Tagged: Poverty and Public Health

The Navajo Nation says the only financially viable future for its coal supply may be in clean coal technologies, and overseas exports.

KUNM's Tristan Ahtone reports the Nation is taking preliminary steps to find a future for its coal resources in light of tough, domestic regulations.

The unemployment rate for Hispanics in New Mexico is double the rate for non-Hispanic whites, according to a new report from the Economic Policy Institute.

In the last quarter of 2012, the unemployment rate for Hispanics here was 8.2 percent, compared to 4.7 percent for whites.

West Nile virus cases in the Southwest are up from previous years, according to new 2012 statistics released by the Centers for Disease Control.
First discovered in New York around 1999, the West Nile virus traveled west, carried by birds and mosquitoes, eventually hitting the Southwest.

New Mexico continues to be sluggish in its recovery from the recession and according to a new report, the state lacks over 100,000 jobs.

Gerry Bradley is with New Mexico Voices for Children, a nonprofit children’s advocacy group that produced the report. He says the state needs a jobs package to fill the gap caused by job loss and lack of job growth.  Bradley says state government has conducted an experiment over the last ten years- cutting taxes for high income people and corporations.

Moving into a new home is an exciting event, but for people who have experienced homelessness, the joy is especially poignant. In Santa Fe, the renovated Stage Coach Motor Inn is preserving its classic nicho and viga architecture and working to preserve a sense of permanency for some new tenants.

KUNM's Poverty and Public Health reporter Deborah Martinez has the story. 

With drought affecting much of the southwest, the Navajo Nation is working to bring water to it's citizens with the tribal government recently approving over $8-million dollars for water infrastructure projects.
The Navajo Nation is roughly the size of West Virginia, has a population of around 170,000 people, and much of the Nations citizens are in need of water.

In what's thought to be the first housing program of it's kind brought to a tribal community, the Pueblo of Zuni in western New Mexico has broken ground on a series of homes financed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.

The "Self-help housing" program works like this: the USDA gives your community a grant to finance housing, delivers supplies to build a home, provides blue prints, then - with the help of technical volunteers - oversees community members build their own homes.

Medicaid expansion under the Affordable Health Care Act is expected to bring in much needed dollars to the chronically underfunded Indian Health Service or IHS.  But tribal health experts say the main game changer in Indian country will be new health insurance exchanges.  For the first time ever, the IHS, a system traditionally open only to Native Americans, will be competing for non-Indian patients in order to survive. KUNM’s Tristan Ahtone reports.

The Star Wars films have been translated into at least 50 languages, but this will be the first time a major movie, Star Wars Episode IV will be dubbed into a North American indigenous language. 
 The translation comes from a partnership between the Navajo Nation Museum, Navajo Parks and Recreation and Lucasfilm.

Manuelito Wheeler is the director of the Navajo Nation Museum and has been working to get the film translated for over three years. He hopes the movie will serve as a tool to preserve the language.

Obama’s proposed budget for Indian Health Services is up from FY 2012 by $124 million.. The White House’s focus on increased funding to IHS programs, it’s now up to congress to make a decision on the President’s budget.

Around 25-thousand Native Americans in New Mexico will become eligible for Medicaid when the Affordable Care Act goes into effect next year.  The change translates to more money for the Indian Health Service. But as KUNM’s Poverty and Public Health Reporter Tristan Ahtone explains: in Albuquerque, Medicaid expansion will also force Native health providers to deal with something they’ve never faced before: competition from non-tribal health programs.

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