CityBeat stands corrected.

In this week’s Porkopolis column, which examines political fallout from the health care reform vote last month by U.S. Rep. Steve Driehaus (D-Price Hill), we said Steve Chabot — Driehaus’ predecessor and current opponent — hadn’t done much during his 14 years in Washington to improve access to affordable health care.

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The Children’s Defense Fund (CDF) will host a national conference in Cincinnati July 22-25 with a focus on child poverty, education and health care. It’s the first national conference hosted by CDF since 2003.

Child poverty and its causes will be one of the main focuses of the conference. Nearly 15 million children in the United States, or 21 percent of all children, live in families below the federal poverty level, according to the National Center for Children in Poverty (NCCP). A study from the NCCP found Cincinnati has the third-worst children’s poverty rate at 48 percent. Only Detroit and Cleveland were worse, with 53.6 percent and 52.6 percent, respectively.

“We’re going to look at all the range of policies and practices and the impact of those and what we can do,” CDF President Marian Wright told WVXU today. “It’s going to be a real teach-in on what we must do to move forward and stop the move backwards, which I think we’re in the midst of.”

The conference will also look at education issues. It seeks to shine light on the issue of the achievement gap between the poor and non-poor and racial disparities. A 2011 analysis by the National Center for Education Statistics found black and Hispanic students are behind their white peers by 20 test-points in math and reading tests provided by the National Assessment of Educational Progress. The difference equates to about two grade levels.

The conference will also look at child health care services, zero-tolerance discipline policies in schools and tools and programs that can be used to improve the lives of struggling children.

Anyone is free to register at CDF’s website to join the conference. Experts, doctors and activists will also be there. 

An anti-abortion group is defending the claims it makes on billboards criticizing Congressman Steve Driehaus (D-Price Hill), but comments from a prominent Catholic bishop appears to support Driehaus' stance.

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Republicans already have introduced a bill that seeks to repeal the health care reforms passed this week by Democrats, but only the most delusional of GOP “true believers” expect it has a chance of passage.

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There are protesters who have been standing outside of a pediatrician’s office almost daily since at least the summer. Why? Someone else in that same tiny complex is offering abortions. A woman who has taken her special needs daughter to that pediatrician’s office for more than 20 years was recently told by her minister’s wife that she needed to switch pediatricians. Abortion is “murder,” of course, so going anywhere near the “scene of the crime” must make her a co-conspirator.

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As part of CityBeat's continuing election coverage, we’ve once again sent a questionnaire to the non-incumbent Cincinnati City Council candidates to get their reactions on a broad range of issues.

Nine of the 14 non-incumbents chose to answer our questions. Others either didn’t respond or couldn’t meet the deadline.

During the next few weeks, we will print the responses from the non-incumbents to a different topic each time.

Today’s question is, “Do you consider the operation of health clinics to be an acceptable function of municipal government?”

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As Cincinnati Archbishop Dennis Schnurr and other Catholic officials speak out publicly against a new federal rule involving free birth control, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) defends the switch and says the criticism is misguided.

Last month the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) announced that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act — known informally as “ObamaCare” — would require nearly universal coverage of contraception.

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People who want to apply for the state of Ohio's new high-risk medical insurance pool can get free help at two upcoming events.

As part of recent health-care reforms, the state launched the high-risk insurance pool Aug. 1. The program is designed to offer affordable coverage to individuals who have been denied coverage in the past because of pre-existing medical conditions.

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A major effort is underway today to urge Congressman Steve Chabot (R-Westwood) to buck his GOP colleagues and vote against repealing the health-care reform law.

A national group, Catholics United, is placing about 6,000 telephone calls to Catholics who live in Ohio's 1^st Congressional District, that contains a recorded message asking them to have Chabot vote “no” on repealing health-care reform. The GOP leadership is expected to bring up the repeal bill, H.R. 2, on Wednesday for a vote by the U.S. House of Representatives.

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Because it can take years after exposure for symptoms to develop, many people who are infected with the virus that causes AIDS don't even realize it. More than one million people in the United States are estimated to be living with HIV, and approximately one in five people with HIV are unaware they're infected, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

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