keeping with several principles of fairness shared in liberal democratic societies. This argument not only applies to the Massachusetts plan but likely to any other health care coverage schemes using individual mandates in the US political context, including recently passed federal health care reform measures. However, even though the Massachusetts plan may provide increased access to health care for many, there are still legitimate worries that it currently places disproportionate financial burdens on the working poor and thus will need refinement.
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