Jermane Bond (@JermaneBond) is a Senior Fellow at the National Collaborative for Health Equity where he leads efforts to address the determinants of health for boys and men of color. His research interests include men’s preconception health and reproductive life planning, paternal involvement in pregnancy outcomes and racial and ethnic disparities in infant mortality. With funding from the Office of Minority Health in the Department of Health and Human Services, Dr. Bond formed the Commission on Paternal Involvement in Pregnancy Outcomes, (a transdisciplinary working group of social scientist and public health professionals) to raise awareness for the importance of paternal involvement in pregnancy and family health by reframing debates, informing research, policy and practice to support greater involvement of expectant fathers in pregnancy. Dr. Bond is a member of the American Public Health Association, the American College of Epidemiology and serves on several editorial boards, including the Maternal and Child Health Journal and the American Journal of Public Health. He received a B.A. from Morehouse College, and a Ph.D. from Howard University.
In this episode, we discussed:
Health disparities within the black community. Specific health disparities affecting black men. How health technology can play a vital role in creating better outcomes for black men.Resources:
National Collaborative for Health Equity Lagging Life Expectancy for Black Men: A Public Health Imperative by Jermane Bond and Allen A. Herman (American Journal of Public Health, 2016) The Warmth of Other Suns by Isabel Wilkerson----
This Week's News
The Federal Trade Commission plans to crack down on celebrity product endorsements on social media. The agency thinks the endorsements aren’t transparent enough because they often don’t contain an explicit statement that the endorsement is actually a paid advertisement. So this will affect celebrities like DJ Khaled who promotes Ciroc vodka on Snapchat and other celebrities who earn revenue from sponsorships in exchange for giving products their stamp of approval. The FTC has brought lawsuits against several companies that secure product endorsements from celebrities. But marketing executives think this is an overreach, saying the these celebrity influencers recognize the trust their audiences place in them and would never violate that rapport by endorsing products they don’t actually believe in. Experts are advising celebrity endorsers to know include hashtags in their sponsored posts, with #ad being the preferred indicator, although these hashtags often get jumbled up with a bunch of other hashtags. Sarah Frier and Matt Townsend at Bloomberg have more. ---- The U.S. is concerned that voting machines will be hacked on election day. Remember that crazy 2000 election that was ultimately decided by the Supreme Court? Well, picture that scenario—except no one even knows where to start counting—since the entire system was hacked. The problem is that with more than 9,000 voting districts in the U.S., it’s quite a task to monitor all those. So the Obama administration is considering whether to designate voting machines as “critical infrastructure”. Check out Julie Hirschfeld Davis’ Coverage in The New York Times. ---- So if you’re in or around a court house, you may want to watch what you say—even if you’re talking to your own lawyer. Apparently, the FBI placed bugs in and around the San Mateo County courthouse while they were investigating an alleged foreclosed homes bid-rigging scheme. The FBI started out sending under-cover agents with wires, but apparently the agents fell out of favor with the suspects who began sharing less information with the undercover agents. So the FBI decided to try and capture the suspects’ conversations at the courthouse. But they went ahead and captured EVERYONE’S conversations—including people discussing their sex lives. In any case, US District Judge Charles Breyer issued an order last week suppressing over 200 hours of audio recordings because he found the suspects had a legit expectation of privacy and so the surveillance tactic violated the Fourth Amendment. But technically, the FBI can keep placing bugs outside courthouses, since another federal judge in San Mateo issued the exact opposite ruling in another case—saying the suspects didn’t adequately protect their own privacy. Joe Mullen covers this story over at Ars Technica. ---- Privacy Shield went into effect last week. That’s the privacy deal worked out between the U.S. and European Union after lawyer and PhD student Max Schrems — who is Austrian — successfully challenged Facebook’s privacy protection practices. Schrems filed 22 complaints against Facebook in Ireland, which ultimately led the EU to strike down the so called Safe Harbor—which for 16 years had governed transatlantic data exchanges between European citizens and servers in the United States. After the Safe Harbor was struck down, tech companies had to make individual agreements, which proved cumbersome, while the U.S. and E.U negotiated an alternative arrangement that would protect Europeans’ private data from the prying eyes of the National Security Agency. The result is the Privacy Shield. But 28-year-old Schrems thinks Privacy Shield still isn’t good enough. Adam Satariano and Stephanie Bodoni covered this for Bloomberg. ---- In a letter to Congress, the U.S. Copyright Office weighed in on the Federal Communications Commission’s proposed rules to open up set-top boxes to competition. The goal is to allow consumers to choose which set-top box they access content from, instead of being stuck with the box that they lease from their cable provider for an average of $231 per year. The U.S. Copyright Office wrote that the FCC’s proposed rules would give rise to widespread copyright infringement. The Electronic Frontier Foundation’s Mitch Stolz argues that the Copyright Office’s legal analysis is full of holes, mainly because it fails to account for the fact that copyright law doesn’t confer any rights with respect to how the technology that consumers use to access the actual, copyrighted material, is designed. Check out Mitch Stolz’ analysis at EFF and John Bergmayer analysis at Public Knowledge. ---- The Justice Department has decided it will not update the consent decrees performing rights organizations ASCAP and BMI entered into back in 1941. Those agreements set the standard for how media outlets would pay royalties. But, of course, the Internet wasn’t around then, and ASCAP and BMI had sought to have the consent decrees updated for the digital age. The Department of Justice declined and actually are adding a rule requiring ASCAP and BMI to get clearance from all of the artists who contributed to a song, and pay each of them their share of royalties. This is known as 100% licensing. ASCAP and BMI, of course, were not happy with the decision, arguing that it would lead to musicians being paid less for their works. Ben Sisario has the full story and analysis in the New York Times. --- Finally, a former technician a the FBI has pled guilty to charges that he spied for the Chinese government, providing sensitive intelligence to Chinese officials, in exchange for travel reimbursements, cash and even prostitutes. Kun Shan Chun, a Chinese-born naturalized U.S. citizen faces 10 years in prison. Camila Domonoske covered this story for NPR.