Study: Having PCOS may affect brain health midlife
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Originally Published: 01 FEB 24 09:06 ET
By Sandee LaMotte, CNN
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(CNN) — Why do many people overeat chips, cereals, cakes, puddings and other ultraprocessed foods despite knowing those foods may not be healthy?
According to emerging science, it may be due to manufacturing processes that “predigest” raw food ingredients — creating ultraprocessed foods that bypass the body’s signals of fullness.
You read that right: We are eating predigested food.
What does “predigested” mean? To manufacture cheap, delicious food that is packaged for convenience, basic food crops such as corn, wheat and potatoes are dissembled into their molecular parts — starchy flours, protein isolates, fats and oils — or what manufacturers call “slurries.”
“The bulk of what is extracted is starch slurry, a milky mixture of starch and water, but we also have extracted proteins and fibers,” according to a video explanation of the process from Starch Europe, part of the European Starch Industry Association.
“Roughly half of the starch slurry goes to produce starch-based sugars and other derivatives,” the video says. “Those are created by hydrolysis, a process similar to human digestion.”
Next, with the help of artificial colorings, flavorings and glue-like emulsifiers, those slurries are then heated, pounded, shaped or extruded into any food a manufacturer can dream up.
Add in just the right ratio of sugar, salt and fat designed to tickle our taste buds, and an ultraprocessed food that’s nearly irresistible is born, said infectious disease specialist Dr. Chris van Tulleken, an associate professor at University College London.
“It could be a pizza if you put some cheese and tomato on top. It could be a burger bun. It could be a grain bar, a breakfast cereal, ice cream or confectionery — they all have the same list of basic starting ingredients,” said van Tulleken, a BBC contributor who authored the 2023 book “Ultra-Processed People: Why Do We All Eat Stuff That Isn’t Food … and Why Can’t We Stop?”
“It’s an illusion of food,” he added. “But it’s really expensive and difficult for a food company to make food that is real and whole, and much cheaper for food companies to destroy real foods, turn them in molecules, and then reassemble those to make anything they want.”
Bypassing the digestive system
Much like the regurgitated food mother birds feed their babies in the nest, ultraprocessed food is quick and easy to digest, according to experts. But that’s not how the human digestive system was meant to work.
Starting with teeth designed to tear food apart, the human gastrointestinal system evolved to break down whole foods into their various nutritional components, absorb those vitamins, minerals and micronutrients and then eliminate the undigestible leftovers and fiber as stool.
When food moves through the digestive system in ways Mother Nature didn’t intend, however, the body loses the ability to send a signal of fullness to the brain, said Dr. David Katz, a specialist in preventive and lifestyle medicine who founded the nonprofit True Health Initiative, a global coalition of experts dedicated to evidence-based lifestyle medicine.
“In effect you are bypassing the stretch receptor effect in the stomach,” Katz said. “Before the stretch receptors can even tell you, ‘Hey, we’ve had enough,’ you’ve put down twice as many calories as you need.”
Estimates say 73% of the food supply in the United States is made up of ultraprocessed foods. Yet it’s been hard to pinpoint the underlying impact of such foods on the body, as nearly all research in nutrition is observational. It’s difficult to do a randomized clinical trial, considered the gold standard of research, by forcing people to eat only certain foods.
However, a clinical trial published in 2019 did just that. Twenty healthy volunteers were locked away from the outside world for one month. For two weeks they ate only ultraprocessed foods. For the remaining two weeks, they ate a diet made up of minimally processed foods.
Breakfast on the ultraprocessed diet might consist of store-bought cereal, flavored yogurt or blueberry muffins, said study author Kevin Hall, a senior investigator with the National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases in Bethesda, Maryland.
The other two weeks the same 20 people ate meals created from minimally processed foods — breakfast during this period might consist of plain Greek yogurt with walnuts and fruit slices.
Each diet contained the exact same quantity of calories, sugars, fiber, fat, salt and carbohydrates — the only difference was that one diet consisted only of foods that were ultraprocessed, Hall said.
In two weeks, participants on the ultraprocessed diet gained an average of 2 pounds (0.9 kilograms). They lost an equivalent amount of weight while on the minimally processed diet.
“On the ultraprocessed diet, people ate about 500 calories more per day, and they ate at a faster rate,” Hall said. “This is the first study to demonstrate in a controlled environment that ultraprocessed foods cause people to eat too many calories and gain weight.”
Hall is conducting a new study designed to explore the underlying reasons for weight gain from ultraprocessed foods, such as their “hyper-palatbility” or yumminess due to enticing levels of sugar, salt and fat.
“I think the importance of these kinds of studies is that until we really know the mechanisms by which ultraprocessed foods drive people to overconsume calories and gain weight,” Hall said, “creating policies to reformulate those ultraprocessed foods so they don’t have that effect is going to be enormously challenging.”
Are the nutrients intact?
There’s another problem with foods that are broken down and reassembled — they may no longer contain the nutrients our bodies need and crave, said Giulia Menichetti,principal investigator and junior faculty at Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
“We are consuming more calories, but they are less dense in terms of micronutrients,” said Menichetti, who is also an affiliated faculty member at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University.
Breaking down the chemical and physical structure of the cells in a food, or a food’s matrix, can damage or even eliminate many of the nutrients in that food, said Anthony Fardet, a senior research scientist at the French National Institute for Agricultural Research in Paris.
“By fracking food much like we frack oil, we have fully deconstructed the food matrix, and this is associated with many times higher risk of chronic disease and early mortality and a degradation of global health,” said Fardet, who researches preventive, holistic and sustainable diets.
Such ultraprocessed foods are less satiating than minimally processed foods and contribute to a rise on blood sugar levels, according to research Fardet conducted.
Other studies have linked diets high in ultraprocessed foods to increased risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease, obesity, type 2 diabetes and depression.
“Before the Second World War, before we began using these new manufacturing processes, we never observed such a high level of chronic disease worldwide,” Fardet said. “So the question is, which degree of processing remains compatible with human food system sustainability and global health?
Some food processing may be good
Humans have processed food for centuries — the first evidence of fermentation was some 13,000 years ago. The simple act of peeling an apple, potato or carrot, simmering tomatoes to create a sauce, adding salt to cure and preserve meat, or canning food grown in summer for use in winter are all ways that we process food.
Processing can often be beneficial because in some plants, tough cell walls lock in vitamins, minerals and micronutrients, making them less accessible to the human body. When the cells walls of asparagus are weakened by steaming, for example, vitamins A, C, E, K and B folate are more available to be absorbed by the body.
Simmering tomatoes boosts levels of an antioxidant called lycopene thought to improve bone health and lower risk of heart disease.Cooked carrots release more beta-carotene, an antioxidant the body uses to create vitamin A. Overcooking vegetables, however, can destroy some of those same nutrients — vitamin C, for example, is extremely susceptible to heat.
The ingredients used in many ultraprocessed foods, however, have been subjected to much more than a bit of heat. Modified starch extracted from a slurry, for example, “can be roasted or cooked, or treated with certain chemicals that help give it specific properties,” according to the Starch Europe video.
“These are used in food preparations to improve, for example, their resistance to cooking temperature changes as well as extending shelf life,” the video says. “A small part of the starch or residue leftover from production is fermented and distilled into bioethanol for biofuels or disinfectants.”
The process creates “near zero waste of our precious agricultural raw materials,” the video says, and the technology is efficient and economical, creating products with long shelf lives that make our lives easier.
But we are paying a price, said Marion Nestle, the Paulette Goddard professor emerita of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, who has written books on food industry politics.
“The food industry has created an eat more environment — that’s what it’s supposed to do,” Nestle said. “And it’s fun — the foods do nice things for your brain’s pleasure centers and your hormones and the like, so it’s very difficult for people to stop eating them.
“The other way I put it is that individuals who are trying to control their weight in today’s food environment are fighting an entire food system on their own. That’s hard to do.”
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Hamburger
Embargo: NONE; **This image is for use with this specific article only** You may be eating predigested food, According to emerging science, it may be due to manufacturing processes that “predigest” raw food ingredients — creating ultraprocessed foods that bypass the body’s signals of fullness.
CNN
01 Feb 24
Vegetables
**This image is for use with this specific article only** Fermentation has been a form of processing for centuries. Sauerkraut, carrots, cucumbers and celery are just a few of the foods that can be pickled.
Alexander Donin/iStockphoto/Getty Images
01 Feb 24
Chips
**This image is for use with this specific article only** From chips to burger buns, many ultraprocessed foods are made from ingredients that are created during the manufacturing process, experts say.
Aleksandr Zubkov/Moment RF/Getty Images
01 Feb 24
Colorado’s top election official urges Supreme Court to keep Donald Trump off the state’s 2024 ballot
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President Biden prayed for peace in Israel and Gaza at the National Prayer Breakfast Thursday.
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Originally Published: 01 FEB 24 06:45 ET
Updated: 01 FEB 24 10:12 ET
By Nicquel Terry Ellis, CNN
(CNN) — Maudy Adkinson Johnson remembers walking across cow fields and busy roads as a child to get to her one-room schoolhouse in Spring Hill, Tennessee.
It was the 1950s, and Johnson said the Lee-Buckner School was teaching her how to read, write and do math problems. She was also making friends with other Black children.
Never once did she question why there were no White students at her school – instead, she said students were more focused on their education and building a sense of community.
“We never even talked about it being a difference in the races,” Johnson said. “We didn’t understand it.”
But whether the students knew it or not, Lee-Buckner was part of the Rosenwald Schools project — a broad effort to educate Black children in the rural South at a time when segregation prohibited them from attending White schools.
Julius Rosenwald, a philanthropist and president of Sears, Roebuck and Company, launched the project in partnership withBlack American orator and president of the Tuskegee Institute, Booker T. Washington.
Rosenwald, his nonprofit, The Rosenwald Fund, and members of the Black community raised funding for the construction of more than 5,000 schools, teacher homes and shops between 1912 and 1932, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.
But following the Supreme Court’s 1954 ruling in Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated schools across the United States, there was less of a need for Rosenwald schools, said Rachael Finch, a historian and preservation consultant for the Heritage Foundation of Williamson County in Tennessee.
Many of the schools became vacant and faced demolition over the years, Finch said, adding roughly 10% of the schools are still standing today.
Among them is Lee-Buckner, which is scheduled to be moved by a tractor-trailer this week from Spring Hill to the Franklin Grove Estate & Gardens — a landmark historic site in downtown Franklin, Tennessee.
The Heritage Foundation of Williamson County is developing the site with a $35 million capital campaign, said Bari Beasley, president and CEO of the foundation. The site will open in 2025 for tourists, school field trips and local resident memberships, she said.
Beasley said the organization plans to restore and transform Lee-Buckner into a historic monument.
Former Lee-Buckner students also helped the Heritage Foundation draw renderings of where desks and other furniture were placed when they attended the school, so the room can be recreated, Beasley said.
Beasley said Lee-Buckner remains a critical piece of Black history that needs to be preserved and taught, especially amid ongoing efforts by some conservative lawmakers to limit or change Black history lessons in schools.
“I don’t think you can truly be authentic without telling the whole story,” Beasley said. “And to be able to talk about it and have difficult conversations helps us all understand the world around us and how to make the world a better place.”
Finch said the Lee-Bucker school is a national treasure because it symbolizes the resilience of Black Americans. After the Civil War and during the Jim Crow era, Finch said there was a movement of newly-freed Black slaves working to build churches, cemeteries and schools for their communities.
If their community didn’t have a schoolhouse, many Black children would study and learn in their living rooms, front yards, fields and church pews, according to the National Park Service.
Rosenwald Schools,Finch said, played a major role in expanding educational access for Black youth.
“These schools became beacons of hope,” Finch said. “One thing that African Americans craved and sought after the Civil War was access to education because access to education meant knowledge and power … to be able to propel oneself into place of prominence through owning a business, having a home, owning land.”
The Rosenwald Schools have notably educated prominent civil rights activists including the late Congressman John Lewis, poet Maya Angelou and Medgar Evers, a civil rights activist who was assassinated in Jackson, Mississippi, in 1963.
But after schools across the US were ordered to desegregate, many of the Rosenwald schools became vacant and faced demolition.
“They became shadows and shells of the past,” Finch said. “But that doesn’t mean the community forgot.”
Roy Brown, who attended Lee-Buckner from around 1954 to 1963, said the school was a staple in his close-knit community growing up.
Brown, 74, said he studied math, English, history and social studies at Lee-Bucker. He also recalled going outside to collect wood for fire to heat the school during the winter months.
“We had an opportunity through the founders of Rosenwald schools to learn what we would have never been taught at home,” Brown said.
Now a retired Franklin police officer, Brown said he is thankful that Lee-Buckner is being preserved by the Heritage Foundation of Williamson County.
“It shouldn’t be neglected,” he said, adding that the history and significance of schools like Lee-Buckner should be taught. “Whether you’re White or Black, you should learn about this history.”
Johnson, who is now a local pastor, said she keeps in touch with many of her classmates from Lee-Buckner. She said she is excited the Heritage Foundation of Williamson County is saving Lee-Buckner and not allowing it to be demolished.
Johnson said she takes pride in this part of Black history.
“Not just because we had our own school,” she said. “But it gave us a chance (to learn) … a chance that we would not have had any other way.”
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Rosenwald Schools history
**This image is for use with this specific article only** A classroom in the old Mount Sinai Junior High School, a “Rosenwald School,” that was built for rural Black Americans during the Jim Crow era near Prattville, Alabama.
Jay Reeves/AP
01 Feb 24
Rosenwald Schools history
**This image is for use with this specific article only** A historic photo of students at a Rosenwald School. The schools educated generations of Black Americans, including prominent graduates like the late John Lewis and poet Maya Angelou.
National Trust for Historic Preservation
01 Feb 24
Rosenwald Schools history
**This image is for use with this specific article only** Rosenwald graduates from left, Leonora Gross, 79, Norman Hall, 80, Mae Williams, and Corinthia Ridgley Boone, 80, gather at the Ridgeley School in Capitol Heights, Maryland, in 2015.
Nikki Kahn/The Washington Post/Getty Images
01 Feb 24
Originally Published: 01 FEB 24 09:58 ET
Updated: 01 FEB 24 10:16 ET
By Kristen Rogers, CNN
(CNN) — What if you were able to have your favorite song basically on speed dial, ready to go for any moment that calls for it?
What’s known as a “Spotify tattoo” has made that possible: On Spotify, every piece of content has a series of unique sound bars known as a Spotify code, meant for sharing the content with someone when scanned with the camera function on Spotify’s mobile app. Get a code tattooed on your arm or another body part and, when scanned, it should immediately play the content associated with it.
(That is, when the tattoo has been done well, and especially when it’s fresh. The Wall Street Journal, for example, has interviewed several people who reported their tattoos were no longer working once both the body art and their skin had started to age.)
Spotify launched its codes in 2017. Exactly when the tattoo fad began isn’t clear, but on TikTok, videos tagged “#spotifytattoo” have garnered 14.8 million views. Ten million of these were on a viral clip of a UK-based tattoo artist showing off the results of a Spotify tat on his friend’s forearm — it played the friend’s wedding song, “A Thousand Years” by Christina Perri, to their delight. In the last few years, at least a few hundred people have also gone under the needle to pay permanent tribute to their favorite tunes, showing off their musical ink on TikTok or Instagram.
“We love seeing listeners wear the audio they love on their sleeves and helping them rep their fandom,” Spotify told The Wall Street Journal in a statement. CNN has reached out to the company for additional comment.
Tattooing the codes can be stressful, especially in that moment of truth between finishing the piece and testing whether it works, said tattoo artist John Lapides of United Tattoo in Fountain, Colorado. Lapides has inked two Spotify tattoos: One connected to the Michael Bublé song “Everything” in November 2022, and another in December of that year for “Gone Away” by the band The Offspring.
“I told them, ‘If it is scannable, fantastic. If it’s not scannable, I’m sorry, but that’s part of the risk,’” Lapides said. “Lo and behold, when we finished it was scannable.”
Reasons why people get these tattoos run the gamut: Some people simply want the fun party trick of flashing a phone at their arm to play Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” while others have more sentimental motivations.
The song choice of Lapides’ first Spotify code customer was related to a memory of their father who passed away, he remembered. The customer shared that the tattoo “almost brought their dad back around,” Lapides said, “because now they’re able to listen to the song and always have it.”
Other times, it’s simply a means of decorating the body, said Drew Hibbard, a tattoo artist and piercer at Blue Lotus Tattoo & The Piercing Lounge in Madison, Wisconsin. Hibbard has applied one Spotify tattoo.
“Life is short,” he added. “I’ve definitely fallen victim to getting quirky, fun tattoos just for the hell of it … Each one of my tattoos are like a time stamp for a part of my life.”
In conversations with CNN, Lapides and Hibbard discussed what to know if you’re considering having a favorite song immortalized on your body.
These conversations have been lightly edited and condensed for clarity.
CNN: How do you tattoo a Spotify code?
John Lapides: Prior to the actual tattooing process, I’d take a picture of the code and, like I would for any other tattoo, print it out on a machine that had ink on the back of the page so I could transfer the design from the paper to the skin. That helps me know that all my straight lines were straight, all my parallel lines were parallel, and all my circles were circular. I just follow those purple stencil lines with the tattoo machine as closely as possible, and then do the shading on top.
Are there ways to maximize the chances of it working?
Lapides: Make sure the tattoo is done on a flatter body part so the camera can read it as easily as possible with as little distortion as possible — I’m sure if it’s in some way rolling off the side of your arm, it will be harder to scan. Both tattoos I did were done on forearms, one was closer to the wrist and the other to the elbow.
Drew Hibbard: You don’t want it on your hands or feet because they don’t hold ink well and they’re always being used.
Lapides: Line weight and line thickness also play a huge role. The lines (in a Spotify code) vary in height, and if one of those lines is not straight or not symmetrical on the top and bottom ends, or on the left and right, the tattoo might not be readable.
It’s also good to have the lines be a little thinner than needed at first, because if it doesn’t work, you can thicken them — but you can’t take away thickness. And as time goes on, those lines will get a bit thicker (as skin stretches, ages or loses elasticity). You need to have gaps in between that are going to always stay gaps.
Also, the tattoo doesn’t necessarily need the three lines within that little circular Spotify logo, but it does need the circle.
Will these tattoos age well over time?
Hibbard: Spotify tattoos are a super cute and meaningful idea, but years down the road, who knows if Spotify will even be a thing? Also, companies are always upgrading what they’re doing — who knows if they’ll switch to a QR code like everybody else.
Lapides: I’m not sure if these will be scannable 10 to 20 years from now. People lose weight, gain weight or get pregnant. But I’ve hopefully given them the best chance of being scannable by leaving gaps or space for the tattoo to expand and age.
Hibbard: That’s why you should also pick a size that will age well — doing a 4- or 5-inch tattoo leaves a lot more room than a 2-inch one. And doing the correct instructed aftercare also helps. Always moisturize.
How can someone find an adept tattoo artist or studio?
Lapides: Studios’ websites and Instagrams are helpful resources; you can also find a reputable studio by good reviews or word of mouth. You can go to the shop as well to get a sense of their professionalism and respect for your input.
But not everyone in a reputable studio is created equal. Artists who do fine line, traditional, geometric or black-work styles — which revolve around very clean line work — are good choices, but a watercolor tattoo artist might not do the cleanest piece.
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Spotify tattoo
**This image is for use with this specific article only** The above ink, on the forearm of tattooer John Lapides’ first Spotify tattoo customer, leads to the Michael Bublé song “Everything.”
John Lapides/Spray Day Tattoos
01 Feb 24
Spotify tattoos
**This image is for use with this specific article only** This Spotify tattoo is for “Gone Away” by The Offspring.
John Lapides/Spray Day Tattoos
01 Feb 24
Wednesday, January 31, 2024 – Today the Buffalo AKG Art Museum announced it has been approved by the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) for a Grants for Arts Projects award of $50,000. This grant will support Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon, the first retrospective exhibition to trace the evolution of artist Stanley Whitney’s wholly unique and powerful abstractions over the course of his fifty-year career. In total, the NEA will award 958 Grants for Arts Projects awards totaling more than $27.1 million that were announced as part of its first round of fiscal year 2024 grants.
“The NEA is delighted to announce this grant to the Buffalo AKG Art Museum, which is helping contribute to the strength and well-being of the arts sector and local community,” said National Endowment for the Arts Chair Maria Rosario Jackson, PhD. “We are pleased to be able to support this community and help create an environment where all people have the opportunity to live artful lives.”
“Stanley Whitney’s lifelong exploration of color has created an oeuvre of stunning inventiveness and rigor that evokes deep human emotion, beauty, and hope,” said Cathleen Chaffee, Charles Balbach Chief Curator of the Buffalo AKG. “It has been one of the great honors of my career to work with Whitney on this, his long-overdue first retrospective. How High the Moon constitutes a historic moment not just for Whitney but also for the Buffalo AKG, and we are thrilled to have the support of the National Endowment for the Arts in this important endeavor.”
About the Exhibition
Stanley Whitney: How High the Moon surveys Whitney’s extensive, career-spanning investigation of color. The exhibition features large canvases from throughout the artist’s career, including early gestural works such as Untitled, 1972, and his first large-scale oil paintings, including Sixteen Songs, 1984. In works such as Untitled, 1992, Whitney began grounding rounded forms of color in his paintings within a loose grid. Around 2002, this structure led Whitney to begin making the paintings for which he is best known today: square, richly colored, gridded abstractions, including Undestructable Hymn, 2001; James Brown Sacrifices to Apollo, 2008; Elephant Memory, 2014; and Stay Song 66, 2019. Endless Time, 2017, a painting from this later period that the Buffalo AKG acquired in 2017, will also be on view.
Whitney’s major paintings from 1972 to 2023 will be accompanied by extensive installations of the artist’s improvisatory small paintings; his drawings and prints, which constitute a vital, often overlooked element of his practice; and a chronological selection of the artist’s sketchbooks spanning from 1987 to 2021, which offer a view into his engagement with the written word as well as contemporary social and political issues. The exhibition contextualizes his work within the artist’s diverse sources of inspiration, including music, poetry, American quilts, and the history of art and architecture.
***
For more information on other projects included in the NEA’s grant announcement, visit arts.gov/news.
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About the Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Founded in 1862, the Buffalo AKG Art Museum (formerly the Albright-Knox Art Gallery) is the sixth-oldest public art institution in the United States. For more than 160 years, the Buffalo AKG has collected, conserved, and exhibited the art of its time, often working directly with living artists. This tradition has given rise to one of the world’s most extraordinary collections of modern and contemporary art.
In summer 2023, following the completion of the most significant campus development and expansion project in its history, the Buffalo AKG opened anew to the public. The project is funded by a $230 million capital campaign, the largest such campaign for a cultural institution in the history of Western New York, including $195 million raised for construction and $35 million in additional operating endowment funds.
Representative Mike Waltz joined CNN to discuss the latest from Washington.
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Originally Published: 31 JAN 24 09:23 ET
Updated: 31 JAN 24 11:08 ET
By Amy Simonson and Lauren Mascarenhas, CNN
(CNN) — Oregon leaders joined forces to declare a 90-day state of emergency in downtown Portland, funneling resources into the city’s deadly fentanyl crisis.
Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek, Multnomah County Chair Jessica Vega Pederson and Portland Mayor Ted Wheeler each made an emergency declaration to address the public health and public safety crisis in Portland’s Central City, citing overdoses, deaths and fear driven by fentanyl use, according to a Tuesday press release.
“Our country and our state have never seen a drug this deadly and addictive, and all are grappling with how to respond,” Kotek said in the release.
Oregon voters passed Measure 110 in 2020, which decriminalized some use of hard-drugs, including fentanyl, a potent synthetic opioid. The measure has received criticism, as opioid overdose deaths steadily climbed since.
Opioid overdose deaths in the state increased from 280 in 2019 to 956 in 2022, according to the state’s data.
Nearly 70,000 people in the US died of drug overdoses that involved fentanyl in 2021, almost a four-fold increase over five years, according to a US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention report released last spring. Fentanyl is significantly more likely to be involved in a deadly overdose than other common drugs, according to the CDC.
Experts say reversing the trends in overdose deaths really depends on broader access to and use of treatments for opioid use disorder.
The emergency declarations were recommended by a Portland Central City Task Force last year.
“We are all in this together,” Kotek, a Democrat, said in the release. “The next 90 days will yield unprecedented collaboration and focused resources targeting fentanyl and provide a roadmap for next steps.”
The emergency order allows the city, state and county to allocate resources to the response and stand up a command center in the central city.
The effort will include two public health campaigns and increased outreach to get people into treatment, recovery and housing services. The release also cited the “continued missions between the Portland Police Bureau and Oregon State Police to hold individuals selling the drug accountable.”
The command center will share and report data on the impacts of fentanyl in downtown and use the data to respond to “acute needs and gaps in service,” the release said.
“We are acting with shared leadership to take urgent action today to respond to the very human toll fentanyl takes in our community, including overdoses, fatalities and day-to-day suffering, and the fear so many families are experiencing as a result,” Pederson said in the release.
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Tina Kotek
**This image is for use with this specific article only** Oregon Gov. Tina Kotek joined local leaders in declaring a 90-day state of emergency in Portland’s Central City.
Abigail Dollins/Statesman Journal/USA TODAY NETWORK
31 Jan 24