Given a paragraph, generate a claim that is supported by the given paragraph. 1) The claim must contain information from within the paragraph. 2) A sentence within the paragraph can be used as a claim. 3) The claim should not have contradictions within the paragraph. 4) The claim should be at most one sentence long.

Over 100 residents of the apartment buildings in southeast Colorado Springs have been told to leave in recent weeks, according to Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment officials. Making matters worse, residents who left said looters broke in and took belongings they left behind. A Colorado Springs Gazette reporter witnessed a person break a window Friday  at the buildings owned by Denver-based Slipstream Properties. Attempts by the newspaper to reach company officials for comment Friday were unsuccessful. Exposure to even minute amounts of asbestos can cause lung cancer and other deadly respiratory conditions. Slipstream Properties bought the buildings in 2018, raising hope that conditions in the apartments would improve after years of disrepair and code violations. The asbestos problem arose during recent renovations. Renovation work can disturb asbestos, which decades ago was used in a variety of building materials including insulation. “We’re trying to understand how widespread this is, how many apartment complexes there are,” said Curtis Burns, field operations unit supervisor for the state health department’s asbestos unit. The building owners could face fines of $25,000 per day of noncompliance with asbestos-handling regulations, Burns said.
Asbestos, looting plague Colorado Springs apartments.

This is a tricky one. The story does not explicitly address cost, except to call text messaging “a scalable and affordable approach.” For many (or most) patients, the cost of receiving four text messages a week would likely be negligible — covered by an individual’s phone plan or by nominal text rates. However, not everyone owns a mobile phone, a fact that makes access (and cost) a more significant issue. However, the story does deliver on this point. The story discusses both the number of U.S. adults who own mobile phones (90 percent) and the fact that text messages are more accessible than other forms of mobile health communication (such as apps, which require patients to own smartphones or other smart devices). So, while we’d prefer a more in-depth discussion here, we’ll award a Satisfactory rating for the story’s nod in this direction. The story addresses the range of benefits reported in the study, such as reduced cholesterol and blood pressure, but doesn’t quantify that information or offer readers any context. For example, while the story says “patients who had received the text messages had reduced their cholesterol,” the JAMA paper reports that patients who received the text messages had a “mean difference [of] −5 mg/dL” in “LDL-C.” In other words, the information in the paper, while quantified, probably isn’t very useful to many readers outside the health industry. Is “a mean difference of −5 mg/dL in LDL-C” good? Bad? Irrelevant? This is where reporters have an opportunity to shine. If a news story can take those numbers and translate them into language that is accessible to non-experts, it provides a very real service. It would have been great to see that here. As long as people aren’t driving and checking their cell phones, there don’t appear to be any harms associated with receiving well-meaning text messages four times a week, so we’ll mark this one “not applicable.” This is a strong suit. The story not only offers a concise, but good, summary of the study — but it also goes out of its way to address the study’s limitations. For example, the study notes that the study “can’t tell us whether text messaging could eventually lead to fewer subsequent heart attacks among the patients receiving those messages or whether the positive health outcomes would continue past the six-month study window.” Good points, and we’re glad the story includes them. No disease mongering here. The story includes input from an outside expert who was not involved with the research. The story clearly meets our bar here, although it would have been stronger if it had reached out to at least one more independent source — preferably one who hadn’t written an editorial that ran in conjunction with the paper in JAMA. Yes, the editorial was independent and provides some insightful commentary. But it also means we already knew where this source stood on the issue. Finding another reputable expert, who hadn’t already weighed in publicly on the work, would have been great. The focus of the story is not so much on how the text message intervention directly reduced heart disease risk, but on the extent to which it resulted in patients taking steps to reduce their own risk — such as by exercising more, smoking less, making dietary changes, or taking prescription drugs on a regular basis. The story does discuss other “mobile health interventions,” such as smartphone apps — but notes that there don’t appear to be many mobile health projects that rely simply on text messages. The story also looks at how the text messages helped patients pursue lifestyle changes — like exercising more and smoking less — that reduced their risk. It was fairly clear from the story that this was a clinical trial, and that this particular service doesn’t seem to be available to offer customized, encouraging text messages for heart disease patients. From the start, the story frames this research in the context of the much larger “mobile health” field. For example, the story notes that “While there are more than 100,000 health-related apps on the market, the evidence to date is lacking as to whether many of those apps are safe or effective.” Since the story includes quotes from an interview, we can be fairly certain it went beyond the related JAMA news release.
Text Reminders Help People Lower Cholesterol, Blood Pressure

The Board of Regents approved the fiscal year 2020-2021 supplemental operating budget of about $28 million Thursday, The Honolulu Star-Advertiser reported. The request will be submitted to the state Legislature and Democratic Gov. David Ige. The university requested $2.6 million to hire 19 psychologists for the 10-campus system. The University of Hawaii Manoa has eight psychologists, the Hilo campus has three, and the West Oahu campus has 1.75 positions, while each community college has one position, said Allyson Tanouye, who coordinates mental health throughout the university system. “The national standard is one mental health professional per 1,000 to 1,500 students,” Tanouye said. “If we add the 19 positions we will be up to one per 1,500. That’s how low we are.” The mental health funding would also expand programs to prevent suicide, reduce mental health stigma, provide peer education, and alert new students and parents to college transition challenges, officials said. The largest item in the supplemental budget is $17.7 million to expand the Hawaii Promise Program scholarship to four-year state institutions. The university has proposed a flat amount to cover tuition and fees of Hawaii residents qualifying for need-based federal Pell grants. “This is looking to focus on the most needy students going to the four-year campuses,” said Donald Straney, vice president for academic planning and policy. “It would add Hawaii Promise on top of the Pell grants to cover the total tuition costs of students who are receiving those grants.” The request also covered staffing increases including positions for operations and maintenance, security, educational and cultural programming, and student mentors. ___ Information from: Honolulu Star-Advertiser, http://www.staradvertiser.com

University of Hawaii seeks mental health, scholarship funds.