The Palm Beach Post from West Palm Beach, Florida • Page 6

8A THE PALM BEACH POST MONDAY, MARCH 14, 2005 MSL Retrieving luggage Rural areas leading rise in youth obesity takes some creativity Old-fashioned diets, poverty and electronic games are all considered possible causes. By CHARLES SHEEHAN The Associated Press GENE J. PUSKARTtie Associated Press Visiting an aerobics class for children and teenagers at the Windber (Pa.) Medical Center, cardiovascular disease research director Dr. Darrell Ellsworth hopes his efforts can curb obesity. WINDBER, Pa.

When Ray Crawford walks down the hallway of his school, the beefy, 240-pound sophomore says he doesn't stand out much. Many of his classmates are heavy, too. "We go to the Eat 'n Park to meet and chill, maybe don't eat the right things," he said, referring to a regional chain restaurant famous for its smiley-faced cookies. "There's not much else to do." Here in his small hometown in the mountains of Western Pennsylvania and in other rural communities like it, many health officials say, the tide of obesity is rising faster than anywhere else. And new research appears to back them up, dispelling a long-held belief that in farm communities and other rural towns, heavy chores, wide expanses of land and fresh air make leaner, stronger bodies.

"Whatever the situation was, rural areas are leading the way now they're ahead of the curve," said Michael Meit, director of the University of Pittsburgh Center for Rural Health Practice. "Something's happened." The Center for Rural Pennsylvania released a study recently that used state health figures to compare the body-mass index of seventh-graders in urban and rural communities more than 25,000 students in all. About 16 percent of urban students qualified as obese, according to the study, which is in line with the national average for children ages 6-19. In rural school districts, however, 20 percent of students were considered obese. More alarmingly, researchers found that during the years of the survey, from 1999 to 2001, the number of obese students in rural school districts rose about 5 percent, more than twice the rate of their urban counterparts.

The same trends are being reported from New Mexico to Michigan to West Virginia. In Michigan, children in rural areas were 3 percent to 9 percent more likely to be obese, researchers found. In rural North Carolina, children had a 50 percent greater chance of being obese. Mostly rural states have done studies that don't distinguish between urban and rural children, but they have found the incidence of childhood obesity to be far greater than the national average. "It is accelerating," said Dr.

Darrell Ellsworth, director of cardiovascular indignitv of being whisked to a special airport screening room while his belongings were rifled. Metzler thinks it's the dark blazer and his trademark dark glasses, which he wears even at night They think I'm a drug dealer," he said, irritation filtering through his laugh. Metzler also is the president of Outtasight Travel Inc. at 610 Marion Port St. Lucie.

Metzler and his sighted partner, Jackie Hull, a travel consultant for 11 years, think they've found a niche market with a lot of perks. They fly and sail to resorts around the world, testing accessibilitv and suitability for the blind and visually impaired. Their constant companion is "Doc," a yellow Labrador retriever guide dog. Metzler casually distributes Braille business cards with the Web site address www.outtasighttravel.com printed on the bottom. Sindy Greenwell, a staff member and the discussion leader, marked her baggage with bright ribbons, and wore matching colors in her hair, so her grandparents who met her at the airport had no problem picking out her luggage.

Ashley Skellenger was grounded at a tiny airport in Pensacola. A short layover became an all-night stay in a hotel because of mechanical difficulties. She remembers marking her bags one time with special tags and searching for them by running her fingers over every bag on the luggage carousel. "Baggage claim is actually interesting," she said. "I felt pretty silly.

But, what the heck, it works." Not all of the experiences are unpleasant. Greyhound gets high marks from some of the group members for computerized reservations that remember special needs, reserved front-row seating and drivers who offer to bring soda and coffee during short layovers. Kennedy, who is about to get a computerized print reader that she hopes will help her land a clerical job, has nothing but high praise for Spirit Airlines. Agents make sure she gets a bulkhead seat more suitable for her guide dog, and even bum pe her to first class when the bulkhead became too crowded for her dog and other passengers. "I let them know that I'm legally blind.

I have to because I have a guide dog." she said. "1 alwnvs get a lot of help." jimasr 'ffpfpost com BLIND fromlA eryone trying to pet a working guide dog. Most of the experiences, from having to explain handheld Braille computers, to figuring out where to stow white-tipped canes and prevent security guards and airline workers from separating blind passengers from their guide dogs or canes, are common, according to the Baltimore-based National Federation of the Blind. "I don't think blind people are being deterred from getting to a destination, but they are subject to more of the inconveniences and condescending behavior that they have grown used to.in normal life," said James Gashel, NFB's executive director for strategic initiatives. The group estimates that there are from 1.1 million to 1.3 million Americans who fit the legal definition of blindness set by the Social Security Administration: "the best corrected visual acuity is 20200 in the best eye or the person's visual field is less than 20 percent." 'To be legally blind doesn't mean you have no vision," NFB spokeswoman Linda McCarty said.

"Many people may see light, or colors, or have pinpoint vision." Of the legally blind, onlv about 10 percent, or 100,000, are completely blind, according to the NFB. About 6 million to 10 million Americans are visually impaired, the group estimates, meaning their vision is so poor they need additional technology or Braille to function normally. "The majority of the blind are senior citizens," McCarty said. "It's largely a function of aging. But some 90,000 children are blind." The American Optomet-ric Association says a person with 2020 vision can clearly identify a row of 9mm letters from 20 feet.

A legally blind person has to be as close as 20 feet to identify objects that people with normal vision can spot from 200 feet. Gary Metzler has been legally blind since birth and totally blind since 1984. The native of the New York City borough of Queens, who has lived in Florida for 24 years, remembers setting off a security beeper in a busy airport and waiting compliantly for instructions. He was met with a long, uncomfortable silence. The security guard didn't speak English.

He was flapping his arms and motioning me to go somewhere. He had no idea I couldn't see," Metzler said. Metzler has endured the short time. The only other place where researchers are finding obesity rates similar to rural America is in the poorest, most troubled urban neighborhoods, suggesting that poverty may be the overriding cause. In Tioga County in northeast Pennsylvania, where farming has declined and poverty has risen to about 20 percent, one in 10 kindergartners were found to be obese in 2001-2002.

That number doubled for eighth-graders. Wellsboro Area High School, the largest in the county with 580 students, will alter physical education next year to allow student choices: sports, wellness classes, and traditional gym classes. During a recent health fair in Con-nellsville, about 40 miles to the west of Windber, Ellsworth found that 60 percent of adults tested had metabolic syndrome, a collection of unhealthy conditions that raise the risk for diabetes and heart disease. "The numbers for obesity in children were nowhere near what they are today and you can just imagine what we're going to be looking at 10 to 20 years from now if nothing is done," he said. "That 60 percent that's going to seem like a pretty low figure." Ray Crawford, who is 16, round-faced and 5-feet-9, lifts weights year-round in preparation for football season.

Now he says he'll also take up cardiovascular exercise. "I've started trying to take it easy on the junk food," he says. Crawford's father died of heart disease about eight years ago. He was 45. disease research at the Windber Research Institute.

Ellsworth is trying to start a childhood obesity clinic to stave off a wave of diabetes and heart disease he believes will overwhelm this region if nothing is done. In a room with 14 children doing aerobic exercise at the Windber Medical Center, he nodded toward the teens and adolescents, saying they will have a much higher rate of disease than their parents or grandparents. Researchers are not ready to point a finger at any one culprit for rural obesity, but they have some theories. For one thing, with fewer family farms and more mechanization, children are not burning many calories, but they're still eating high-calorie meals. Habits are passed vertically from Grandma on down, but the diet of three decades ago just doesn't work today," said Dr.

Jeff Holm of North Dakota. The Center for Health Promotion at the University of North Dakota School of Medicine, where Holm is senior scientist, is following about 500 third- to fifth-graders over three years with hopes of finding a pattern. Fewer farmers does not explain why Windber, a former coal-mining town named after a coal-mining company, would have the same problem. One connection might be found in the satellite dishes, computers and game consoles that have popped up in almost every town, regardless of the region's economic engine. The same technology is found in cities and suburbs, but health officials say it arrived later and spread much more rapidly in rural areas, changing behavior dramatically in a very Urns remind Ore.

of long-forgotten mentally ill At an Oregon hospital, there are 3,489 urns containing remains. pital have access to medical records of the patients in the urns and are making a new effort to reach relatives. The story about the cre-mains is in large part a metaphor of what has happened here in terms of the mental health system," said Dr. Marvin D. Fickle, the hospital's superintendent, who took over last April.

"That is to say, this has been a system that has been largely ignored and left to its own resources for decades if not longer. And it has now deteriorated to the pint where people feel embarrassed and ashamed. It is, of course, ironic that people, in essence, seem more concerned about the dead than the living." The fate of the unclaimed mirrors that of those who died over the past century in silence at scores of state mental hospitals across the country. Cemetery restoration or memorial projects have begun since the late 1990s in at least 18 states, those involved in the projects say. Oregon mental health advocates, including Jason Renaud, who founded the Mental Health Association of Portland in January, have insisted that current and former hospital patients be included in the discussion of how to best pay tribute to the abandoned remains.

But at least one former patient said the cremains should stay where they are, in deference to how those patients had truly lived and died in obscurity. 0 11 Take 30 Off By SARAH KERSHAW The York Timrs SALEM, Ore. Next to the old mortuary, where the dead were once washed and prepared for burial or cremation, is a locked room without a name. Inside the room, in a dim and dusty corner of one of many abandoned buildings on the decaying campus of the Oregon State Hospital here, are 3,489 copper urns, the shiny metal dull and smeared with corrosion, the canisters turning green. The urns hold the ashes of mental patients who died here from the late 1880s to the mid-1970s.

The remains were unclaimed by families who had long abandoned their sick relatives, when they were alive and after they were dead. The urns have engraved sorial numbers pressed into the tops of the cans. The lowest number on the urns Mill stored in the room is 01. the highest 5.1 18. Over the decades, about l.fiOO families have reclaimed urns containing their relatives' ashes, but Oiosr left are lined up meticulously on wood shelves.

Short strips of masking tape with storage information are affixr-d to ra shelf: "Vault (Ntf MBKK)2. Shelf plus four unmarked urns." one tWe of lattrrrd tape says. Most of the laMs that once the full names of the dead patients have orrn washed off by water damage of prrtol away by time. Still. frw frayed laMs are legible: Among the urns stored nrt one shelf are IW-s, a ri and art Andrew-.

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