The Environmental Protection Agency may begin an investigation into a series of facial birth defects among migrant farm workers in Kettleman City, California. If the EPA takes on the case, it will mark a sharp turn in the agency's attitude towards issues of environmental justice. 

Are you and your family suffering from the winter stir-crazies? Are you hungry? Why not cook together? Romilly Newman, an 11-year-old chef who hosts her own Youtube cooking show, "Little Girl in the Kitchen," insists that it’s easy. And Alyssa Volland, founder and president of the Mini Chef culinary institute for kids, says it can improve everything from your family’s diet to your kids’ math skills.  

I try to teach kids that that feta cheese can taste good. —Romilly Newman

Dr. Susan Clancy believes that for young children, sex abuse is oftentimes more confusing than it is traumatic at the moment that it’s happening. In her new book "The Trauma Myth: The Truth About Sexual Abuse of Children — And Its Aftermath," she argues that more victims would come forward if we stopped framing sex abuse as terrifying and violent, and instead acknowledged that child victims often love and want to please their perpetrators.

New York Mayor Mike Bloomberg is cracking down on salt in city restaurants. But is salt really that bad for us? In this week's food segment, Marion Nestle, author of "Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety," explains the science and politics of salt. And Melissa Clark, food writer for the New York Times, compares her low-sodium homemade breakfast offerings to those sold at fast food restaurants.

This week’s tech segment looks at innovations that can help Haiti now. We’re not talking about sophisticated computer programs or gadgets, but low-tech, low-cost tools that are easy to use. We talk with two experts to find out they're making a difference in an emergency situation.

Can a checklist save a life? Dr. Atul Gawande thinks so. He talks with us about his new book, “The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right,” and about how the simple act of checking items off a well-designed list can transform healthcare, workplaces, and our response to life’s disasters. 

A quadriplegic mother is at risk of losing her five-month-old son in a custody battle with the baby's father, who cites her quadriplegia as a reason to deny her custody. Should the courts be involved in such cases? If so, where does ADA regulation end and family law begin? Lisa Belkin introduces us to various custody cases involving parents with disabilities, and Dr. Corinne Vinopol, president of the Institute for Disabilities Research and Training and a hearing officer in disability disputes, shares her insights about parenting, disabilities, and the law. 

Follow along with New York Times' readers at Lisa Belkin's blog post on this story.

What have we learned from the swine flu crisis that wasn't? Joan Nichols, associate director of research at the Galveston National Laboratory at the University of Texas Medical Branch, and D.A. Henderson, public health expert and co-author of "Smallpox- the Death of a Disease: The Inside Story of Eradicating a Worldwide Killer," share their differing opinions on what we did right and what went wrong.

 

President Barack Obama's stimulus plan cut the price tag for COBRA, the federal program that allows workers to keep their healthcare benefits for 18 months after they leave a job. Under the bill, laid-off workers pay only 35% of the actual cost of COBRA benefits. That provision expires this month, meaning many unemployed workers will face suddenly higher healthcare premiums. We speak with Jody Dietel, chief compliance officer for WageWorks, a company that administers COBRA and other benefits programs. We also speak with Cheryl Fish-Parcham, deputy director of health policy at Families USA.

According to a recent study, child abuse cases went up 35 percent nationally between 2001 and 2007. In one hospital in Phoenix, child abuse cases are up 40 precent over last year alone. Can the recession be blamed for these gloomy statistics? Or is there something else causing this trend? We get insights from Amy Terreros, a pediatric nurse practitioner who diagnoses child abuse at Phoenix Children's Hospital, and Jim Hmurovich, president and CEO of Prevent Child Abuse America.

For decades, motivational speakers like Tony Robbins have told us that positive thinking can vastly improve our lives. But Barbara Ehrenreich, the writer famous for the 2001 bestseller "Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America," thinks they might be wrong. Her new book is called "Bright-Sided: How The Relentless Promotion of Positive Thinking Has Undermined America," and she tells us why she thinks positive thinking might not be all it’s cracked up to be.

A heated debate has emerged in parenting circles: Should kids be allowed to walk to school? In 1969, nearly 50% of kids walked. Today, that number has dropped to 13%, with many parents arguing that it’s just too dangerous nowadays to let kids walk. Are they right? The Takeaway's correspondent, Andrea Bernstein, was at the Walk21 NYC conference yesterday in New York to talk with people about urban planning strategies for city walking. We also talk to Gina Lovasi, from Columbia University's Mailman School of Public Health, about the health implications. Jeremiah Weintraub, a fifth-grader from West Virginia who's been riding his bike to school for over two years, joins us with his thoughts on the matter.

Last week, opponents of healthcare reform began their most recent strategy: raucous shout-downs at town hall meetings with U.S. senators and representatives. Tonight, President Obama is holding his first town hall meeting since the protests hit the news. The president will try to sell his plan to ordinary Americans in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. We talk to Corey Lewandowski, who is organizing a protest in Portsmouth this afternoon. Princeton historian Julian Zelizer joins us to look at the role of grassroots protests in the current healthcare debate and throughout history.

Some listener suggestions:

  "This is Jay from Boston and I would urge everyone to just say no. No, no no.""

  "Here's what I would say, shut up, shut, shut up!."

  "Co-pay, go away! Co-pay, go away! Co-pay, go away!"
  "I say, it's broke, fix it. It's broke, fix it.""

This week in The Takeaway's Monday agenda: the Senate confirmation hearings of Sonia Sotomayor, the health care debate continues, bank earnings out this week may cause some controversy and Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner is in Europe and the Middle East. The Takeaway is joined by Marcus Mabry, the International Business Editor for The New York Times. Also joining the show is the BBC's Diplomatic Correspondent Jonathan Marcus.

Hospitals are the latest front of President Obama's drive to reform health care. Vice President Joe Biden is expected to announce today that hospitals have agreed to spend $150 billion dollars over the next ten years to care for some of the uninsured. What does that mean for hospitals—and patients? The Takeaway talks to Dr. Herbert Pardes, President and CEO of New York Presbyterian Hospital and to New York Times reporter David Herszenhorn.

For more, read David Herszenhorn's and Sheryl Gay Stolberg's article, Health Deals Could Harbor Hidden Costs, in The New York Times.

Yesterday the Congressional Budget Office passed judgment on one of the key bills overhauling the health insurance system. Here with a look at who might get insurance, who won't and what it'll cost is Todd Zwillich, The Takeaway's Washington Correspondent.

One of the ongoing mysteries of the H1N1 influenza outbreak is why it killed 26 people in Mexico, but only two people right across the border in the U.S. Is it simply that the virus is less virulant now? Or can we learn something by looking at how each nation handles public health crises? The Takeaway talks to Dr. Julio Frenk, former Mexican Minister of Health and now Dean of the Harvard School of Public Health.

Today close to 46 million Americans are without health insurance, and of those, more than half are people of color. According to the Institute of Medicine, At least 1 in 3 Latinos is uninsured, as compared with 22% of African Americans, 17% of Asian and Pacific Islanders, and 13% of whites. In the third installment of our series, The Color of Money, we're examining how the economic downturn is exacerbating the already pronounced healthcare disparities among minorities. Job losses since 2007 have led to an estimated 9 million fewer Americans receiving health coverage through the workplace, and a corresponding rise in Medicaid enrollment. Well off white people who are losing their jobs these days are likely to fall into a safety net of COBRA coverage, which they can probably pay for out of their unemployment. Low-income ethnic minorities are losing their jobs too, but the world of healthcare they are likely to enter is one where prescription drugs are too expensive, co-pays too steep to pay, and the ER becomes a last resort.

To assess the current situation and to gauge how bad things could get we are joined by two experts in the field. Cara James is a Senior Policy Analyst for the Race, Ethnicity and Health Care group, and the Director of the Barbara Jordan Health Policy Scholars Program at the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. And Dr. Robert Schiller is Senior Vice President for Medical Services and Training for the Institute for Family Health at Beth Israel.

For more of The Takeaway's series on The Color of Money, click here.

The Takeaway talks to two residents of Dublin, Indiana, who met with former U.S. senator Tom Daschle, D-S.D., the likely Health and Human Services secretary in President-elect Barack Obama's Cabinet. Health care concerns are always on the mind of Jill King, a homemaker with breast and uterine cancer, and Travis Ulerick, an emergency medical technician. They give us their take on the senator's fitness for the job at hand.

Confirmation hearings for the Obama Cabinet begin today with former Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle, who is up for secretary of Health and Human Services, first to face the congressional firing squad. Daschle is likely to be confirmed, but how will the new administration make health care reform a priority as the economic crisis persists? Len Nichols, director of the Health Policy Program at the New America Foundation, joins The Takeaway with some insight.

Join the discussion here and on change.gov.