Blog Posts (2010)

Asman Sawo and his wife Miriam sit in the small front room of their home, bathed in mid-morning light from the open front door. While the breeze eases the gathering heat, Sawo knows open doors in the Nyanza Province of Kenya can literally be killers. In Africa, where a child dies from malaria every 45 seconds, a bed net can mean the difference between life and death.   

With childhood obesity rates on the rise, playtime is serious business at Hickory Creek Elementary School in McMinnville, TN. The school playground, funded in part through a CDC Foundation partnership with Cargill, is a welcome addition to the school’s commitment to student health.

Schools are the ideal setting for children to exercise and eat healthy food, given the significant amount of time they spend there every day. One corporation decided to act to help schools tackle the growing problem of childhood obesity. Partnering with the CDC Foundation and CDC, Cargill provided $300,000 in grant money to help 47 elementary schools with one simple goal: to improve children’s health.

David Rubin, assistant vice president of contingency planning for Whitney National Bank, leads the bank’s disaster preparedness and response efforts in New Orleans. A native of Louisiana, Rubin’s job was created after Hurricane Katrina proved how critical it was for businesses to ensure employees’ safety and security while keeping their doors open for business.

Joseph Kimbrell, chief executive officer of the Louisiana Public Health Institute (LPHI), can see the Louisiana Superdome from his New Orleans office. It is a commanding view today – and a stark reminder of the chaos in the days following Hurricane Katrina when thousands of evacuees crammed the Superdome and the surrounding streets. Kimbrell and his staff were among those fleeing the city to escape the flooding.

If you watch her eyes as she drives slowly through the Lower 9th Ward, you can almost see the events of Hurricane Katrina unfolding again for Avis Gray. As the regional administrator for the Louisiana Office of Public Health in New Orleans, Gray was at ground zero when the levees surrounding the city broke and cannot forget what she saw in the weeks that followed.