Not all innovations are expensive or high-tech. Outside Philadelphia, a hospital turned to a cheap and simple solution for a complicated and common problem. Every hospital in the nation is working to prevent the spread of C. difficile, a dangerous infection that patients often pick up during hospital stays. It’s one of those things that make people fear going to the hospital, and make health care more expensive. But Holy Redeemer hospital found a grocery-store solution: yogurt. Dietitians encouraged potentially vulnerable patients to start eating yogurt, which contains healthy digestive bacteria. Infection rates fell by about two thirds, and the program earned an Innovation Award from the Hospital and Health system Association of Pennsylvania. It could be a big step toward cutting the 337,000 yearly cases of C. diff in U.S. hospitals.
Tag: philadelphia
This Innovative Philadelphia School Has a Really Good Reason for Downgrading Its Computers
Philadelphia’s award-winning Science Leadership Academy is making a big switch: from $1,500 Mac laptops to the $300 Chromebook 11. The new, inexpensive laptops run on Google’s Chrome operating system, support web applications, and store user information in the cloud rather than locally. The education market still favors Macs, but SLA’s principal, Christopher Lehmann, points out that the Chromebooks can make a long-time dream of ed-tech proponents — the 1-to-1 model where schools have a device for every student — come true. Dell is helping to fund the computers for the school’s two campuses, and will help SLA to create a “center of excellence” to promote the school’s inquiry-driven and project-based approach to learning. Check out the video by Lehmann to learn about the school’s vision for using Chromebooks to enable students to create their own learning experiences.
How $5 and a Plate of Spaghetti Can Change a City
There’s a lot of money in the crowdfunding world. And MealTics is looking to move some of that support into hungry communities that need a financial boost. They’ve combined the crowdfunding model with traditional fundraising to build an opportunity for people to easily turn meals from their favorite local restaurants into donations for local shelters and soup kitchens. Their current campaign to raise 5,000 spaghetti dinners from Rino’s Restaurant, outside Philadelphia, takes just a $5 donation from diners, and it’s starting to catch on.
Watch These Kids Be Better City Planners Than the Pros
Watch this inspiring video to follow 16-year-old Alexa around the playground that she and other students are designing and building. They’re in Philadelphia, the backyard of Public Workshop, a program that creates learning opportunities outside the classroom to educate students as citizens, leaders and designers.
Why It’s Time to Forget About “Food Deserts”
Innovation is often about changing the way we think about a problem, sometimes even changing the terminology so that we can focus on a better solution. That’s what John Bare wants to do: Instead of diagnosing and pointing out the nation’s food deserts, he wants to empower a cure for the problem with a name. In creating the Food Oasis Movement, Bare shifts the attention to meeting the demand for fresh fruits and vegetables, rather than assigning blame for the lack of healthy produce. He’s identifying innovators and their creative ideas for engaging families and supporting their desire to learn about healthy cooking and choose nutritious foods. With new programs emerging in cities including Philadelphia, Chicago, and Atlanta, the oasis is certainly growing.
See the New Skinny Houses
Think Tiny Houses are cool? Make way for skinny houses. This Japanese house is extremely skinny but it’s not doing anything that Trinity Houses in Philadelphia haven’t been doing for 200+ years—as real, liveable homes. It’s still really neat as an example of how energy- and space-efficient urban living can be wildly creative.
Will Philly Be Known for Healthy Produce Instead of Cheesesteaks?
The first food most people would associate with Philadelphia is the cheesesteak—tasty and popular, but not exactly nutritious. Philly isn’t quite known for its fruits and vegetables, but Healthy Corner Store Initiative, is the nation’s biggest city-wide effort to bring healthy foods to convenient stores. The proactive initiative requires store owners to take small, low-risk steps toward stocking healthier items, meant to protect and support the business as it transforms from a source of sugary drinks and salty snacks to an easier source of nutritious foods. Not only has the successful partnership with the city department of health and local philanthropy Food Trust helped grow the program to over 600 stores in the city—it has also reached out to nearby Norristown, Penn., and over the bridge to Camden, N.J., to consult on similar programs for cities with similar struggles.
How to Break the Northeast’s Biggest Farming Rule
The Philadelphia area has plenty of affluent communities ready and eager to participate in local shopping at farmers’ markets, but not far from those neighborhoods are vast food deserts. It’s a dramatic disparity, but local farmers have the power to help overcome the local food problems. Malaika Spencer is one of the farmers working to improve the local healthy options, and to do it she has transformed one of Bucks County’s traditional farms into a fully organic local resource. She has a revolutionary approach to the calendar, ignoring the Northeast’s standard six-month schedule. Instead, she’s using “storage crops like potatoes, winter squash, onions, garlic and turnips” to maintain her output through all four seasons. This way, her CSA shareholders enjoy her produce year-round and she becomes ingrained in the community’s agriculture, economy, and community.
Philly Activist Backs Fruit Into the Corner (Store)
Philly-based healthy food champion Brianna Almaguer Sandoval is bringing fresh fruits and vegetables back to her city’s corner stores, one bodega and market at a time. She runs the Healthy Corner Store Initiative for the non-profit The Food Trust. This initiative works with small store owners to make gradual steps towards carrying healthy food. I love the group’s practical “carrot” approach that starts with store owners carrying just four new products. For that, they get $100. There are incentives for every step forward they make to offer their customers more fresh produce and perishable foods.
M. Night Shymalan: “Fierceness” Will Fix Our Schools
In an event that focused on Philadelphia’s education problems, some reformers focused on schools’ input (the public resources going into a school) and some focused on output (the results schools achieve). Amid conversations about alternative school models, like charter schools, film director M. Night Shyamalan offered his perspective: U.S. students get unequal environments and support. Non-white students especially get shortchanged. Shymalan says that inner-city schools that work tell kids “You’re fierce!” — a reminder that maybe making students feel that they matter is the real purpose of public education.