​We have been talking a lot about cancer lately, but for good reason. November is lung cancer awareness month, a time to reflect on the second most common cancer and the leading cause of cancer death among both men and women.

The crazy thing about lung cancer is that the vast majority of these diagnoses can be prevented.

Most are related to smoking (or secondhand smoke), or less often from exposure to radon or other environmental factors.

Of course, some lung cancers occur in people without any known risk factors and it’s not yet clear if these cancers can be prevented.

The bottom line here is that if you smoke, you really should quit. About 80 percent of lung cancer deaths are thought to be the direct result of smoking. The longer you smoke and the more you smoke, the greater your risk. Simple.

If you’re a non-smoker spending significant time around secondhand smoke, the news is bad for you too – it’s thought to cause more than 7,000 deaths from lung cancer each year.

While smoking rates have declined in the city, Staten Island is still reporting the highest in all of the boroughs, with 17.4 percent of residents smoking versus 14.3 percent city wide.   

Youth smoking rates are also higher on Staten Island, notes Health and Wellness Director Ginny Mantello, M.D. “It’s important to start early with education and awareness, especially since smoking is an addiction and a gateway - like alcohol - to youth experimenting with other substances later in life,” she said.

City wide, it’s reported that 15,000 public high school students currently smoke cigarettes, a third of whom are predicted to die prematurely as a direct result of smoking. If that’s not grim enough, more than 200,000 children are still exposed to secondhand smoke at home, an unacceptably high number.

While smoking is to blame for most lung cancers, some other risk factors include exposure to Radon, asbestos, and other carcinogens (most likely found in certain kinds of work environments), previous radiation therapy to chest, and other situations.

However, there’s a conversation to be had with your doctor to determine who needs to be screened for lung cancer. Over-screening can be dangerous as there are levels of radiation in the screening. 

“Only in recent years has a study shown that a test known as a low-dose CT scan can help lower the risk of dying from this disease,” Dr. Mantello noted.

To determine if you should be screened for the disease, be prepared to review these criteria with your primary care doctor:

-          Are you 55 to 74 years old?
-          Are you in fairly good health and able to tolerate surgery if needed?
-          Do you have at least a 30 pack-year smoking history?
-          Are either still smoking or have quit smoking within the last 15 years

If you’re still reading this, here’s a quick guide to reducing your risk:
•           Don’t smoke.
•           Avoid secondhand smoke.
•           Get your home tested for radon.
•           Be careful at work. Health and safety guidelines in the workplace can help workers avoid carcinogens.

The following blog post was written by Chris DeCicco, Counselor to the Borough President.

​Someone I know well recently asked me, obviously tongue-in-cheek, if I believe my intensive workout regimen will prevent me from aging or dying.

Here’s the simple answer, indeed, the only answer: no, of course, not.

But I will readily admit that I do work out with an almost religious zeal, and go out of my way to make sure I eat in a healthy way.  Why?  Because I want to ensure when I do age, I will age well.  I want to give myself the best shot at entering my 70’s, 80’s, and beyond living an active life, mentally sharp and independent until the day I die.  That’s why I wake up at 4:30 every morning to work out.  That’s why I turn down dessert when it’s offered. 

It seems like almost every day new research is released showing that the benefits of exercise are even greater than we thought.  Not only does it have positive effects on our hearts and other internal organs, but also our mood, our energy, our ability to stay mentally sharp - and who knows how many other benefits have yet to be discovered. 

So many maladies facing Americans today are preventable, based on simple lifestyle choices we can all make – that is, if we choose to make them. 

Personally, for a long time, I didn’t make the right choices.  Working out was a bothersome chore, and when I did motivate myself to get on the treadmill for a few days in a row, I quickly became discouraged because I didn’t see the results I so unrealistically expected.  I didn’t understand that health, wellness, and fitness is not a sprint, it is a marathon properly measured in years and decades.

It requires an unrelenting effort - week after week, month after month, year after year. 

We spend a great deal of time at Borough Hall thinking and talking about these issues, because we want to share with Staten Islanders the steps they can take to improve the quality of their lives, both now and in the future. And we preach baby steps.  A person who has not worked out in decades and eaten poorly for years cannot make a total lifestyle change a short term goal.  While that may happen for a rare few, it certainly doesn’t happen often.  But, there are definitely a series of smaller steps that can be taken to bring you closer to your goals.

Here are a few tips that I can share from my own experiences that may be helpful:

1.     When changing your diet, begin by making small adjustments. If you drink sugary drinks, start by cutting those out and see how you feel. Once you have successfully managed that change you can then begin making additional changes that, taken together, will lead to big results. 
2.     When designing a workout regimen, look for something that is fun for you. Working out doesn’t necessarily mean spending hours on a lonely treadmill – unless you like that “alone time” to reflect, or perhaps listen to music.  Do you like to bike?  Then bike.  Do you like to dance?  Find an active dance program. The number of activities that can form the basis of a sustainable workout regimen are infinite and limited only by our imaginations.
3.     Workout with someone, or a group of people, that you like to be with. Especially in the beginning; it can get discouraging when you aren’t seeing progress. So find a friend - or group of friends - to commiserate with during those difficult first few months. 
4.     Focus on this: Living a healthier lifestyle can be fun. You will find yourself able to do things you were unable to do when less fit.  Is playing with your children or grandchildren something you are forced to avoid because it knocks you out?  Exercising and eating right may give you more energy, keep you more alert and allow you to enjoy your loved ones in a manner you may have been missing out on for years.
5.     Keep the big picture in mind.  You are changing your life in a meaningful way for both the short and long term.  If you miss a day of working out here or there, or eating a “cheat” meal on occasion, it’s not going to ruin all your progress and it’s not grounds for quitting  
6.     Find the time! We are all busy with work, families, school, and probably a myriad of other activities. But there are 24 hours in a day, and we must utilize those that work best for us. That is why I work out in the pre-dawn hours - it doesn’t interfere with either my job or my family. 
I follow my own advice on all six tips, they work for me, and I can’t imagine living any other way – but it’s a decision you have to make for yourself.   I believe that if you do, you’ll look back on it as one of the best decisions you ever made. 

We here at Borough Hall will continue trying to provide you with information about the tools that can help you on your journey.

We don’t know shit. 

“And they began to use a pair of mantras around the office. The first— ‘We don’t know shit’ — kept them humble when they thought they were rolling.”  

This self-deprecating admission comes from a Washington Post article on Chicago Cubs President of Baseball Operations, Theo Epstein, and was one of a few beyond-baseball takeaways that stayed with me after reading it.  I know good counsel when I see it, and so even at the quarter century mark on my life in public service, I readily bought the self-counsel Theo Epstein was selling.  

In my business, hubris is the deadliest of sins.  So when I say, “We don’t know shit,” I am most definitely including myself.  And, of course, you.

I have no problem with people having strong opinions.  I like it actually.  On an Island where the apathetic are more numerous than dangerous drivers, where some elevate disengagement to a level of Zen-like bliss, I have always had, if not a great tolerance, a preference for the opinionated sort. I’d take them any day over a societal zombie with no sense of what it means to be an engaged member of a community.

But if you’re going to bloviate in my direction, I’d appreciated it if you had a semblance of knowledge about the subject matter at hand. 

With the arrival of the internet, everyone in my orbit seemed to use that platform to air his or her viewpoint.  Professionally, I embraced social media early on and saw it as a great tool to pop the bubble that surrounds elected officials, to varying degrees, on every level of government.  It allowed me to engage the public more – and more directly - and to be better informed on just about every issue across the board.  And it gave me a more direct access to divergent points of view.  All right there at my fingertips. 

Suddenly, I could read the thoughts of learned journalists throughout the world.  With the click of a mouse I could be kept better apprised of the goings-on of colleagues.  And lo and behold, revealed in an instant would be the inner-most thoughts of anyone who cared enough about any given topic to discuss it publicly.

This is an opportunity, I remember thinking.  This is a chance to broaden my perspective and learn something from those whose life-experiences differed from my own, who saw the world through a completely different set of eyes.  And I often did.  Cool!

But here’s the deal: we don’t know shit.

You see, a weird thing happened when I began to utilize this tool, this vehicle, in my search to become “better.”  I didn’t just come across new information and new perspectives, I found that I entered a world where everyone’s opinion was actually an undeniable truth, and if you disagreed with it, you did so at your own peril.  Even if your opinion differed in merely a small and seemingly insignificant way - you were wrong.  You were bad.  Perhaps you even warranted a dreaded “label.”
What was once merely a sharing of thoughts and opinions quickly became, “I am right and you are wrong.”  Then it got worse. It morphed into “I am right and you are a horrible human being.” To glean usable information, I now had to sift through gallons, lakes…. oceans of uninformed, ignorant, and insulting rants, all couched in a self-righteous tone that served to suck the oxygen of debate right out of the room. 
​
It ended all discussion, for if anyone had the temerity to see things even slightly differently, each side acted as if the world stopped spinning on axis because of the sheer loathsome stupidity of the other’s opinion.

But here’s the deal: we know shit. Which is to say — despite the haughty attitude and itchy fingers eager to affix a label, apply a generalization or place someone, dare I say, in a basket — YOU know shit.

I recognize that your unique experiences, history and point of view, give you a keen ability to see angles that others don’t.  I recognize that perhaps you have an academic acumen which I cannot match, and must readily acknowledge.  As well, I’m forced to recognize my own deficiencies, which might be the result of ignorance, “privilege,” or just plain lack of experience.  And finally I’m led to the realization that we will have a better dialogue after I concede that not only do I know shit – you do, too.

Theo Epstein is going to the Hall of Fame. He knows A LOT of shit, and I think you do, too.  But if someone at his level of acumen believes part of his success is being vigilant about admitting he doesn’t know it all, shouldn’t you and I take note and grab onto that same belief?

I have worked my ass off in government for 25 years.  I have learned at the knees of great mentors.  People who don’t share my gender, race, religion or sexual orientation have blessed me with their wisdom and friendship and made me a better person.  I care deeply about the covenant I have with the people I represent, and I protect it vigilantly. 
I am good at what I do.  But because I want to be as good at my job as Theo Epstein is at his, I’m going to work on the premise that I don’t know shit.  And I am going to keep working on that premise until the day I finish with this calling and walk off the stage, and then I won’t be heard from again. 

​The following blog post was written by Frank Santarpia, Senior Adviser to the Borough President.

My father was a veteran.  That’s a simple statement, but I freely admit it took me a long time, and a lot of growing up, to fully appreciate what that meant.  What it meant to our country, what it meant to our family, what it meant to my father, and in the end, what it meant to me.

Frank Peter Santarpia, born in 1925, son of Italian immigrants, believed in the greatness of America.  So did every man who fought beside him on that rock; so does every man who proudly calls himself a veteran today.  It is the job of those who did not serve in the armed forces -- and I did not -- to make sure that those who did are recognized, celebrated, and most importantly, thanked.

And that is the importance of Veteran’s Day, it sharpens our focus, and that is why I want to tell my father’s story.  Not because it was remarkable, but because for the American military, it was so very typical.

Easter Sunday came early in 1945, and many of the tens of thousands of Marines waiting nervously in troop transports a few thousand yards off the beaches of the Ryukyu Islands must have feared that this day's celebration of the Resurrection would be their last.  Others would note with irony that it was the first of April: April Fool's Day.  All of them, however, were blanketed by that one inescapable, overarching reality -- their lives might end before the sun dipped below the far western fringes of the Pacific Ocean.

Shortly before dawn, the first wave of United State Marines would slip over the sides of their troop transports, climbing down rope netting into the rocking landing craft below known as Higgins Boats.  The codename for the operation was Iceberg.  The invasion of Okinawa had begun.

My father enlisted in the Marine Corp on the day he turned 18 in 1943, and after a year of stateside training, he was shipped overseas.  On Guam and Iwo Jima, he trained for amphibious landings.  By that time, the United States Navy and Marine Corp had island-hopped almost all the way across the Pacific -- almost.  There was but a single island to capture, an island that would serve as an important forward base in what everyone believed was inevitable: the invasion of the Japanese homeland.  That one island was Okinawa.

PFC Frank Santarpia, 3rd Platoon, I Company, 3rd Battalion, 29th Regiment, 6th Marine Division, twenty years old, went ashore with the first wave in the gray dawn of that April morning.

There's not the time or space to recount here the gruesome details of the ensuing battle, but let it be noted that Okinawa was the most heavily defended island of the war.  By the time it was secure, 12,513 young American men were dead.  So, too, were the commanding generals of both the American and Japanese forces.  The wounded numbered 38,916, and my father was one of them; he was shot on May 16, during the battle for a cursed mound of earth the Marines nicknamed Sugar Loaf Hill.  

He received a Purple Heart, spent three weeks in a makeshift island hospital, and was sent back to his platoon before the operation was completed.  His regiment, the 29th, had been thrown into a meat grinder: their casualty rate was over 90%.  Within the 22nd and 29th, the two regiments that finally secured the hill on the 18th of May, two of every three men fell.

As I said earlier, despite his remarkable courage my father's compelling story was far from unique – when I asked him, he would tell me that he was simply doing his job alongside tens of thousands of other Marines and soldiers.  In the same way as any other American fighting for freedom, past and present, his actions represented the norm, not the exception -- and to the day he died, any and every detail about that battle had to be coaxed from him.  He never talked about it voluntarily, and he never thought he did anything special.  

He was just a scared kid from Brooklyn.

Veteran’s Day is upon us, America, and it is time to start remembering.  It is time for us to perform a service for our country.  Maybe that service is simply telling our children or grandchildren about things that perhaps their schoolbooks never will.  Maybe we should tell them about war and tyranny and the great men and women who stood ready, stand ready to this day, to keep us safe.  

And I know that until I draw my last breath I will never forget, and when my grandchildren are old enough I will tell the story of those who fought and died for our flag and our freedom, and one in particular who took a bullet  on a Godforsaken piece of volcanic rock that was six thousand miles closer to Tokyo than it was to Ebbets Field.

We must tell them what it means to be a veteran, and why we owe them so very much.  Because if we don't tell them, nobody will.