It doesn’t take much to spark new furor in the debate over fluoride these days, and the unveiling of a new study that shows reduced cavities in Oregon’s schoolchildren has done just that in the past week. The delayed release of the 2012 Smile Survey has also heaped scrutiny on the Oregon Health Authority, which was expected to make the study public in February but didn’t get a draft out to media outlets until April 24.
“OHA’s delayed release of the study, and reported stonewalling in providing the data after media requests for it, has raised questions about OHA’s motivations in withholding the cavity data and whether fluoridation proponents have known about this data,” said a news release this week from anti-fluoride political action committee Clean Water Portland. The group had two specific queries: “1) Was the delayed release of the 2012 Smile Survey in any way related to influencing the water fluoridation ballot measure in Portland? 2) Did OHA share the results of the survey data with fluoridation promoters before releasing it to the media or public?”
The answer to those questions, to the extent it can be discerned by internal e-mails, appears to be “no.”
Hundreds of e-mails, released to Clean Water Portland in the past two days, instead indicate a largely helpful and busy OHA staff, willing to get the new survey out to the public but cautious data could be misinterpreted absent proper context. The e-mails, also sent to the Mercury, shed light on internal communications around the Smile Survey from January through Tuesday.
The bulk of the messages constitute the type of collaboration and housekeeping you’d expect with any large study: documents sailing back and forth for proofreading and correction, questions about data’s finer points, discussions of how best to release the information.
A typical example is this March 28 update on the study from Shanie Mason, Oral Health Program Manager at the OHA’s Public Health Division, to a colleague: “It has not been published. We are working on it as a priority. I am getting a ton of interest, which I expected, and am wondering if it would make sense to prepare a one page set of talking points for media to have ready when we do release the report.”
At no point in the e-mails the Mercury reviewed is there a suggestion that the report was being withheld for political reasons.
The most interesting bits—and maybe this is just because I’m a reporter—come from state staffers parsing over how to deal with media requests.
“Please note, (Oregonian reporter) Brad Schmidt has expressed concern that were are intentionally delaying the release of the report,” wrote Mason in an April 22 e-mail. “This is, of course, not accurate and any delay has been the result of lack of staffing and significant workload.”
In a note to a Department of Justice lawyer and others four days earlier, OHA Spokeswoman Alissa Robbins wrote: “If there is nothing that prohibits us from releasing it, let’s get them what they’ve requested and try to set up some time to give them background so they understand the data.”
Portland’s upcoming vote on water fluoridation—to be decided May 21, via Ballot Measure 26-151—is only ever glancingly mentioned in the e-mails.
State Epidemiologist Katrina Hedberg, in an April 8 message following a records request from a KATU reporter, wrote to Public Health Director Mel Kohn: “Mel— because of the political sensitivity with this, I wonder if you would like to be involved in responding to KATU?” He declined.
There’s a good deal of push-and-pull between reporters and state staffers in the documents. KATU, which has been a darling of anti-fluoride activists in this debate, is quick to invoke lawyers and hint at legal action in the e-mails.
“Also, I just want to confirm that OHA will providing (sic) all the raw data that we’ve requested,” reads an April 16 note from KATU reporter Shellie Bailey-Shah. “I’m sure that you and I would both prefer that we keep our attorneys out of those.”
“It seems pretty unreasonable to assume that we drop everything we’re doing to respond to this request;” commented Mason, in a later e-mail to colleagues,”I have only four staff including my admin specialist and myself and none of us are data analysts. Poor form, in my opinion,”
There’s more—a lot of it—and if I could figure out how to post it all here, I would. The formatting of the records makes that tough.
It’s worth noting that OHA staffers are clearly aware their e-mails constitute public record, and likely keep that in mind while writing back-and-forth.
The 2007 Oregon Smile Survey was the linchpin in Healthy Kids, Healthy Portland’s campaign. They could not trumpet loud enough that 35% of Oregon children suffer from untreated dental decay, and this was the basis for their self-proclaimed “dental health crisis” justification that Portland needed water fluoridation.
Now, even though the same Oregon Smile Survey showed that children in the Portland Metro area have a dramatically less prevalence of untreated dental decay – 21% – than the rest of the state (we actually brought the state average down from 44% outside of Portland to 35%), the pro-fluoride campaign is still clamoring on about a dental health crisis.
Even though non-fluoridated Portland’s dental health numbers are better than the national average, the pro-fluoride campaign tried to make the case that Vancouver and Seattle, who fluoridate, have lower rates of decay thus the need for fluoride. But that doesn’t a make a pile of sense when you look at the rate’s of fluoridation per region compared to the prevalence of untreated decay.
Despite Vancouver having only 10% untreated decay, 48% of its residents have access to fluoridated water, a figure which is lower than Washington’s overall fluoridation average of 64.6%, and dramatically less than the 80% fluoridated King County, the county the city of Seattle resides in, whose decay rate is 15%.
Seattle has an 8% higher rate of dental sealants than Portland, very important factor in preventing cavities, a reduction of 70% according to the CDC. Seattle enjoys a higher avg. income than Portland by appx. 10k; more than any other factor, it’s poor socio-economic status that is predictive of higher rates of dental health problems, not the fluoridation chemicals in the water or lack of them. Finally, the difference between Oregon and Washington are stark in terms of dental health care available to the poor. Oregonians are served by 11 low income dental health clinics. Washington, with not quite twice the population, is served by 115.
Oregon sat fifth from the bottom in it’s dental health figures and according to the CDC’s 2010 Water Fluoridation Statistics, the percentage of persons receiving fluoridated water in Oregon is 22.6%, making Oregon the least fluoridated state in the US that has submitted data on untreated decay. Yet, the states with significantly worse dental health numbers all had significantly higher rates of fluoridation. Kentucky, the state who was virtually tied with Oregon in it’s dental health numbers has 99.9% of its population receiving fluoridated water!
Texas, with the highest untreated decay rate of 43% has 80% of its population drinking fluoridated water.
So it is that the draft 2012 Smile Survey is showing across-the-board improvement in every area of dental health, without any change in fluoridation rates. The percentage of children with untreated decay also declined from 35% to 20% statewide! That’s down by nearly half.
The 2012 Oregon Smile Survey was supposed to be released months ago. If the OHA was taking its sweet time releasing this report because they didn’t want the data to be misinterpreted, well too late. The date from 2007 has been misinterpreted to the point of absurdity. Something tells me that if the new Smile Survey’s data reinforced the side that was getting hundred’s of thousands of corporate and PAC dollars, we would have heard about it a while ago …
I’M LOVING ITALICS DAY AT THE MERCURY. WHEN CAN WE HAVE CAPSLOCK DAY?
Drunk & Write, it is standard form to italicize (or actually “make oblique” as they show up in my computer fonts) periodical names as literary works (ok somewhat of a stretch here). How we know this: it’s in Strunk http://www.bartleby.com/141/strunk2.html that later evolved into Strunk and White, containing the same text: http://colfa.utsa.edu/Sociology/StrunkWhit…
I presume Strunk and White is an eponymous inspiration for your own nick name.
….someone forgot to close an italics tag on a different post and it affected the whole blog. It’s fixed now. Do you feel better about your life, having discussed that?
Rightwinger Shellie Bailey-Shah rattles her legal sabre at the Health Authority because she and the supposed progressives of Portland both start from the same assumption, which is that the gubment must be in on the evil conspiracy.
Does it make the anti-flouride troops feel good to know that they have so much in common with the tea party?
Nothin’ to see here, folks. Two-month delay in releasing a report, tens of thousands of dollars paid out to groups supporting a measure, nothing wrong here, EVERYTHING’S FINE.
Since the study doesn’t seem to support the argument for fluoridation, it seems to me that if the OHA were truly acting for political reasons, they would have done everything possible to release the study in February so that it would be forgotten by the time of the vote in May.
As it is, by releasing the study now, just weeks before the vote, I’d say they’re showing a laudable level of responsibility, and accusations of “stonewalling” strike me as bizarre and absurd.
“It seems pretty unreasonable to assume that we drop everything we’re doing to respond to this request.”
Did somebody not get the memo that they get to charge reasonable costs for answering requests even if it requires a contractor? Considering it takes a few minutes to click “forward” on email, if the delay is due to being “cautious data could be misinterpreted absent proper context.” that’s a political reason for delay. The sunshine statutes don’t require that data has to be released with political propaganda that favors a bureaucrat’s interest.
Data is data. Interpretation is up to the public, not bureaucrats. That’s why we have sunshine statutes in the first place, to get to raw data like this so we can think for ourselves. As a data wonk myself, in my professional judgement you’ve only shown how terrible the process was and that it was delayed for political reasons.
Your quote here is laughable:
“At no point in the e-mails the Mercury reviewed is there a suggestion that the report was being withheld for political reasons.”
That’s the thing, when looking for wrongdoing your job isn’t to see if the emails said there was an explicit written plan to delay it for political reasons. Your job in this article is to see if they delayed it for political reasons. Asking if the head honcho should be involved for political sensitivities, and discussing how to spin it for political reasons before releasing it — that stuff is definitely a delay for political reasons. The correct thing to do would be to click forward, attach, send — a few minutes of time.
Keep burying your paper into irrelevancy though. This article clearly indicates that you and your editors simply don’t care about real transparency.
You don’t have the slightest idea how public records requests are handled in this state, seth.
This case was a model of public responsiveness.
Oh shit, time for yet more nefarious conspiracy theory crap.
Thank you, Seth. Your comment is spot on. It does not inspire confidence when a ‘journalist’ requires cartoon-esque language of a political coverup before concluding that ‘politics’ could have been involved. Under this standard, the delay would have only been ‘political’ if an OHA staffer wrote something like:”Mel, in order to keep to our secret plan — wink, wink — to help ensure the passage of Portland’s fluoridation measure, we must do everything we can to postpone the release of the data.” What makes the requirement of a smoking gun here so daft is the journalist’s own recognition that “OHA staffers are clearly aware their e-mails constitute public record, and likely keep that in mind while writing back-and-forth.” Sadly, it appears the Mercury sees its role as a fluoridation advocate, not as a news organization.
Euphonius, I’ve made some requests myself, and I’ve paid for costs, too, so I’m familiar with how public requests are handled. Sometimes (most of the time) they are quick, as in the same day or while you are on the phone with them, but other times they take a while if they have to process data and they give estimates for when the task can be completed.
Oregon has no specific time limitations so making up excuses for delay is not something easily held to account. One essentially has to hint at legal involvement as KATU did, in some cases. The pressure by the mainstream media suggesting political delays is because they do enough requests to know this is not something that requires a delay.
“In its proposed prohibition on sulfuryl fluoride, EPA acknowledged that the pesticide’s residues on food are “responsible for a tiny fraction of aggregate fluoride exposure” but deemed that children’s total contact with fluoride in the environment — through drinking water as well as toothpaste — posed an excess risk of tooth and bone damage.”
http://www.nytimes.com/gwire/2011/01/11/11…