1) Graduation Rates - "With just 2 million residents spread across [New Mexico], the fifth-largest state in the nation, a $589 million budget shortfall, declining oil and gas revenues that are the core source of state education funding, and six-year graduation rates in the low double digits, does it make any fiscal sense to fund 32 public colleges and universities?" "A 2015 national report found that the state's college graduation rate was just 40 percent, with only Alaska (26 percent), Idaho (39 percent) and Nevada (29 percent) handing out fewer degrees per enrolled student.Six-year graduation rates range from a dismal 18 percent at New Mexico Highlands University to 49 percent at the University of New Mexico." (Source: "New Mexico can't afford so many colleges graduating so few," [editorial] Albuquerque Journal, October 1, 2016.)
2) Game Officials Shortage - "The New Mexico Activities Association is having a hard time scaring up enough officials this season to cover football, soccer and volleyball. Maybe that's because the referees, who make a pittance for working the events, don't think putting up with the abuse expressed by many fans is worth it." "Over the past seven years, the number of statewide officials who call football high school games has dropped by about 20 percent, from 423 to 340 currently." (Source: "R-E-S-P-E-C-T the referees," Albuquerque Journal, October 1, 2016.)
3) Obesity Costs - "A 2012 study in the Journal of Health Economics estimated the medical-costs of obesity in the U.S. in 2005 to have been as high as a hundred and ninety billion dollars, a figure that is steadily increasing." "Today, obesity is second only to tobacco as a killer in this country. "A study that followed up on fourteen contestants from Second 8 of "The Biggest Loser" found that all but one of the finalists had regained much or most of their original weight, and that these contestants' metabolic rates had slowed dramatically, making maintaining a healthy weight even more difficult." (Source: Rivka Galchen, "Keeping It Off," The New Yorker, September 26, 2016.)
4) Gender Identity - "Just twenty states have laws explicitly protecting people from employment and housing discrimination based on gender identity. Transphobic hate crimes tripled in the United States from 2014 to 2015, and nineteen trans Americans have been murdered this year, almost all of them African-Americans. Forty-one per cent of transgender Americans have attempted suicide, compared with five per cent of the general population." (Source: Michael Schulman, "Model Citizen," The New Yorker, September 26, 2016.)
5) Building Waste in Landfills - "The U.K. Green Building Council estimates that 15% of materials delivered to construction sites end up in landfills, the result of mismanaged scheduling and purchasing. The American Institute of Architects believes building-related waste makes up anywhere from 25% to 40% of America's solid-waste stream." (Source: Clay Dillow, "A Drone for Every Job Site," Fortune, September 15, 2016.)
6) Texas's Maternal Mortality - Texas now has the highest rate of maternal mortality in the developed world. According to a just-released report from the journal Obstetrics and Gynecology, maternal mortality doubled in the state from 2011 to 2014. One cause is the opioid epidemic. Black women are 11.4 percent of all pregnant women in the state but 29 percent of those who die.
Texas is one of nineteen states that have refused to expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. (Source: Katha Pollitt, "Fatal Births," The Nation, September 26/October 3, 2016.)
7) Sustainable Development Goals - Based on measures of dozens of factors, including diseases, suicide rates, road injuries, smoking, water quality, and war, the U.S. ranks 28th. More than 1,870 researchers in 124 countries complied data on 33 different indicators of progress toward the UN goals related to health. The UN has 17 Sustainable Development Goals.
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