Where We Live

The COVID-19 pandemic has magnified health disparities in the U.S., from high blood pressure in under-resourced communities to sharp declines in breast and cervical cancer screenings among Hispanic, American Indian, Black, and Asian Pacific Islander women through the CDC’s National Breast and Cervical Cancer Early Detection Program.

The deeply-entrenched inequities have continued to persist over the last two decades, with Black and Latino/Hispanic people persistently reporting the highest rates of poor or fair health, a new Yale study shows.

This hour on Where We Live, we look at cancer disparities among communities of color: Incidence and mortality rates, barriers to screening, and access to treatment.

We also discuss how hospitals and nonprofits are reducing the gap, and enabling access to affordable, farm-grown food in high-risk communities below the federal poverty line.

GUESTS 

• Shelly Hicks - Breast cancer survivor; Charter school advocate; Advocate, Sisters' Journey, a breast cancer support group in New Haven for Black women
• Dr. Kristen Zarfos - Senior breast surgeon and Medical Director, Comprehensive Women's Health Center at St. Francis Hospital
• Elizabeth Heubeck - Reporter at the Connecticut Health Investigative Team
• Xóchitl Garcia - Assistant Program Manager, Farm-based Wellness Youth Program, Gather New Haven

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Women-founded or co-founded firms in the U.S. raised $25.12 billion in venture capital in the first half of 2021, more than in any prior year, according to PitchBook. The reason? Women founders are raising a greater share through late-stage deals and high-value sectors. More women are writing checks at VC firms. And networks of female founders are thriving in cities like New York.

Yet the investments are just 2.7%, or $3.54 billion, of the total VC funding pie, PitchBook noted. Within that statistic, across the U.S., just 34 Black female founders raised $1 million in VC money in 2018. That number, according to ProjectDiane, shot up to 93 Black women in 2020.

Connecticut saw the launch of a couple of women-owned investment firms and the acquisition of women-founded companies this year -- Mizzen Capital and Greenworks Lending, for instance -- but the majority of women entrepreneurs continue to struggle for funding in a state that has yet to return to its pre-pandemic level workforce.

How do women entrepreneurs navigate the funding environment?

GUESTS: 

• Marie Rocha: Founder & General Partner, Realist Ventures
• Wendy Ward: Founder & CEO, futures Thrive
• Liddy Karter: Managing Partner, Mizzen Capital
• Alexandra Cooley: COO & Co-founder, Greenworks Lending from Nuveen
• Mary Anne Rooke: President and Managing Director, Angel Investor Forum

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Gabby Petito has been laid to rest, a few weeks after attention on the missing 22 year old from Long Island exploded in traditional news outlets and on social media. 

She’s just one of many Americans who go missing.  

4 out of 10 of them are people of color according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Today, Derrica Wilson, cofounder of the Black & Missing Foundation, joins us to talk about missing persons and how these cases are covered in the media.

Why do some cases capture the attention of the public, and others are completely ignored by the media?

GUESTS:

• Derrica Wilson - co-founder of the Black And Missing Foundation, a non profit organization working to bring awareness to missing persons of color.
• Meghan Scanlon - CEO of the Connecticut Coalition Against Domestic Violence
• Susan Omilian - Project Director of Never Going Back to Abuse Project for the Connecticut Alliance for Victims and Their Families

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With Connecticut facing a waste crisis, there’s a new incentive for cities and towns interested in more sustainable ways of managing trash. A new $5 million grant program means municipalities can apply to implement food scrap collection or "pay-as-you-throw" programs.

Where We Live hears from DEEP Commissioner Katie Dykes, and two municipalities applying for food scrap collection programs. What are the options for food waste recycling or composting where you live?

Guests:

• Katie Dykes - Connecticut Dept. of Energy and Environmental Protection Commissioner
• Kim O'Rourke - Middletown Recycling Coordinator
• Joe DeRisi - Hamden Solid Waste & Recycling Coordinator
• Alex Williams - Blue Earth Owner & Operator
• Domingo Medina - Master Composter, Peels and Wheels Founder & Owner

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The endless Instagram scroll; we know it’s impacting our lives but what do we really know about how it’s impacting kids?

The Wall Street Journal recently reported that researchers inside Instagram know that their app is making teenage girls feel worse about themselves.

This hour, we talk about the real implications of social media use among adolescents and how influencers are affecting their self esteem.

We hear from Dr Catherine Steiner-Adair, a psychologist and author of “The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.”

How’s your relationship with Instagram? What about your child’s?

We want to hear from you.

GUESTS:

• Bianca Brooks - media personality and New York Times feature writer
• Dr Catherine Steiner-Adair - clinical and consulting psychologist and author of The Big Disconnect: Protecting Childhood and Family Relationships in the Digital Age.

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In Connecticut, residents are more likely to die from unintentional drug overdose than a motor vehicle accident, according to the state Department of Public Health.

Last year, more than 1,300 people died of accidental drug overdose – a 14.6% increase from 2019, and an 88.5% increase from 2015. Through January to June this year, 547 lives were lost to overdose, with additional deaths pending investigation.

This hour on Where We Live, we talk to a peer recovery specialist from Wheeler Clinic about her lived experience with childhood trauma, opioid use disorder, and medication assisted therapy. 

GUESTS:

• Stephanie Almada - Peer Recovery Support Specialist, Wheeler Clinic
• Sabrina Trocchi - President and CEO, Wheeler Clinic
• Dr. Adriane Fugh-Berman - Professor, Department of Pharmacology and Physiology at Georgetown University Medical Center, and Director of PharmedOut

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This hour, Connecticut residents with different views of the world are coming together to help Afghans flee the Taliban, and to help people targeted by the Taliban start new lives in the Nutmeg state.

And and update from Connecticut Public’s Accountability Project on their recent investigative reporting on education.

Guests:

• Deidre Gifford -- Department of Social Services Commissioner
• Alex Plitsas -- Iraq veteran, defense civilian intelligence officer in Afghanistan, a spokesperson with the organization Digital Dunkirk, and Fairfield Republican Town Committee Chairman
• Thomas Burke -- Afghanistan veteran, pastor at the Norfield Congregational Church in Weston, he has worked with the Connecticut Institute for Refugees and Immigrants, or CIRI
• Jacqueline Rabe Thomas -- Connecticut Public Accountability Project investigative reporter

We want to hear from you.

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America's roughly 40 million acres of well-mowed, privately-owned lawns are taking the place of native plants that could be helping local ecosystems thrive.

There are at least two initiatives aimed at replacing American lawns with native plants, to provide homes for pollinators, migrating birds, and a whole lot more. The process is sometimes called "delawning" or "rewilding." Do you want to be on the Pollinator Pathway, or a part of Homegrown National Park?

Hear more about the benefits of biodiversity, and tips on how you can participate, with or without a lawn.

GUESTS:

• Donna Merrill - Pollinator Pathways Northeast founder
• Doug Tallamy - Ecologist and University of Delaware professor who launched Homegrown National Park, an initiative aiming to convert 20 million acres of native plantings in the U.S.

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A new study by the National Institutes of Health and the Research Triangle Institute, found alcohol consumption by women with children younger than age 5, surged 323% during the pandemic.

Researchers compared alcohol consumption rates in February 2020 to April of 2020, when stay-at-home guidelines were in effect, and further along into the pandemic year in November. More women than men exceeded recommended drinking guidelines between April and November.

But for as long as nearly a century, women have been closing the gender gap in the consumption of alcohol, binge-drinking, and alcohol use disorder.

What are some triggers, coping mechanisms, and treatment options available to treat women with alcohol use disorder?

Tune in Monday, 9:00 AM

GUESTS:

Kathleen Callahan - Stratford resident; sober for 10 years

Beverley Brakeman - West Hartford resident; sober for 31 years

Amanda Aronson - Principal, Aronson Consulting, West Hartford; sober for 7.5 years

Dr. Jeanette Tetrault - Professor of Medicine and Public Health, and Director of the Addiction Medicine Fellowship, and Associate Director of Addiction Medicine at Yale School of Medicine

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The Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art’s upcoming exhibit By Her ­Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy: 1500-1800 (Sept. 30, 2021 through Jan. 9, 2022) brings to Connecticut paintings by Italian women in a male-dominated art world.

Who do you think of when you think of Italian art?

Michelangelo? Botticelli? Caravaggio? Bernini? And in contemporary times, Modigliani.

Why haven’t we heard of the women?

In Connecticut, girls were making needlework schoolgirl art that evolved into samplers — the more intricate and beautiful, the higher the young woman’s eligibility as a wife.

The sociologist Taylor Whitten Brown in an Art Market 2019 report pointed out that in “more explicitly sexist eras of art history, the textile arts were a medium that women were permitted and encouraged to adopt.” Brown cites architect Walter Gropius, founder of the Bauhaus School, that women worked best in two dimensions, and they should weave instead of studying architecture and design.

And in Old Lyme, female American impressionists created masterpieces at the Florence Griswold artists’ colony in Old Lyme.

GUESTS:

• Oliver Tostmann - Curator, By Her ­Hand: Artemisia Gentileschi and Women Artists in Italy, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
• Brandy Culp - Curator, American Decorative Arts, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art
• Rebekah Beaulieu - Director, Florence Griswold Museum

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