National Park System Growing Rapidly, Coltsville Awaits OK

When U.S. Secretary of the Interior Ken Salazar visited Hartford a little more than a year ago, the hope was that his support would push plans for a National Park designation for Hartford’s Coltsville complex over the goal line in Congress.  The project has been advocated for more than a decade by state political leaders in Washington, most visibly by First District Congressman John B. Larson.  The slow pace of final approval may be related to what USA Today recently described as a “growth spurt” in the national park system. Among states with pending National Park Service sites: Delaware, Illinois, Maryland, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio. Ten sites have been added since May 2004; a record 33 were added in 1978. Only Congress can create national parks, but the president can designate national monuments. A commission that proposed goals for the National Park Service's future recommended in 2009 that the process for selecting new sites be streamlined.

“The Coltsville National Historical Park Act,” introduced in Congress two years ago and again last year, would establish a  National Historical Park after certain conditions are met, including the donation of at least 10,000 square feet in the East Armory to be used for a Colt museum and the donation of the land within the proposed Park boundaries. The bill would also give the Secretary of the Interior authority to enter into written cooperative agreements with the various land owners living in Coltsville as well as with various museums in order to acquire different artifacts for display in the Colt museum.

The proposed park has two goals: commemoration and economic revitalization. “The Coltsville National Historical Park Act of 2011 is designed to preserve the important story of Samuel Colt and boost our economy by revitalizing downtown Hartford,” Larson and Senator Joseph Lieberman wrote, in an op-ed in the Hartford Courant. “A recent National Parks Conservation Association study found every federal dollar invested in national parks generates at least $4 in benefits to state and local economies. Connecticut deserves this boost.”

Hartford waits, but is certainly not alone.

Storm Names Influence Baby Names, Research Reveals

Storm names matter – in some unexpected ways.  The more prominent a hurricane name in the news, the more likely that during the coming year there will be an increase in babies named not after the storm specifically (so don’t expect a platoon of Sandy’s), but with names that evoke the storms’ name. Writing in the October issue of Psychological Science, a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, researchers Jonah Berger, Eric Bradlow, Alex Braunstein and Yao Zhang of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School found that names starting with K, such as Karl and Katie, became about 9% more popular after Hurricane Katrina - evidence that parents' choices about what to call their children are influenced by the sound of names in the news. The Harvard Business Review, reporting on the research, points out that the more damaging, and thus the more prominent, a hurricane, the more popular are names containing sounds similar to the storm's oft-repeated name.

The researchers were investigating how psychological processes shape the evolution of culture.  They looked specifically at how a cultural item's popularity is shaped by the recent popularity of other items with features in common.  Using more than 100 years of first-names data, they examined how a name’s popularity is influenced by the popularity of that name’s component sound in other names in the previous year.  They demonstrated the causal impact of similarity on cultural success in an experiment using hurricane names, in their paper titled “From Karen to Katie: Using Baby Names to Understand Cultural Evolution.”  The results suggest how the similarity between cultural items affects their popularity and a way in which culture evolves more broadly.

So, perhaps we should get ready for a bump in babies named Susie, Sara, Sammy, Stacy, Stevie and Steffi in 2013.

Targeting Financial Fraud Against Senior Citizens in CT

Attorney General George Jepsen is encouraging members of the public and social service agencies that work with seniors to attend the annual Connecticut Triad conference to learn more about financial exploitation and ways to protect against such abuse. The conference will be Thursday, Nov. 1 from 8:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. at the Riverfront Community Center, 300 Welles Street in Glastonbury. In addition to the Attorney General, featured speakers include Hubert H. Humphrey III, of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau’s Office of Financial Protection for Older Americans; Special Agent Anna Ferreira-Pandolfi of the U.S. Department of Health & Human Services’ Office of the Inspector General and Dr. Linda Eagle of the Global Bankers Institute.

Assistant Attorney General Phillip Rosario, head of the OAG’s Consumer Protection unit, will moderate a panel discussion by representatives of the Glastonbury Police Department, the state Department of Banking, the state Department of Social Services, People’s Bank Fraud Unit and the Probate Court.

The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and those attending are asked to reserve a space by e-mailing gjames@swcaa.org, or by calling 203-814-3620, on or before Friday, Oct. 26.

Triad is a national initiative of law enforcement agencies and community groups working together to reduce crimes against seniors. There are more than 60 local Triad chapters in Connecticut. Current members of the CT Triad Advisory Board include: The Office of the Attorney General, The Department of Social Services Aging Services Division, People’s United Bank, The CHOICES Senior Medicare Patrol (SMP) Healthcare Fraud and Abuse Project, AARP Connecticut and the Connecticut Area Agencies on Aging.

David B. Fein, U.S. Attorney in Connecticut, hosted the first of the six summits nationwide focusing on financial fraud earlier this month. He says between 2008 and 2011, FBI statistics show at 136 percent increase in investor fraud schemes. At an event in Stamford on October 1, speakers discussed an increase in scams involving reverse mortgages, the failure of victims to have done any due diligence on those they trust their money to, and a lack of skepticism when an "investment counselor" asks for funds to be paid directly to them.  Since last year, the U.S. Department of Justice says, it has charged, brought to trial, taken pleas or received sentences for more than 800 defendants in investor fraud cases. The amount taken from victims exceeds $20 billion.

Earlier this week, a Wells Fargo survey found that a growing number of middle-class Americans plan to postpone their golden years until they are in their 80's.  CNN reported that nearly one-third, or 30%, now plan to work until they are 80 or older -- up from 25% a year ago, according to the survey of 1,000 adults with income less than $100,000.   Overall, 70% of respondents plan to work during retirement, many of whom plan to do so because they simply won't be able to afford to retire full time.

Breaches of Personal Health Data Increase, CT in Middle of Pack

An excess of 20 million patient records have been stolen, hacked, lost, improperly disposed of and/or subjected to unauthorized access since the August 2009, according to Healthcare IT News.   The web-based publication compiled data supplied by Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) since the August 2009 Breach Notification Rule requiring HIPAA-covered entities provide notification after a data breach involving 500 or more individuals. A report by Redspin.com, using HHS data, indicates there were 385 reported breaches of protected health information in 2011, that 59% of breaches involved a business associate, 39% occurred on a laptop or portable device, and the five largest incidents resulted in slightly more than half of the data breached.

States with the highest number of patient records estimated to have been subject to data breach (exceeding 176 people per thousand population) include New Hampshire, Utah, Virginia.  The next group of states, with between 87 and 176 people per thousand, includes California, New York, Arizona, Florida, South Carolina, and Tennessee.

Connecticut is in the middle tier of states, with between 16 and 48 people per thousand population having had their healthcare data compromised.

Earlier this year, Attorney General Jepsen announced he is seeking more information from Hartford Hospital about why unencrypted personal information and protected health information of approximately 9,000 patients was stored on a laptop apparently stolen from a third-party vendor.

Back in 2010, a healthcare data breach in Connecticut that exposed medical information for more than 400,000 individuals resulted in action by former Attorney General Richard Blumenthal, reportedly  the first time that a state attorney general  used the new provisions of the HITECH Act of 2009 to sue a healthcare provider for HIPAA violations.  In that instance, an external hard drive containing unencrypted medical records went missing from Health Net of Connecticut. Another interesting aspect, it was reported,was that the  Attorney General sought not only monetary awards but also a court order forcing Health Net to encrypt all portable electronic devices.

In reviewing the causes of the data breaches of health care records nationwide, it is estimated that 50% were as a result of theft, 18% due to unauthorized access or disclosure, 12% due to loss, 9.5% due to a combination of factors, 6% due to hacking and 4.6% due to improper disposal.

The past few years have brought massive reported breaches, such as the 4.9 million records lost by TRICARE Management Activity (a Department of Defense health care program) when backup tapes disappeared, 1.9 million records lost when hard drives disappeared from HealthNet, and 1.7 electronic medical records stolen from the New York City Health and Hospitals Corporation's North Bronx Healthcare Network.

Student Debt Levels High in CT, Young Unemployment Rate Drops Slightly

As college students across the nation graduate with record-high levels of loans, a recent report found that Connecticut ranks among the five states  with the highest loads of student debt. Roughly 66 percent of college students from the class of 2011 nationwide graduated with student loan debt, and the average loan debt per person amounted to $26,600, according to a report by The Project on Student Debt, an initiative of The Institute for College Access and Success.

The survey  asked universities to self-report debt figures from their graduating classes. In Connecticut, the 2011 average was $28,783, making it the fifth-highest debt state behind four other Northeastern states.  New Hampshire topped the list, with average student debt of $32,450.

The report also found that unemployment rate for young college graduates was 8.8 percent in 2011, a slight drop from 2010’s record high of 9.1 percent. Many more young graduates were underemployed, working just part-time or in lower paying jobs that did not require a college education. Still, college graduates are much better off than those without a college degree. The unemployment rate for young high school graduates was 19.1 percent in 2011, more than double the rate for those with bachelor’s degrees.

Connecticut-specific data, by institution, offers stats including the percentage of students graduating with debt in 2011, which includes universities where the percentage exceeded three-quarters of students.

East Coast Greenway Charts A Downtown Path in Hartford

You wouldn’t expect to see a sign designating Capitol Avenue in Hartford, on the corner of Sisson Avenue, as the route of the East Coast Greenway – but nonetheless, there it is.  Affixed to a utility pole, not a tree. The East Coast Greenway (ECG) is being established as a 3,000 mile traffic-free (not quite yet) trail that will connect cities and towns from the Canadian border at Calais, Maine to Key West, Florida.  Linking together publicly-owned, firm-surface trails, the ECG is envisioned as a safe route for exercise, recreation and transportation for the 30 million Americans who live near the route and as a tourism destination for millions of visitors.  It includes 15 states (and the District of Columbia), 25 major cities, and scores of smaller cities, towns, villages and counties.

The 198-mile Connecticut section of the East Coast Greenway route shows off the diversity of Connecticut from coast to inland, city to country. The eastern part of the state, sometimes referred to as the “last green valley” is the most rural area in the corridor between Boston and Washington, DC.   A series of rail trails, including the Air Line Trail North and the Hop River Trail, run through this region connecting historic mill towns like Willimantic and pass through forests and farmlands between.

In the western half of the state, the Greenway connects the major cities of Hartford, New Haven, and Stamford and allows users to experience history while touring the Farmington Canal Greenway from Simsbury to New Haven. Southwest of New Haven along Long Island Sound, the interim on-road route hugs the shore through the suburbs to the New York line.

Approximately 28% of the 198-mile route is complete as traffic-free trail, and another 28% is in development. There remains much work ahead,  including the Merritt Parkway Trail, envisioned to parallel the Merritt Parkway in Fairfield County, the Farmington Canal Greenway between Southington and Farmington, and the route from Hartford to Simsbury.

Among the partners working to bring the project to completion in the state of Connecticut are:

• Bike Walk Connecticut
• Connecticut Bicycle Coalition
• Connecticut Department of Energy and Environmental Protection
• Connecticut Department of Transportation
• Connecticut Explorer’s Guide
• Connecticut Forest & Park Association
• Connecticut Greenway Council
• Farmington Canal Rail-to-Trail Association
• Farmington Valley Trails Council 
• Greenwich Safe Cycling
• Merritt Parkway Trail Alliance
• South West Regional Planning Agency

This past August, a group of 37 riders traveled from Portland and rode over 400 miles in seven days to Hartford, where they were greeted by Mayor Pedro Segarra.

CT Among States Analyzed for High School Social Studies Requirements

The Center for Information & Research on Civic Learning & Engagement (CIRCLE), with funding from the S. D. Bechtel, Jr. Foundation, has analyzed the standards, course requirements, and mandatory assessments relevant to civic education in all 50 states plus the District of Columbia.  Among the highlights:

• All states have standards for social studies, a broad category that includes civics/government along with other disciplines such as history and geography. The civics theme of power, authority, and government is included in all 51 states' social studies standards (including D.C.). The theme of civic ideals and practices is found in every state's standard except Missouri's.
• Thirty-nine states – including Connecticut - require at least one course in American government or civics.
• In the 2012-13 school year, 21 states – not including Connecticut - require a state-designed social studies test. This is a similar number as in 2006 but a dramatic reduction compared to 2001, when 34 states conducted regular assessments on social studies subjects. Two states, Maryland and Florida, have recently instituted new social studies assessments.

In Connecticut, required Social Studies courses include World History, U.S. History and Civics/Government.  Topics to be included within the curriculum, according to the CIRCLE data,  include Cultural Diversity; Time, Continuity & Change; People, Places and Environments; Production, Distribution and Consumption; Power, Authority & Governance; Global Connections; Civic Ideals and Practices, Real World Application, Individuals, Groups and Institutions; and Science, Technology and Society.  Service learning is not currently part of social studies standards, as it is in numerous other states.

The report also found that less than a dozen states require students to pass exams in social studies subjects.  Among those that do, social studies assessments have shifted from a combination of multiple-choice and performance tasks to almost exclusively multiple-choice exams since 2000.

•  Just nine states require students to pass a social studies test in order to graduate from high school: Alabama, Georgia, Mississippi, New Mexico, New York, Ohio, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia. Georgia's assessment will be phased out but Maryland and Florida will add high-stakes tests.

• Eight states have statewide, standardized tests specifically in civics/American government: California, Indiana, Kansas, Kentucky, Missouri, Ohio, Virginia, and West Virginia. Of those, Ohio and Virginia are the only ones that require students to pass that test to graduate from high school.

The CIRCLE study was the first in five years. The full analysis is summarized in a new fact sheet entitled State Civic Education Requirements , and a spreadsheet provides details on each state.

Robotics, Simulation Training Draws Medical Talent to Hartford

An unassuming building on Hudson Street in Hartford, in the midst of a construction zone and a short walk from Hartford Hospital, is what’s known as CESI - the Center for Education, Simulation and Innovation, located on the second floor of Hartford Hospital’s Education & Resource Center. Part of the hospital campus, it is among a select number of premier centers for comprehensive experiential learning and innovation nationwide, using simulation, robotics and other leading-edge training technologies – a hands-on magnet for  tomorrow’s technology that is increasingly becoming today’s reality in medicine.  Some suggest that CESI is– or soon will be – among the top five facilities in the country.  Already, CESI is a regional and national training destination. As the second largest surgical center in New England and the Northeast’s largest robotic surgery center, Hartford Hospital is widely viewed as a hub for medical training.

The vision of the rapidly growing facility is fundamental to the mission of Hartford Hospital, and parent-organization Hartford Healthcare:  to assist all providers in enhancing multidisciplinary team performance, the quality of patient care, and patient safety through a comprehensive range of educational programs using state-of-the-art simulation and cutting edge technologies. CESI features exact replicas of an operating room, intensive care unit, delivery room and trauma room. It has the same equipment as the hospital, including two robots and two robotic simulators designed especially for training purposes.

Seeing is believing, and a recent tour provided to representatives of Leadership Greater Hartford by CESI staff was a window into medical technology not often seen by those outside the field (or their patients).  If you believe that a picture is worth a thousand words, CESI does that one better, with a virtual tour available on-line, which allows individuals, organizations, and the general public a glimpse of the sophisticated technology available to teach surgeons and medical teams the robotic techniques now emerging.

During the two decades since its inception – with exponential growth in recent years – its predecessor facilities and CESI (so-named in 2010) has expanded from 900 square feet to 20,000 square, training thousands of medical personnel. Incredibly, the entire operation is run with a staff of six – from the medical and program directors down to the simulation technician. The dedication and pride is evident in every aspect of the facility’s operation, which has a schedule that is consistently busy – not only with surgeons, residents and nursing staff from Hartford Hospital, UConn and local acute care facilities, but from organizations local – such as the Connecticut Fire Academy – and worldwide, such as teams from France and Israel (during the past two weeks alone).

In fact, both the Navy and Army National Guard use the CESI facility for their training purposes. The Navy trains their independent duty coremen and physicians. The state-of-the-art facilities enable CESI staff to simulate not only medical emergencies, but the environment that teams such as those in a war zone would face in responding.  That level of training is invaluable,  and not readily available elsewhere.

CESI has been recognized as a Center of Excellence - one of only 20 centers designated nationwide. Nearly two dozen training courses are offered, ranging from labor & delivery to bio-terrorism, traumatic brain injury to advanced cardiac life support.  This summer, Governor Dannel P. Malloy announced that the state will provide a $10 million grant to support a 30,000 square foot expansion of CESI - part of the hospital’s larger $100 million capital improvement plan, designed to make the institution a leader in training the world’s healthcare professionals in the latest medical techniques.

CESI is comprised of three separate areas:

• Robotic and endovascular simulators
• Task trainers, ultrasound technology and Fundamentals of Laparoscopic Surgery (FLS)
• Five simulated clinical environments each with its own control room: Labor & Delivery, Resuscitation, ICU, Trauma/ED, and Operating Room.

Internally, Hartford Hospital’s Departments of Anesthesia, Critical Care, Emergency Medicine, Ob-Gyn and Surgery are all using the facility to orient their first year residents and fellows to their clinical practices. The residents are able to experience hands-on training without the added pressure of performing new tasks on real people. It builds their confidence and allows them to learn, practice and repeat procedures in a controlled, non-rushed and educational environment.

It is also an ideal setting to begin to establish a culture of patient safety and open communication among an interdisciplinary medical team, whether from Hartford Hospital or elsewhere. Participants are able to train in a setting similar to an actual work environment to create an atmosphere of realism - mirroring multiple types of acute crises and patient care scenarios. Through simulation, the team can learn the physiologic components of crisis management, equipment knowledge, technical skills, and the leadership and teamwork needed to successfully deliver exceptional health care.

As Connecticut steps up its international presence in bioscience research and personalized medicine, facilities such as CESI have the potential to complement that effort, broadening the state’s impact on health care and medicine for decades to come.

Local Author Among Growing Trend of Alzheimer's Books for Children

It seems the number of children’s books devoted to explaining Alzheimer’s Disease (AD) in a kid-friendly way is growing, not surprising since the number of people with Alzheimer’s continues to increase along with the number of older Americans. The New York Times recently reported that a trip to a local children’s book store stocked revealed at least half a dozen titles on the shelves.  A more formal study by three doctoral students at Washington University, analyzing the way storybooks describe the disease, found 33 of them published for 4- to 12-year-olds from 1988 to 2009.

Among the books is one authored by Linda Scacco, a West Hartford mother of three, clinical psychologist and an adjunct professor at the University of Hartford, who drew on her professional and personal experience.  Her book, "Always My Grandpa," was published in 2005.  The roots of the story come from the death of Scacco’s uncle from the disease in 1988.   Reviews of the book highlighted its “gentle narration and easy-to-understand explanations,” about Alzheimer's disease and “how it affects children, and families.”

While acknowledging the challenge of presenting explanations in a way that children can absorb, the Wash U graduate students found that overall, the books tend to “provide little information about the diagnostic process or treatments. Clinical presentations are diverse among characters with AD, and no single book presented a comprehensive depiction of the cognitive, behavioral, affective, and functional symptoms of the disease.”  They suggest that more be done to “ensure health literacy about AD in young children.”

The Times pointed out that the study indicated that generally absent were “symptoms like wandering, agitation sleep disturbances and depression. Only about a third of the books depicted anger or irritability, and very few showed functional limitations — the inability to drive, feed oneself, walk.”

State’s Mature Firms Are Key to Job Growth, Study Finds

Because new firms, by definition, can’t “destroy” jobs, only create them, analysis of “job creation” often skews towards new rather than mature firms.  But an analysis by economist Manisha Srivastava of the state Department of Labor, writing in The Connecticut Economic Digest, suggests that when one looks a gross, rather than net, job creation - it is the mature companies that lead the way.  In fact, Connecticut has outperformed the national average in gross job creation by mature companies during the past two decades (through 2007).  The research and analysis, presented at a state data conference, suggests that state policy should focus on “helping firms destroy less jobs” as well as assisting them in creating new jobs. Reviewing two decades of data, the study found that Connecticut is six percentage points above the national average on job creation from mature firms – and that most job creation comes from mature firms.  Mature firms are defined as those that have been in business for at least 11 years.

“Connecticut created about 4.35 million jobs between 1988 and 2007.  An almost equivalent number of jobs were also destroyed during the time period,“ the study noted.  But that said, the number of jobs created by mature firms – and thus “the number of employment opportunities for individuals seeking jobs, mature firms outweighed the availability of jobs from firms of all other categories, including small businesses.”

The answer to the question who creates jobs “will change depending on how the question is framed,” the report concluded.  “If the desired metric is net job creation, than new firms create the most jobs.  If the question is simply job creation, then mature firms create the most.”  If a greater percentage of those jobs can be retained, since the numbers are far larger, the impact will likely be as well.

A series of charts and graphs highlighting the report appeared in The Connecticut Economic Digest in May.