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August 15, 2019
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Council vote could backfire on inmates Private corrections companies lose contracts with no plan in place for residents of halfway houses BY COLLEEN SLEVIN ASSOCIATED PRESS
Efrain Camas, right, plays basketball at Washington Park with his two sons, Fabian, pictured, and Efrain. Experts say that one aspect of a healthy community is access to open spaces for exercise. KAILYN LAMB
Sanders said. “It just depends on which things you’re looking at,” he said. “We organize a lot of our work around the built environment.” Primary care physicians also look into people’s home environments when making a diagnosis or care plan for an individual patient, said Dr. Scott Joy, chief medical officer with HealthONE, a network of Colorado hospitals. He estimated that only 20% of a person’s health comes from seeing the doctor and creating a plan. The remaining 80% all comes from his or her living environment.
Denver city councilors have refused to renew more than $10 million in contracts with two of the nation’s largest private corrections companies that operate halfway houses in the city partly due to their track record running immigration detention facilities, a sudden move which puts current inmates and people leaving prison in limbo. Supporters of the change approved Aug. 5 — many of them newly elected — said they could not endorse sending money to Nashville, Tennessee-based CoreCivic and Boca Raton, Floridabased GEO Group because of their treatment of detained immigrants. They also objected to having large, for-profit companies handle the job of helping inmates transition back to life outside of prison and faulted them for not being accountable to the public. “These entities are essentially the Walmarts, taking away the businesses from our mom and pops and they’re
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Living healthy in Denver Experts weigh in on what makes a healthy community BY KAILYN LAMB KLAMB@COLORADOCOMMUNITYMEDIA.COM
When people think of public health, a few thoughts naturally come to mind: doctors, good nutrition and getting exercise. But defining a healthy community can be a difficult task, said Tristan Sanders, public health program manager with the Denver Department of Public Health and Environment. Those three components are crucial
to public health, but there’s also a lot more to it. Every five years the city is required by law to conduct a Community Health Assessment, as well as a Community Health Improvement Plan. The last assessment was released in 2015, and the department is gearing up to collect data for a new version to be released early next year. The report will likely look a little different this year, Sanders said. While it will provide information based on the city as a whole, the department also wants to break down by neighborhood some of the factors that contribute to health. Many statistics can vary drastically from one neighborhood to the next,
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“He’s just strong. He’s a strong rookie. You don’t see a lot of rookies like that.” Chris Harris, Broncos cornerback, on rookie receiver Juwann Winfree | Page 13 INSIDE
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