HUTCHINSON- Ahmed Mohamed, the 14-year-old suburban Dallas student who became a sensation on social media Wednesday after word spread about his clock, mistaken for a bomb, may be coming to Kansas.

The Kansas Cosmosphere on Friday invited Ahmed to attend their space camp in Hutchinson.

Hey @IStandWithAhmed you're welcome to come train like an Astronaut @ a Cos Camp – our treat! #WeStandWithAhmed pic.twitter.com/5BTM4f0OY3

— Cosmosphere (@kscosmosphere) September 17, 2015

Awesome! Your interest in STEM inspires you 2 innovate! There's a camp 4 that – choose one, ON US! http://t.co/ECHydjEKS1 #WeStandWithAhmed

— Cosmosphere (@kscosmosphere) September 17, 2015

Ahmed was pulled from class Monday after he showed the clock to a teacher. Authorities are not seeking criminal charges against him. News of his arrest sparked an outpouring of support including from President Barack Obama.

HUTCHINSON -A Kansas man arrested for allegedly robbing LoanMax Title Loans in Hutchinson in May was bound over for trial on Thursday.

Jerry Allen Anderson Jr., 29, Hutchinson, is charged with aggravated robbery after he allegedly walked into the business and demanded money at gunpoint.

He got away with about $1,400 and left in a black four-door automobile.

The victim testified Thursday morning about the suspect coming into the business then coming through a door that leads behind the counter.

That is when she says she saw the gun and she said that the suspect spoke in a soft voice, “this is how we’re going to do this.”

She testified the suspect told her to put her hands up and stated he wanted the cash.

She opened the drawer and placed the money on the counter. He grabbed it and ran out. She was able to identify Anderson as the one who robbed her because of photos provided by police.

Police Sgt. Detective Tyson Myers testified about a search of a home where Anderson was living and found items consistent with what he was wearing the day of the robbery including a black Atlanta Braves baseball cap and a black dew rag.

The gun is believed to have been a BB-gun that looks like a real gun.

Anderson will be arraigned on October 5, in front of Judge Trish Rose.

Anderson was paroled in January for another conviction of aggravated robbery from 2007 in Leavenworth County.

By ANDY MARSO

The secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment says the agency is moving to fill several leadership positions vacated in recent weeks. KDHE’s Division of Public Health is losing the directors of three of its eight bureaus and two supervisors who led sections directly under the bureau heads. Combined, the five had more than 80 years of experience.

All of them worked with local health officials. KDHE Secretary Susan Mosier, responding Wednesday to concerns some of those local officials expressed about the sudden loss of institutional knowledge, said the agency is working to quickly fill the void.

“We’ve got great people coming up,” she said. Mosier said Jennifer VandeVelde, the chief of the agency’s sexually transmitted illnesses section, is set to replace Brenda Walker, who is retiring as director of the state’s Bureau of Disease Control and Prevention.

“She’s awesome,” Mosier said of VandeVelde. “She’s been involved in the agency for many years now and really knows the agency well.”

She said the agency is interviewing candidates to replace Paula Clayton, who is retiring as director of the Bureau of Health Promotion, and Mindee Reece, who was fired as director of the Bureau of Community Health Systems. Both positions should be filled within a month, Mosier said. “The outlook looks good,” she added.

Mosier said Clayton may continue to do some work for the agency on a contract basis. She did not touch on the departures of Jane Shirley, who worked directly under Reece as director of Local Public Health, or Tim Budge, who worked under Walker as section chief of immunizations.

Budge was terminated and has been replaced on an interim basis by Phil Griffin, the head of the agency’s tuberculosis control program. Shirley retired, then took a job with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Kansas. An agency spokeswoman has said KDHE will not comment on the reasons for the personnel changes.

Conference kicks off 

Mosier was in Manhattan on Wednesday to kick off the 2015 Kansas Public Health Association conference.

Her 10-minute presentation to a Hilton Garden Inn ballroom full of state and local health officials focused on progress KDHE has made this year toward encouraging healthy living, including:

Doubling the number of physicians participating in a “medical homes” program intended to better coordinate patient care.
Increasing the number of day care centers enrolled in a healthy eating program.
Increasing referrals to the state’s tobacco “quit line.”
Increasing participation in workplace initiatives that stress healthy eating and exercise.
Mosier also touted the state’s KanCare program, which placed almost all Kansas Medicaid beneficiaries under the administration of three private insurance companies known as managed care organizations.

“While we have been able to improve health, we also have been able to bend the cost curve down over time,” Mosier said.

A healthy legacy?

Keynote speaker Paul Kuehnert told attendees that this year’s conference theme of “Promoting Health for All Kansans” means bucking a “pattern of stark disparities in our country” when it comes to health outcomes.

Kuehnert, director of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Bridging Health and Health Care Portfolio, said the disparities go well beyond access to health insurance and acute medical care. “The vast majority of health is actually determined by other things, like what goes on in our social, economic or behavioral spheres,” he said.

The health effects of socioeconomic disparities are on display in places like Washington, D.C., he said, where a child born today in the wealthy suburbs of Maryland has a life expectancy seven years greater than a child born downtown.

But the disparities are also close to home for Kansans, Kuehnert said. He displayed a map that showed much better health outcomes in Johnson County than in neighboring Wyandotte County

In part because of those disparities, Kuehnert said he and his public health peers may be the first in American history to serve a generation of children who live “shorter, sicker lives” than their parents.

“What is going to be our legacy?” he asked rhetorically. Kuehnert said there’s still an opportunity to turn those life expectancy numbers around by establishing a “culture of health” that integrates social services with medical treatment.

But he acknowledged that a culture change would be difficult, given that 51,000 local public health jobs were cut nationwide during the recession.

“There’s no data to suggest those jobs are being replaced,” Kuehnert said. “At least not in significant numbers.”

During the question-and-answer session that followed his presentation, Kuehnert was asked how public health advocates should make their case to policymakers who question the government’s role in public health. Kuehnert said that does create a “difficult set of circumstances” politically, but said he worked productively with policymakers who preferred limited government in his previous job in Kane County, Ill.

One of the keys is to form public-private partnerships, he said, and then ask the private sector partners to tout public health goals to lawmakers. But he stressed that public health officials shouldn’t shy from the discussion.

“We in public health have to engage in that conversation … but not in an adversarial way,” Kuehnert said.

 

Andy Marso is a reporter for Heartland Health Monitor, a news collaboration focusing on health issues and their impact in Missouri and Kansas.

UNITED NATIONS (AP) — The U.S. government has announced it will begin using the term “sexual rights” in discussions of human rights and global development.

The statement at a U.N. meeting comes after years of lobbying from rights groups. They argued that the U.S. should show global leadership on the rights of people of all gender identities and sexual orientations.

The statement, posted on a State Department website, says sexual rights include people’s “right to have control over and decide freely and responsibly on matters related to their sexuality, including sexual and reproductive health, free of coercion, discrimination, and violence.”

The Washington-based Center for Health and Gender Equity pointed out the statement Thursday and said it was delighted.

The change comes days before world leaders launch an ambitious set of development goals.