FARGO, N.D. – Life on the streets is hard on anyone’s health and homeless people tend to have more medical problems. That life also makes it hard to get effective treatment when medical problems inevitably occur, not just because there isn’t a place to heal but also because follow-up visits with doctors aren’t simple.
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The consequence is a life expectancy that’s about 25 percent shorter for the homeless and, because they’re in and out of emergency rooms often, higher costs to the health care system. The aim of the medical respite program, funded by the Sanford Health Foundation, is to reverse the cycle.

GRAND FORKS, N.D. –  In her hands, University of North Dakota professor Holly Brown-Borg holds up two mice born on the same day in separate litters.

The larger mouse likely will stay spry and active until age 18 months before dying at 2 years. That’s about as long as a normal mouse can expect to live in ideal lab conditions, without the threat of predators or the ravages of cold and hunger.

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The dwarf mouse, on the other hand, likely will stay active until at least 30 months and die at three years. In human terms, this is the equivalent of living to 120 and not showing signs of aging until 100.

GRAND FORKS, N.D. – “The best bang for your buck is not going into schools. We’ve done it for years and we’ve seen the tobacco initiation rate stalled,” said Theresa Knox, her voice taking on the tone of someone telling you a trade secret. “The best bang for your buck is these system-wide changes —but it takes time.”

Grand Forks Public Health’s tobacco prevention coordinator was explaining why her department wasn’t putting as much emphasis on going out and talking to people about the dangers of tobacco as it seems to do in encouraging various powers that be to impose indoor and even outdoor smoking bans.

MOORHEAD, Minn. – Mike Jensen is one of a couple of men teaching fatherhood classes in Fargo-Moorhead.

“It can be a little overwhelming. My job is just to inform them of these situations and to let them know I’ve been through it, survived it,” he said.

Dads-to-be didn’t always have classes designed just for them. Two or three generations ago, they weren’t very welcome in the delivery room. In the 1970s, Lamaze classes brought dads into the picture as moms’ helpers during birth. Education for parents gradually became more inclusive and, today, there are classes tailored for all members of the family, such as other children and dads, from pregnancy through childhood.