15:23 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : All right, so we are recording. So thanks again for, joining us for the discussion today about the community health improvement plan.
15:34 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Alright I got the robot voice of my ear. All right, a few quick housekeeping type things. As I said, we are recording.
15:42 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : And we are.
15:45 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Going to be making that recording available. We'll also make all of the slides and information that we covered today available as well. If you do need, closed captioning, there is a closed captioning button on the bottom of your screen, it's a little CC, so you can turn that on if, you do need that assis.
16:04 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Assistance. Again, we do have everyone muted. When we get to the discussion, form part of the, the conversation today, if you want to speak, there's a little raise hand icon that's how we will be allowing people to unlock their, their mute button there. If you are unlocked and you do do some speaking.
16:25 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I'm please put yourself back on mute when you've, when you finished speaking. Lastly, we did send out a document called Quickfax on top priorities for everyone that registered for this conversation today. We really hope everyone did have an opportunity to review that document. It's going to guide the conversation today.
16:46 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : But if you do still need it, it is dropped in the chat. It's the link up in the chat so you should be able to click on it and open that document up so you know, what we are referencing when we talk about that document.
17:00 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : So today, again, we are meeting about the community health improvement plan and we have a great team to lead and facilitate the conversation, but we are gonna kick it off with our commissioner of Health, doctor Burnstein.
17:14 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Thank you and good morning everyone. So i'm Gail Burstein, the IRI county Department of health Commissioner and a pdnutrition. So, you, I just want to frame that what the child and the chip are to the county. So their foundational work for our department, and yes, they are required by federal law and state law.
17:34 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : But they also keep us connected to our primary focus of protecting community health and safety and using all the resources in our purview, including your expertise and experience to do so. So this is an opportunity to assess trends in our community's health, what our current needs are, and how we can improve outcomes. This.
17:55 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : That is the core function of our department and our Office of health equity has centered its work in diving deep into data trends, current status, and outcomes. So I wanna thank our key hospital partners, Catholic Health, Leida Health, and ECMC. They are members of the planning team and have been working with us.
18:15 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : For a year already on this project. We also give a big thank you to live Well Irie and all its members for all community partners that they've helped bring us, help bring to the table as well as for everybody in participating today. So community partnerships and collaboration are the key to any and all.
18:36 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Efforts to improve health in our community. The Department of Health is really meant to service as a facilitator or a connector in the process of developing a community health improvement plan. And that is what we are here to do today. We need all of you, those working in the, those working in the community to give us.
18:56 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Important feedback and information so that we can collectively focus our efforts to make meaningful impacts on the health of all eury County residents. We rely on your feedback to be able to allocate our resources, our staffs supply, budgets, and time. Having such an expansive group of participants gives us access to your insights, your idea.
19:17 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : And your vision for healthier Eri County. Help us think of what we haven't thought of. There's space for creative plans with purpose here. We want to be, and we want you to be our guide as we find ways to bring about meaningful and measurable change. So we have a lot to consider, so the big picture under chronic di.
19:38 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Prevention, maternal infant health, addressing substance use disorder, and tying those into documented disparities, connecting those to evidence based interventions and measuring our progress in doing it all in a political environment that has become less friendly to the goals and systems of public health. So again, I know.
19:58 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Everyone is very busy, so we are so thankful for you all taking the time to be here right now. And now I'm going to turn this over to Kelly Wolfer to give a brief background on the community health assessment and improvement process, and then orient everyone to how this meeting will go today. So thank you.
20:21 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Thank you.
20:21 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Reverse. Good morning, everyone. I'm Kelly Marie Woolford I'm the director of health equity and director of the Office of health equity. I want to welcome you here and say thank you for your participation. Thank you for showing up. Thank you for doing all of the work you do, I wear many hats not just this community.
20:43 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Hat as a director of health equity and I know that you all do as well, and so we encourage you in this process to bring as much as you to the conversation, your knowledge, your experience, both professional and personal, as we work together to be able to develop the community health assessment and.
21:02 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : The community health improvement plan. So I'm gonna do a very quick refresher of how we got here and the process for completing today and the work that lies in front of us. So the twenty twenty five twenty thirty community health assessment is also called the CHA. So you'll hear us.
21:22 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Use the term CHA or say it out loud. Community health assessment, and the community health improvement plan or chip is the resulting work plan from the work being done on the chat. So the community health improvement plan or the, the chat is where we collect the data.
21:43 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : And use that information to.
21:47 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Assess the status of community members. Many of you are probably familiar with this process and with this document. And then the chip is where we develop an implement our plan collectively to be able to address the highest priority issues in the community. So we've been working on the CHA and the chip.
22:07 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Projects since the end of twenty twenty four, and to date we've already conducted or we've already conducted our community surveys, we've conducted our medical provider surveys community focus groups, and interviews with medical providers. The findings from our medical provider and community surveys were used to.
22:28 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Interactive dashboards which are previews you see on the screen at the bottom on the right there, as well as the link to those.
22:38 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Initial dashboards. This work was combined with the secondary data from National and state level systems and other data sources that were reliable that we came across. We also reviewed in this process the finding of previous work done by the office of health equity, which are our health equity reports, and you can.
22:59 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : On the screen as well. All of these steps have gotten us to where we are right now, and because of those steps we were able to put together our quickfax document. It's only fifty pages, you know, it's not three hundred and twenty six and this document is distributed, has been distribut.
23:19 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : To all of you. Mike is also included that in the chat. Mike, if you could repost that in case it doesn't show up for people that have come in later, and so distributing that document, we are moving forward with the expectation and understanding that you have read and gone through the quick facts on the thirteen.
23:40 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Community and health topics from all of the work that we've done thus far. So, you can see that the larger cutout on the screen is from the quickfax document there on the left, and we hope that you are familiar with those topics cause that will be the discussion, the those thirteen topics will be the discussion points for.
24:01 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : So what are we actually doing with those thirteen topics and the discussion today? The goal of our meeting today is to select three to five issues out of the thirteen that we will focus on in the community health improvement plan. How are we gonna do that During this meeting, we're gonna do a brief review of.
24:21 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : The thirteen topics, and when I say brief I mean very brief. I strongly encourage you to, you know, use the chat function if you just even need to make a note, just put it in the chat, all of that is being recorded and we'll be able to pull that information and use it and the development of the chip. The comments are your opportunities to be able to be hear.
24:41 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Heard. Again, we are gonna be moving quickly through those thirteen topics, and we'll have about.
24:48 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Well, and what we want you to do in that space is to add contacts and add scope to the topic being covered. The comments could be relevant from professional or personal space, and we want to be sure to include, again, all of the parts of you in this process that you are willing to share with us.
25:09 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Some information on resources that we may not be aware of can go into chat, programs that are happening can go in the chat. We are gonna have about five to eight minutes per topic. There's thirteen topics, so we'll only be able to take one or two comments in the raising of the hands and and unmuting phase.
25:29 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Of the review. And so in order to get through all of the topics and the finish on time, so we can have our second meeting, we'll only be able to take one or two comments. So if you want to speak, please raise your hand, we will only be taking one or two comments after the conclusion of our meeting. Everyone's going to receive a link to.
25:49 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : To vote for their top three to five issues. Use all the information in the quickfax document, use the information you've heard in today's discussions, use your own personal professional knowledge, use your, you know, knowledge of community, knowledge of industry to be able to help us all make this decision and move.
26:10 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : The, the chip planning process. From there, the chopship planning team is gonna select the top three to five issues based on the voting that you all do. We do want to acknowledge that there maybe some community issues or health conditions that are not included in today's discussion that you feel very strongly about. We.
26:30 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Completely understand and.
26:33 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Uplift that, you know, those concerns, but we we some say butt and we also went to great lengths to collect.
26:44 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Thousands of community surveys and community members have directed us to this point. So we won't be able to discuss or add to the quick facts document with other topics outside of the thirteen. Again, I encourage you truly to use chat feature. We will go through all of the questions even if we don't have time to touch on them today. And.
27:04 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : And with that, I turn our time back over to Mike. Thank you Mike and Laura.
27:11 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Yeah, thanks so much Kelly. So I am Mike Weece, I'm the epidemiologist, one of the epidemiologists with the Eury County Office of health equity, and I'm gonna be helping to facilitate the conversation around around all these topics today. So on the screen, we have actually listed out, all those topics that we're gonna cover. So they're broken into two groups.
27:32 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Community factors, which we'll go through first, and then health conditions. And we're gonna go through them one by one as we discussed today.
27:43 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : So before we move into that first topic, I just want to talk a little bit more about the types of information and the types of comments that we're looking for. So if you have any knowledge or experience with the issue that's presented, we suspect, we, we really suggest that you kind of focus your comments on one of the following. So something like the size or sco.
28:03 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Of the issue, this could be, you know, your county residents of all demographics are struggling with with mental health, so we're, you're, you're basically reaffirming that this is a, this is impacting everyone. Or it could be a comment on the severity or seriousness of the issue. So, you know, something like addressing substance use disorders as a matter of life and death. You know, people are dying if they're not getting.
28:24 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Access to Narcan, that type of comment about the seriousness or severity. Comments also about the ability to impact or change the issue. So some some things maybe out of the scope of what we are able to address. So something like earning a livable wage would be helpful to so many of our vulnerable residents, but I don't think we have the power to.
28:44 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Actually address that. And then making us aware of programs resources, interventions that are either present or absent, that could address the issue that we're discussing. So there are many food access resources available, but there's a lack of awareness about them. So that's just some examples, if you're gonna do a comment, it doesn't have to address all of these.
29:05 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Points, any one of them would be fine. And as a reminder, when we get to the topic, if you do wanna speak, use that raise hand icon, and that way we'll be able to, to unmute you. As a reminder, if, you have other comments, but you don't want to voice them through audio, don't be shy shy, use.
29:25 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : That comment box, and, and put your information in there. We're also going to be reviewing all those comments, sharing those with, with community partners that we're unable to make it today. So again, don't be shy, I don't think you wanna hear from me for the next two hours. We want to hear from you. So again, we're gonna spend about five.
29:45 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : To eight minutes per topic depending on, you know, if, if some are shorter than others or or something like that. And in order to go through them all, and cover them all, after we take a few com comments, you may just see the slide advanced, so that's your signal that we are moving on to the next topic. Helping us stay on time today is.
30:06 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : My colleague Laura Laura, would you like to quickly say hi?
30:12 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Everyone I'm Laura the other epidemiologist here. Thanks again everyone for being here and as Mike said, I will be assisting with the time management of this discussion. Yes.
30:24 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : So you may hear Laura yell at me and tell me we've spent enough time to move on to the next topic. So, again, we just apologize if you do have, you know, things to say and it, we don't have time to, to keep them in, but that is what the chat then is there for. Feel free to add them there if you if we don't have time to get to you. So.
30:45 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : With that, I think we will be jumping into our first topic.
30:52 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Now if I can get us to the next slide. Oh.
30:59 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Sorry, there's a little lag here. All right, so our first topic will be housing options that are affordable and safe.
31:08 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : So for this one, we'll just do a little bit extra background. So with all the topics that we are discussing, we also kind of put the page number up that you can find some background information in that quickfax document, so in this example, we do have page four. So on page four is where information in that quickfec document would.
31:28 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Reference anything we've pulled together related to housing, and then also on the, on each slide we just kind of have a little reminder of the type of comments we're looking for. So with that, if you would like to speak to anything around housing options that are affordable and safe, raise your hand or, start putting.
31:49 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Some things in the chat and we would be happy to hear from our first couple of comments.
31:58 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : All right, don't be shy. This could be anything about, you know, housing, affordability, the safety of housing, access to housing, all things like that. So if you have any thoughts on that as an issue to health in Eary County, we'd love to hear.
32:16 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : From your, and if you do speak, just briefly say your name and organizations. Alright.
32:26 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Got a couple of hands raised, so.
32:35 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : So when you, you'll get like a little thing that says you are able to unmute your, your microphone. So once you get that feel free to speak.
32:50 : Nkurunungi, Lara : I believe you're unmuted. Okay.
32:52 : LuAnne brown : Hi, it's Luinne Brown I'm the CEO of Buffalo prenatal Parentingal Network. I was very interested in this one because I've been complaining about it for ten years as doctor Burstine will tell you.
33:06 : LuAnne brown : I pretty much agreed with everything that was in here, you know, the clients that we deal with are pregnant parenting moms I don't understand why we can't fix this issue, but it's everything you guys acknowledge, you know, the cost, the conditions, you know, we have work arounds that we do with our moms and we have a relationship with the, with.
33:25 : LuAnne brown : With the city to get inspections done and get landlords cited. Sometimes they don't care, but, we're also involved in the eleven fifteen waiver, which is if we get paid, we'll be a really positive step for these moms because, you know, we can pay rent and we can pay.
33:47 : LuAnne brown : For renovations for the house, so this is like the number one issue for me. I will tell you that. Okay, that's all I gotta say. Okay.
33:55 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thank you.
33:59 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I believe Frank, are you I think you're unmuted.
34:03 : Frank Cerny : Yeah, thank you. Yeah, so just briefly, of course this is a huge need for everybody. The and we deal mostly with the rural populations and the problem is, is that we've been told for fifteen years now that royal areas can't support forty fifty unit projects, but those are the only.
34:24 : Frank Cerny : Projects that generally get funded because they're the only ones that quote can make money, can be sustainable. So we need some special attention given to small projects in rural areas which are the only ones that can be sustained.
34:42 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thanks Frank and alright I think we could take one more Broadrick. Yeah.
34:54 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : You're able to unmute if you want Broadrick.
35:17 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : We can move, I think we have time if we want to take Al, if you're able to unmute.
35:45 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Well, I don't see any more hands. Do you.
35:50 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : This one?
35:52 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Oh, a jackie. I see.
35:53 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Decky Cambro?
35:56 : Jackie Kimbrough : Hi.
35:58 : Jackie Kimbrough : I agree with everything that was mentioned, but I also want to bring up that I do think that for individuals who are struggling with substance of mental health, that sometimes when we, they do get access to housing, they don't always know how to properly.
36:18 : Jackie Kimbrough : For the home, which is why we get a lot of pushbacks from landlords. And I think we do need to add a step in teaching individuals how to care for a home when it comes to like cleaning and properly taking care of the home because I think that's where a lot of our pushback comes from with landlords having bad experiences with property.
36:38 : Jackie Kimbrough : Being destroyed. But a lot of our individuals, these, this is the first time that they're moving into their first apartment. So they don't always get taught held to do that even though they do have case managers there. They don't have someone actively preparing them for what that means before they actually get into a home. Thank you.
37:00 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Excellent. All right, thanks so much everyone. I think we'll move from this. So, any last minute comments throw those in, and then we'll move to access to affordable healthy food. So, this.
37:18 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : This topic, again, was one of the the ones that the community filtered down as most important, and from extra information on this topic would be available in, on page seven, starting on page seven, and again, if anyone has.
37:32 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Comments that they'd like to present related to this, again, it could be, if you are aware of programs that are affective at delivering affordable healthy food or things you've heard of that, that could be resources, those types of things are, are what we would love to hear.
38:01 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Candice I believe you can unmute.
38:23 : Jackie Kimbrough : I would just suggest that I'm not for sure that a lot of clients are aware that at farmers markets that they could use their snap benefits and that those snap benefits are sometimes doubled at farmers markets, so if you have a hundred and snap benefits, if you use them at the farmers market, it turns into two hundred. And so, just making the community of where.
38:44 : Jackie Kimbrough : And where their local farmers markets are because they do and do accept those, benefits.
38:59 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thank you.
39:02 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Yeah, Broadrick, you're unmuted if you'd like to s.
39:07 : Broderick Cason : Thank you Mike. Hello everyone. I'm, so I think under the third bullet, our village of impact change for the issue.
39:18 : Broderick Cason : Is going to be very interesting because as you know, or you may not know in the big bill, I'm not gonna call it beautiful, but the big bill, there is some significant change in snap benefits. And so that if in fact things go as the.
39:38 : Broderick Cason : Written, we're going to have to begin to think about the realities of what our alternatives will be. And the reality of reality is, as you all know, speaking to the choir, we don't have enough grocery stores, we don't have enough.
39:55 : Frank Cerny : Things that.
39:56 : Broderick Cason : Affordable corner stores, you know, all these kind of places that do have some affordability. There's only a, you know, select few number of those. So I think that in the issue about impact and change, the question becomes as we begin to brainstorm and think as a larger.
40:18 : Broderick Cason : What are we left with? What can we do that's practical that we can offer to people because the change is going to be significant in what people were able to spend in snap sat vendors and who's even eligible. So I think that the third bullet is impactful right now.
40:39 : Broderick Cason : Thank you very much.
40:40 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : No, thank you Brotter.
40:42 : Nkurunungi, Lara : I think you should be able to unmute and make a comment?
40:46 : Turkovich, Stephen : Hey, can you guys hear me?
40:49 : Turkovich, Stephen : Doctor Turkevich on the president of Ocea and a pediatric hospitalist I think this is probably the biggest threat to pediatric health and wellness.
40:58 : Turkovich, Stephen : The rise of processed foods and, how they become so widespread in in every aspect of life makes it very, very challenging. Personally, when my son moved to city honors and I saw what they were getting for breakfast and lunch, unfortunately his weight went up signific.
41:19 : Turkovich, Stephen : Because of the, the, the types of food that were, that were providing our children in schools. So this this is a multi layered issue. I think the ability to impact is challenging. However, there's some things we can do focusing on school lunches and foods, and ensuring that they are not processed, that they don't have.
41:39 : Turkovich, Stephen : You know the the artificial ingre ingredients and other sort of things that are driving the obesity epidemic and the fact that now at least a third or more of children have chronic illnesses, which is to me, a national health crisis and just gonna continue to get worse. But also, I think we should be focused on advocac.
41:59 : Turkovich, Stephen : At the, at the state level first and looking at what the state government can do in terms of regulating the types of foods that come into our schools and or into our our markets. I think unfortunately it's much more complicated than providing fresh fruits and vegetables to kids.
42:18 : Turkovich, Stephen : The high fructose corner serve artificial sweeteners, all those sorts of things that are just universal. Until we can get our hands around that, you know, providing a child an apple a day is not going to make a dramatic impact in the chronic illnesses that are coming from the unhealthy foods they're eating.
42:40 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Great, thank you so much for those comments.
42:50 : Frank Cerny : Sorry I did did you say Frank? Yeah.
42:53 : Nkurunungi, Lara : We have a comment for this one? I do have a minute, so.
42:56 : Frank Cerny : Yeah, and while I represent rural areas where.
43:00 : Frank Cerny : The distance of grocery stores is between five and ten miles for the majority of the people we serve in the rural areas. We've come up with by listening to others with a proposal that somehow municipalities subsidize mom and pop stores and f.
43:21 : Frank Cerny : In a rural areas the rural malls that we call dollar General be subsidized so that they can in fact carry fresh protos and and healthy foods so that they're available to our populations so bottom line, can we come up with some way to make it affordable for s.
43:41 : Frank Cerny : Owners to do what needs to be done to improve access to healthy foods.
43:55 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thanks. I think, yeah, we'll move on to the next topic. So great, great conversation there. I saw a lot of great comments in the chat for that one too. So thank you, and let's let's just keep the the ball rolling on this. So the next one, I think we started to dive into this Frank kind of started to address this, the, the.
44:15 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : The distance issue with some of these things. So the next topic is access to reliable transportation. This does cover kind of both aspects of transportation with public transportation systems as well as access to things like personal vehicles or ride sharing or bikes and all sorts of ways just to.
44:36 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Get around yourary county. So, we're gonna start talking about this topic again, if you have thoughts on.
44:45 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Any of those bullet points, the scope of the issues, severity, our ability to impact it or any programs resources or interventions, go ahead and you can start typing up your thoughts and dropping them in the chat or raise your hand if you'd like to speak to some of this.
45:02 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : And again, this is page eleven in our quick facts guide.
45:20 : Nkurunungi, Lara : As you should be able to unmute yourself.
45:43 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Anyone else for this one?
45:49 : Nkurunungi, Lara : If anyone's struggling.
45:53 : Nkurunungi, Lara : The mute button should be at the bottom of your screen in that ribbon there. Once I send you a request, it, it should let you unmute yourself there.
46:07 : Candace Moppins : Here I am. Thank you.
46:10 : Candace Moppins : Candice Moppins from the Delivan graduate Community Center a few years ago there was a program that United Way sponsored through child family services called the Waste to work Loan Program, but it provided resources five thousand dollars or less, for low income families who may have had issues with their car.
46:31 : Candace Moppins : Providing for repairs.
46:34 : Candace Moppins : And it was a wonderful program. So it wasn't only for, for auto. One of the things as I was a participant many years ago was that part of the process was, was that I had to learn how to maintain my vehicle so that I wouldn't have to possibly, you know, have the issue that I was having with.
46:54 : Candace Moppins : The car. It allowed me to get myself and my children where we needed to be. But it was an excellent program. I don't know if it others are familiar with it, but it was, it was something that we should probably look at I don't know if you can buy power now for five thousand dollars, but certainly back then you could.
47:18 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thanks for those comments.
47:21 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Anyone else on transportation? I know this comes up in a lot of our discussions, we hear issues that are rural based with the distance between things. We hear.
47:36 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Issues in the city about just, you know, inability to access the, the public system. So if anyone has worked on any of those, you know, addressing any of those in the past or anything, we'd love to hear from you on, on those types of things.
48:02 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Okay.
48:10 : Nkurunungi, Lara : It looks like you're unmuted, Luanne.
48:13 : LuAnne brown : Like, two things I wanted to mention about the transfortation.
48:18 : LuAnne brown : So we have a problem pro program called gobaflo mom, which provides transportation for pregnant moms.
48:27 : LuAnne brown : Was actually stirred by United Way through a grand and we took it over. I'll tell you that it's, you know, because the prenatal appointments are so important for our moms. So we have a navigator that actually either gets mom's bus passes or if they're eligible for Medicaid cabs gets them Medicaid cabs. And we run the program for probably.
48:47 : LuAnne brown : Five years and, you know, we can't take credit obviously for every full term baby that comes, but we did, when we had an evaluation done, the moms and the program actually had less premature kids and if their kids were in the nicku, they were in there a shorter time. The other thing I think they Candice brought up I was thinking about this about the grand thing, so we.
49:07 : LuAnne brown : We have a program that also through United Way.
49:12 : LuAnne brown : Called work Life Solutions, which they started for nonprofits and, you know, they, they piloted it for free. I ended up buying into it because basically what it does is.
49:25 : LuAnne brown : Employees can get a loan of five hundred to a thousand dollars.
49:32 : LuAnne brown : And the requirement is they have to open a check a savings account. So it kind of gets them into the mode of.
49:40 : LuAnne brown : But I just got the lead the radius report and, you know, the two top reasons that people were using it, which is the reason I kept, I paid for it is one was credit card debt. The other one was power issues. So I agree with, you know, cause that's, you know, and especially with like my staff.
50:00 : LuAnne brown : That are not, you know, they always say they're one step above the clients, they work with. It does become an issue, you know, for transportation.
50:13 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Great.
50:20 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Yeah.
50:22 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Alright, any other additional comments I definitely saw some things going into the chat, a few comments related to.
50:31 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Issues around people with disabilities using public transportation.
50:39 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Getting the medical appointments and and such.
50:44 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : We do have time if anyone else has another comment on this one.
50:55 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Want a minute to thank.
51:13 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Yeah, some things about sidewalks and clearing, snow clearing for sure.
51:24 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Okay.
51:27 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Think it's ok to move on. Folks may have more to add on say topic thirteen or twelve and we may need more time there. Yeah.
51:37 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Alright, so we're gonna move on.
51:44 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : So the next topic we're gonna discuss is.
51:50 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Access to community services and resources. So this starts on page.
51:56 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Sixteen and the.
51:59 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Quick facts and just kind of to start this if you look in that document, that term sometimes is a little vague, so for clarity, this is really anything.
52:10 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : That the community kind of provides back out to, to members. So that can be resources from businesses, so places that do, you know, back to school giveaways or clothing drives. This could be community centers, youth centers senior centers, access to those or the availability of those. This can be just the.
52:30 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Presence of grassroots or community based organizations and it can really even be the services provided from the, from the government. So really anything that someone might.
52:41 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Request from the community at large to help them in a time of need. That's what we're talking about when we talk about, access to community services. So, anyone have thoughts about, about this topic.
53:11 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Had whoever that.
53:11 : Carol Murphy : This is, this is Carol Murphy from Harvest House. We are seeing an increase in number of people being referred to harvest House for things like clothing and food for their children. We're also seeing a huge increase in numbers of people who are uninsured or under in.
53:32 : Carol Murphy : Coming to our medical and dental clinics, and you probably gonna get to that later, but, one of the things that we are seeing is that.
53:44 : Carol Murphy : Because of the cuts in government funding.
53:48 : Carol Murphy : We're getting more referrals to our services because people are losing insurance or they or they don't have it, the immigrant community.
54:00 : Carol Murphy : Fewer resources and opportunities to have access to basic human needs like food. We have a, we have a food as medicine program for seniors and for.
54:13 : Carol Murphy : Families with children. But we're just, our numbers are like doubling every time we open.
54:23 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : This is Karen Nickelson from the center for elder Lawn Justice, and I think this this issue sort of cuts across a few of the other.
54:33 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : Thirteen topics that were raised because I agree with the prior speaker that everybody's numbers are going up and access to healthcare and access to nutrition is going to be through community based organizations, through churches. One of the things that the Republican bill that just pa.
54:54 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : Is relying on is that people won't be able to recertify for benefits I mean they're projecting a lot of their savings around Medicaid and Snap because they'll be increased reporting requirements. There'll be increased work requirements. They'll be in some cases for Medicaid reapplying for benefits every six months for some groups. So.
55:15 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : There is a lot of.
55:18 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : Of bad stuff coming. And I think the community based organizations are gonna really be the backbone of how we respond to that as a, as a Western Year community.
55:37 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : All right. Thank you.
55:40 : Nkurunungi, Lara : SSCDC, you should be able to unmute.
55:54 : Nkurunungi, Lara : It looks like you're unmuted now.
55:56 : SSCDC : Okay, wonderful. So my name is Tally Rodriguez I'm the health equity coordinator at a small educational focus.
56:04 : SSCDC : Nonprofit called the asset CDC, which is the senecast Street Community Development Corporation. We have been doing education and health outreach for a while. I am a bilingual person and I think my number one topic are there are different platforms where you can actually one list yourself, though. We know that.
56:24 : SSCDC : For the providers there is a wave of referrals coming, but you can also text in multiple languages the resource directly to a cell phone or a, website, so I mean, there's a lot that I have to comment on, but coming from, the English as second language community, my number one issue is language access and.
56:44 : SSCDC : I can drop the link for that platform and if anybody has any questions about how to use the referral service, I'm happy to help, but that is a free text service that you can text your clients or your navigators can text your clients directly, and I think over twenty languages.
57:06 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Add that to the the chat and, that's just a good reminder that if, you know, on any of these topics you're aware of programs that are going well in the community, that's this is an opportunity to to kind of elevate their work and, and make us aware of that.
57:24 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : As well as if you're, you know, working on a specific focus area and you know there's programs or services that are outside of area that that might be good to bring here, those are also things to, to drop in the chat as well.
57:41 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Alright, so last call on.
57:46 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Access to community services and resources.
57:58 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Alright, we are now on to.
58:01 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Employment options that pay a livable wage. So, this is.
58:07 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Kind of a, kind of all encompassing statement about what we heard around.
58:14 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : The availability of different employment options where those jobs are located, the general rate at which people are paid for certain services, so this is kind of a financial stability type statement and if you wanna see what we've pulled together on this topic, that's starts on.
58:35 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Page nineteen of the, the quick facts guide. So if you have anything you'd like to say around employment or adequate income, this is also where just kind of a general individual is struggling with poverty or families that are struggling.
58:56 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Needing financial assistance for a variety of things. All of that would kind of come under this, this general topic.
59:23 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thing here.
59:32 : Carol Murphy : We've just got one comment on workforce development and employment options. We are seeing since Covid here in our new hope education center at harvest House, we're seeing an increase a large increase in numbers of individuals who are reading at a third grade level and.
59:53 : Carol Murphy : Are not able to even get into the employment options that pay a livable wage. So we've kind of had to go backwards a little bit and instead of focusing only on.
1:00:08 : Carol Murphy : Job training for a little livable wage, we're also having to do quite a bit of, of remediation so that people are able to get into the pro just even get into the workforce development programs.
1:00:31 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thank you for that.
1:00:33 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I think Jackie, I believe. Yes.
1:00:37 : Jackie Kimbrough : In Kimber with crisis services program supervisor, the crisis intervention team. I forgot to say that. I totally echo that tenfold. One of the things my case managers and myself are running into is individuals unable to read. And it is stopping getting them to any type of job training program because they're not able to read and.
1:00:58 : Jackie Kimbrough : And some of the GD programs that we have here, don't offer a lot of tutoring services for those individuals that are that far behind, especially when they take their deep GD practice test. We're we're going to individual that is struggling with that exact same thing. So I think we have to hit that on the educational level because.
1:01:18 : Jackie Kimbrough : And you're not gonna get employed here if you, if you're struggling with reading.
1:01:24 : Jackie Kimbrough : Thank you.
1:01:26 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thank you for your comment. That's, that's an excellent point. Kinda, and if it hasn't already been obvious to kind of everyone on the group, you know, a lot of these topics have overlap and are intertwined and, you know, we did ask in the initial surveys that got us down to these thirteen. We did ask about education in a variety of.
1:01:46 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : And, it did come up in in in some ways didn't make the top thirteen most.
1:01:52 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Requested or highest priority, but I mean, definitely that's a key highlight of how, you know, education is tied to our employment options.
1:02:06 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Has anyone on kind of this general topic, you know, programs or resources that are.
1:02:13 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Bringing in employment options or developing, any sort of business.
1:02:22 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Like bringing organizations to do like to employ, so bringing businesses to the areas, is there anyone that has experienced who wants to put any information in the chat around that.
1:02:33 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : You know cause perhaps the one place that we tend to not have great connections through the health department and the government, we get a lot of community based organizations, not for profits, but the private sector is often a little bit less involved with, with some of these. So anyone has experienced or is working in that area has thought.
1:02:53 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : On that, I think that would, that would be great insight to help us with this topic.
1:03:09 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : If we're not seeing any, you can still put some stuff in the chat. We got one more comment.
1:03:17 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : If I and Megan I think you should be unmuted.
1:03:22 : Megan F Lostracco : Hi, Megan Lustrako Reed. I'm a Senior Director of Strategic initiatives at Catholic Sherry's a faflow. I don't actually have a solution for the question you asked. I had just put something in the chat and I, I I just wanted to say that I, you know, we do have workforce training opportunities through us I think most recently we were doing like.
1:03:42 : Megan F Lostracco : In the construction trades and a lot of, there's a lot of, I think training opportunities out there for trade work, but at the end of the day, and I think somebody else had said something similar to this as well, even if the opportunity is there, it's all of the other stuff that we've been talking about. Transportation and health and all of these other pieces.
1:04:03 : Megan F Lostracco : If somebody can't get to work because they have a chronic condition or a disability or they just don't have any way of getting transportation, then it doesn't necessarily it's not as helpful just that the opportunity's there, so I think.
1:04:20 : Megan F Lostracco : Anything that, that we can do to have make sure there's wrap around services I guess to really help people with all those other barriers and obviously the barrier of they're not being an opportunity is, is one of the first steps, but, I just wanted to say that out loud.
1:04:39 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : The excellent. Thank you very much for bringing that.
1:04:45 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Okay, well then if we don't have any other comments on this topic, of course, you can still add anything to the chat, but then we will move to the next one.
1:04:59 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Which is our cost of healthcare services or just general access to health insurance. We definitely.
1:05:07 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Heard a lot about this and I think adar has already kind of come up in some reference about the changing.
1:05:16 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Political environment, how that that affects this, this comment as or this topic as well. So if anyone has anything that wants to speak to what they're seeing around this issue, any changing trends, our ability to, to impact it or if there's programs or services that are kind of being stood up to address.
1:05:37 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Address this, we'd love to hear, hear about that.
1:05:46 : Carol Murphy : So, can you hear me? Yeah, I am. Okay, Carol Murphy again from harvest house. Our good neighbors healthcare is seeing I I mentioned a large increase of there is, there are not enough services within three hundred miles of bufflow for dental care. We.
1:06:06 : Carol Murphy : We are the only free dental clinic. Most of our referrals come from ECMC.
1:06:13 : Carol Murphy : And it at this time, what we're seeing is mostly urgent care, emergency care for people with dental issues and if you are in horrible pain, you cannot, you know, you can't work. You can't take care of your family. I mean, you know, you, you wind up with other health issues because of.
1:06:34 : Carol Murphy : Infection. This morning we are seeing ten patients. We had twenty five additional people that we had to turn away. These are folks who are lining up at our dental clinic.
1:06:48 : Carol Murphy : When we arrive at six thirty, there is a line around the block for dental care services. So I, we really need to add some capacity to that. We're a free dental clinic, we utilize students from UB. We utilize volunteer dentists and doctors.
1:07:09 : Carol Murphy : But I, we could open every day of the week instead of three days a week and still be turning people away.
1:07:19 : Carol Murphy : But it's a matter of, of building capacity and then paying for things like, you know, I have to write grants to pay for supplies and that kind of thing. But what we're seeing right now is a huge huge increa impact from people who cannot afford.
1:07:35 : Carol Murphy : Dental care.
1:07:39 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : This is Karen Nickelson again from the center for Elder on justice. So, you know, I I believe that access to, health insurance is access to healthcare. I mean, you, you don't really, I mean although in New York State you can get emergency services, you know, you're not really getting help, you know, true health care unless.
1:08:00 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : You have some sort of insurance to note, obviously, what's, you know, what's coming again, I assume kind of sound like a broken record, but you know the new Medicaid reimbursement rate for hospitals is just going to make this even more of a critical issue in the next year. And, and, you know, I think what a lot of people.
1:08:20 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : Also don't realize is that, you know, if you do have Medicare, if you do have Medicaid, if you do have private insurance, many people don't appeal those, those negative decisions and like, I think the, the rate of overturning a denial in Medicare when you appeal is something like eighty percent, but like I think less than fif.
1:08:41 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : Percent of people actually do even manage to do an appeal. So I think I think some of this can be partially mediated by sort of working with patients and healthcare systems to let folks know that, you know, that they, they shouldn't just take a decision and, and lying down and.
1:09:01 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : And they should actually think about the appeal process. But the billions of dollars are about to be lost by the hospital system is gonna impact everybody's insurance. Everybody's insurance is gonna go up. Everybody's gonna have a longer weight in the emergency room, Providers are gonna drop out. It's just catastrophic and I don't know if, if the com.
1:09:22 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : Allowed really understands the, the scope of what's coming.
1:09:29 : Carol Murphy : Thank you very much. I would like to I think that's absolutely what is is already happening. I don't think this is something that's going to just looking at the numbers that are coming to the free clinic. These are all people who are uninsured, are un are under insured, so we have a problem already. There are not enough federal equalified health centers.
1:09:50 : Carol Murphy : In Buffalo to meet the need, and now those federally qualified health centers are losing their funding, so they won't or being reduced in their funding. I think we're going to see a huge number of people going to the emergency rooms again for things like blood pressure medication and diabetes ca.
1:10:12 : Carol Murphy : And these are things that are gonna cost a lot more money to all of us, because we have turned off the ability for people to have health care to go and see.
1:10:25 : Carol Murphy : A provider for basic basic human needs for health care services.
1:10:42 : Danielle L Jackson : If you wanted to add something real quick, can you hear me? Yes yes. Okay, so I used to work for an agency that had a grant called the independent consumer Advocacy Network, and they are statewide, their funded by the Department of Health.
1:10:58 : Danielle L Jackson : The local agency that works with that grant is western American independent Living in their job is to help recipients of Medicaid appeal their negative decisions made by their managed care organizations.
1:11:14 : Danielle L Jackson : And by the aged myself a little bit using that term because that was a couple years ago when I was doing that, but they have lawyers and advocates that are placed among Western New York that are paid to help people navigate the Medicaid system. Medicare does not fall under their contract, however, the Medicare Rights Center, which is based in New York City Will and.
1:11:34 : Danielle L Jackson : And can help individuals with the appeals that they need to appeal for for Medicare. When I worked there at grant, it was really, really great. The information was really solid. The advocacy was really amazing, so I, I can drop the link in the, in the chat for the website for them and the resources that they.
1:11:55 : Danielle L Jackson : Offer because they are amazing and I think that they really help the individuals that were trying to serve who don't have access to these services.
1:12:03 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Excellent. Great.
1:12:06 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thank you.
1:12:07 : Nkurunungi, Lara : I think there's a hand up from statement.
1:12:09 : Turkovich, Stephen : Yeah, I just want to reinforce the the fact that the cost of health care is gonna go up for everybody because as, you know, more people can't afford health care and Medicaid reimbursement rates go down. Hospitals and health health systems are forced them to renegotiate with the payers, and we need to obviously subsidize that gap with commercial.
1:12:31 : Turkovich, Stephen : But it's obviously not just gonna impact the cost of healthcare, it's gonna impact jobs because employers are not gonna be able to afford the healthcare costs for their employees and then they're gonna be forced to look at their workforce and say, you know, can I afford to have as many workers here at my healthcare costs are this high? So the downstream effect of this is, is I think also gonna.
1:12:50 : Turkovich, Stephen : Gonna cause some increase in unemployment. And, you know, from my perspective, I worry a lot about the refugee population that we serve here both pregnant women and, and children. And their loss of potential health, health insurance, and so the uncompensated or charity care that we are gonna have to take on is gonna be significant.
1:13:11 : Turkovich, Stephen : Then the other piece of this, this is sort of a corollary is all the immigration policies associated with physicians and residents. We rely a lot especially here in Buffalo, of, of a variety of different visa types for both residents and fellows and attendings. And this year we had a couple of pediatric residents who couldn't start.
1:13:32 : Turkovich, Stephen : So now we're down pediatric residents and we need to fill that with other people, which is another sort of cost that's part of this. So the downstream effect of all of these changes is significant. And at the end of the day, it all leads to significantly increased costs and to less less services for people.
1:13:57 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Alright, great.
1:14:01 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Feel like.
1:14:05 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Anyone else had their hand up for that Laura?
1:14:08 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Was that.
1:14:10 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Okay.
1:14:13 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Alright, well then.
1:14:16 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I guess we can move then to the next topic. So that was the first section of kind of the the what we called our community factors that emerged from all of the work we've done to this point. The next set of topics are, as you can already see with cancer, more specific, more focused on actually.
1:14:36 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Health based issues. These are the health issues that, from review of data and.
1:14:44 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : What the community told us about their biggest concerns about health issues, what emerged from that information where we see disparities in these health conditions arise, we see this proportionate rates within Theory County compared to other areas of the state or the country. And so that's how these next topics emerge that are more specific.
1:15:05 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Specific health, health conditions. And so we're gonna do the same general type of conversation around how the size or the scope of the issue is in your, in your opinion, the severity or the seriousness of these types of things, whether we can of course impact or change these programs researches, resources or interventions that are.
1:15:26 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Dedicated or directed towards this, and so first topic we'll talk under this kind of category of health conditions is cancer, the document starts that on page twenty seven. I do want to say that like this kind of also would incorporate for all of these health conditions so we have the.
1:15:46 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Illness itself or the, the disease of cancer, but also then maybe prevention for that condition. So in of course the case of cancer, anything around cancer prevention, programs that do cancer screening, all of those would be also things we would love to hear about in.
1:16:05 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : In the discussion of this topic. So with that, any, any comments, that anyone would like to make around cancer as a health major health issue in Hearie County.
1:16:31 : Carol Murphy : So, at harvest House good neighbors, we are seeing, people that.
1:16:39 : Carol Murphy : Have cancer who live on the east side of Buffalo. What we hear time and again is I don't want to go, I don't want to know if I have cancer, I don't want to go there because I can't pay for it. And if I can't pay for it, I'm might as well not know it. One of the things that we have been able to do.
1:17:00 : Carol Murphy : I sit on a community council for Roswell Park, they have been, they give their staff hours to be able to volunteer in the community. We have a nurse who is here and embedded.
1:17:17 : Carol Murphy : And she comes in and she meets with patients for all different kinds of things. But gets to know the community. The community has gotten to know her and she has been able to lead a number of patients from the east side of Buffalo to Roswell Park for services. She even meets them at the do.
1:17:38 : Carol Murphy : And walks them to their appointments. I think those are the kinds of things we need to be looking at doing more of so that we can build that trust in a community that, and you know, Roswell Park also helps them with the, you know, getting all the paperwork, you know, to be able to receive services.
1:18:00 : Carol Murphy : You know, that is such a, a barrier to care, especially if English is not your first language. So just those programs and resources, those interventions.
1:18:12 : Carol Murphy : You know, I think we at one time, you know, we said let's move everything into one central location and it may great sense until there was a pandemic and then, you know, these community centers that were embedded at ECMC and and other places no longer had that outreach. So.
1:18:33 : Carol Murphy : I think we need to, we need to have a plan for.
1:18:38 : Carol Murphy : Some of those.
1:18:41 : Carol Murphy : Programs that, that help build trust and communities for things like cancer diabetes, hospice care, all of that.
1:18:51 : Carol Murphy : That.
1:18:54 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Excellent, thank you very much for those thoughts on that.
1:19:00 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Do we have any other hands raise Laura? I'm not.
1:19:05 : Nkurunungi, Lara : That's a good.
1:19:09 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Okay.
1:19:14 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Just give it one more second to see if anyone's thinking about saying anything for this one. Again.
1:19:23 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Feel free to to put any information or opinions, thoughts about the topic in the chat and if not, we'll just go right now then to the next topic, which I believe we're coming to diabetes.
1:19:39 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : So, diabetes of course is another major health condition that's very prevalent, not just locally, but nationally.
1:19:51 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : But we definitely see large disparities in diabetes rates based on race and ethnicity, as well as access to care and treatment for diabetes huge disparities in this topic. This health condition as well. So anyone has focused on this topic.
1:20:12 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Worked at prevention or resources to educate the community on this, would love to hear anything about that. And again, this is page thirty one in the, the document that we have put together.
1:20:36 : Carol Murphy : Hi there, it's Erol again. I hate to sound like a broken record, but we're like right up the lines.
1:20:43 : Carol Murphy : We do a lot of diabetes care. We have students from UB who are pre med and medical students and presidents.
1:20:53 : Carol Murphy : And we do as much education as we can on this topic.
1:20:58 : Carol Murphy : For many years, I have, we do a lot of trauma informed care training and training with the students on issues and how they manifest themselves in a community without access to healthcare. In the past I have spent a lot of time talking with the, the.
1:21:19 : Carol Murphy : The medical students about how our immigrant population who are close to getting their citizenship or, you know, in that process will not use managed care because they are afraid that if they're, if, if it is seen that they have diabetes.
1:21:39 : Carol Murphy : They won't get their citizenship. And I have always said to the students, that's not true, but that's their reality. And then of course last week, all of the, of the Medicaid.
1:21:57 : Carol Murphy : Handed to ICE. All of those patients who were afraid that if they were getting managed care and utilizing their Medicaid.
1:22:10 : Carol Murphy : Their, their fear is now very real, and.
1:22:15 : Carol Murphy : You know, it's a, it's a sad situation. I worry that because of this, we're gonna see even, we're gonna fall even more into that hole of people not being willing to have anyone know that they have any kind of chronic illness.
1:22:36 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : That's great. Thank you very much Carol.
1:22:43 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Any other thoughts? I see a couple of.
1:22:48 : Broderick Cason : Madam Broadrid. Comments were just made.
1:22:52 : Broderick Cason : She is exactly right. This is gonna be significantly important for.
1:23:00 : Broderick Cason : So take a village to educate people, to further them to the health plans, if they're in a Medicaid managed care plan or anyone any one of our products.
1:23:14 : Broderick Cason : You know, if they, if, if they don't understand the process, particularly to recertify those types of things, it's gonna be.
1:23:24 : Broderick Cason : Imperative that they talk to us even more so than they've ever done before. It's gonna be a lot of things coming down on this. If the bill gets enacted in the timeframe they're talking about, it's not gonna happen tomorrow, will we need to be prepared. So this idea of more than just the chronic disease states, it's the fact that people aren't gonna have insurance period.
1:23:45 : Broderick Cason : So the idea that they're gonna be able to do any preventative care, all the stuff we've always wanted and we've struggled with getting them to do with coverage, what's that going to look like when we have so many people? We're still trying to get our arms around with this gonna look like that are going to be without insurance. So we gotta s buckle down here and t.
1:24:06 : Broderick Cason : To work as a community on this cause it's gonna take everybody's connection to these to this clientele to try to help us to keep people insured or to at least figure out what to do in the event they're not. It's gonna be huge. So I agree.
1:24:25 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Yeah, thank you very much Broadrick. Yeah, I.
1:24:29 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Yeah, definitely an issue.
1:24:33 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Alright, anything else? Anyone.
1:24:36 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : You know with programs resources that, that are, you know, specific for, you know, either diabetes or, you know, kind of the healthy diet around diabetes prevention or anything that anyone would like to, to comment comment on.
1:24:56 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : If not, we'll just keep the ball rolling then.
1:25:04 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Okay, so the next.
1:25:09 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Health condition that the community and and our data pointed towards towards as as an issue in, in Ura County was heart issues. So this is kind of, you know, the, the encompassing term for, things all all the issues around heart health. So we're talking high blood pressure, high choles.
1:25:30 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Strokes, heart attacks, you know, the repercussions of, you know, untreated high blood pressure and things like that. So, that definitely emerged again as an issue where we see not only just high rates in general in hearing county, but also some of the more severe dis.
1:25:51 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Race and ethnic line racial and ethnic lines, as well as geography, you know, some of the underresourced area of the areas of the county I see the, see the highest rates with these issues, so same, same idea here. If anyone has thoughts on the severity of the program.
1:26:11 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : This health issue, any programs resources that are dedicated towards heart health, I know the county has some initiatives around.
1:26:20 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Healthy parts, but, any, anything from the group on, on heart issues.
1:26:45 : Carol Murphy : This Carol again. Just one of the things that I don't think we are are thinking about too much. We get a lot of patients here and good neighbors who need physicals to be like a truck driver or a CNA.
1:27:00 : Carol Murphy : And they don't have access to health care, they can't afford to, to go to an urgent care and pay for a physical. A lot of times we're telling them then they don't know, that they have very high blood pressure. We send a number of people.
1:27:20 : Carol Murphy : Year to the hospital straight from here with extremely high.
1:27:26 : Carol Murphy : Blood pressure. And these are people who wanted, you know, who, who are desperate to get, a physical so that they can work driving trucks across our, our country. This is a, a public health issue.
1:27:44 : Carol Murphy : Huge public health issue. They all lo.
1:27:49 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Excellent point.
1:27:49 : Carol Murphy : Lot of them, you know.
1:27:52 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Yeah, so those, those, it ties back to employment issues and things like that too. So yeah, we can again another connection to some of the broader issues in the community. And I I saw a.
1:28:05 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Interesting comment about a project to try to get increased access to blood pressure testing in the community. So great, yeah, the great example of a project that's trying to address this awareness issue. So, yeah, anybody else comments around heart health, heart issues.
1:28:27 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I saw a comment about CPR and AEDs, which I know is an important.
1:28:33 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Aspect of preventing the severe severe outcomes from heart issues.
1:28:41 : Nkurunungi, Lara : And just to note on time, we are ahead of schedule at this time, so don't feel feel shy, feel free to share your comments.
1:28:58 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Do you think our next topic should have some, some discussion around it? I would hope so. So we can move on and we can make sure we have plenty of time to talk about the next issue that came up from our work with the community and our review of data. So, mental health and you can see the.
1:29:18 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : The background information that we put together.
1:29:22 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Starting on page thirty seven.
1:29:25 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : We heard definitely a lot about mental health from pretty much every survey and, focus group and, and the individual we talked to, as well as there's a lot of data that supports the need for addressing mental health. So if anyone has thoughts, comments about the scope of the.
1:29:45 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Our ability to impact it, programs or resources, let's talk about mental health.
1:30:04 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Let me see in a lot of comments coming here.
1:30:12 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : Hi, this is Karen Nickelson again. I think this is an issue just not just.
1:30:19 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : From, you know, a community based organization perspective, but also from an employer perspective and I I am seeing so many of our newer employees younger who like, you know went through school during Covid or.
1:30:34 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : Just coming in with sort of without the, the strategies that they need to be a good employee and to manage their own mental health.
1:30:45 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : And I think a great resource for us has been child and family services has the employee assistance program, which has been tremendously helpful for us just being able to send people.
1:30:57 : knicolson@elderjusticeny.org : For, for that extra help and, sort of take that off of our HR directors plate because it's just, it's growing exponentially in the last since Covid, the last five years I've really noticed a difference.
1:31:14 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Great, thanks and completely agree. Yeah, it's issue from a lot of perspectives.
1:31:23 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Anyone else have programs or or resources that they're dedicating towards.
1:31:29 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Issues around mental health.
1:31:34 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Someone wants to speak to.
1:31:45 : Carol Murphy : This is Carol. You know, the, the mental health issue, you know, we, we have an, well, we had an opportunity after the mass shooting on the east side where we started to see a lot of folks and and hear from them saying, you know, I don't need a lot of our students and our programs, a lot of our patients.
1:32:06 : Carol Murphy : They're saying, you know, I don't need a counselor. I need a therapist. And, you know, we all said, you know, this is a perfect opportunity because on the east side, we were always getting pushback on mental health, you know, my community doesn't do mental health counseling. We don't.
1:32:26 : Carol Murphy : And, and we had an opportunity, but we didn't have the resources to really address the mental health issues on the east side, and if, if I can say there's one gaping hole among so many gaping holes here on the east side, it is access to mental health care.
1:32:52 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Great, thank you. I think we had one other hand. Jessica maybe?
1:32:58 : Jessica Pirro : Yeah. Hi. This is Jessica Piro with Crisis Services, you know, I was sitting with Karen's comments about the employees that, you know, have much higher mental health needs, so kind of not only the point that Carol just made about access to providers, I.
1:33:18 : Jessica Pirro : I think a big piece we're seeing is, is truly the.
1:33:23 : Jessica Pirro : Succession planning, if you will, of the mental health provider community. We we are in this space of trying to build up our newer professionals to have the resilience to do the work, and to want to do this work. I think we definitely were vulnerable before Covid, so we're.
1:33:43 : Jessica Pirro : You know, five years out and now kind of the uncertainties that we're facing in this moment. I think the.
1:33:51 : Jessica Pirro : The desire to get into this field and the sacrifice that goes into it to meet the demand that they witness and see has been very challenging. So we have a system of care that was vulnerable, has been vulnerable for, for years, we are used to a system that access.
1:34:12 : Jessica Pirro : And we know that access has been pointed out throughout this conversation today, but we're in an interesting point I think of what truly can be provided with the providers we have, the staffing we have, and how do we pause.
1:34:32 : Jessica Pirro : In this moment to also think about the succession planning of this field? Because, you don't have people that are willing to sacrifice you, you know, I can speak for crisis services. I know my colleague Jackie's on the line as well, we talk a lot about this in our in our organization.
1:34:51 : Jessica Pirro : I'm being able to meet these emergency needs.
1:34:56 : Jessica Pirro : We can't do it right now and and I think we're only seeing the need grow, but we also have to look at going back to that pipeline, how the schools are educating future employees, but also how to incentivize wanting to do this work. I mean, I've been doing, I've been with this organization twenty six six.
1:35:16 : Jessica Pirro : A lot of sacrifice to to be in this work.
1:35:21 : Jessica Pirro : It's not the same.
1:35:23 : Jessica Pirro : Commitment and I don't want to say that in a negative way but it's just greatly so work life balance has become an an absolute, not a, not an exception. So I I'm just wondering how do you meet the need, which we know is only ever growing.
1:35:39 : Jessica Pirro : While also building the field, and I I just wonder how the, there's some maybe overlap in meeting these needs of the community that also has that component about how we're training, how we're incentivizing, how we're partnering within the universities of our community to build up our own community.
1:35:59 : Jessica Pirro : Of that support. So I know it was a little soapbox, but we're living and breathing it every day and when I hear we need more, we need more, people. Yes, we do, but it's, we don't have them. And so we really have to think about how do we increase meeting the demand when we truly don't have the people to do it, and then it fails, right?
1:36:20 : Jessica Pirro : And then people complain, then we're not being able to meet demands. So it's just, it's a very complex space. It's been this way for a while, but I feel like every year we keep getting hit with so many impacts that I I I just don't know if we've ever, we really have to think about that piece.
1:36:40 : Jessica Pirro : Of this in order to address this.
1:36:46 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Some points, thank you very much for for those those comments and I think I've seen a lot of comments that have echoed that coming through the chat too. So.
1:36:59 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Anything else on mental health? I, I know we've.
1:37:05 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Heard a couple of comments, but we, we do have some additional time here and I know this is often sited as one of the bigger issues in in our community, so.
1:37:15 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Anyone else has anything to add.
1:37:23 : Nkurunungi, Lara : SSDDC your hands up.
1:37:25 : SSCDC : Sure absolutely. This is Tally again from the SOCDC. We're conducting a health survey here in the Eneca Bab **** neighborhood, and a lot of the discussion that we have been having with community and health partners is how we can utilize our actual building. So to be concise, people can have access to digital counseling or digital therapists, but if they don't have a place where.
1:37:45 : SSCDC : They feel safe and sound and affirm to have those conversations, then the accessibility doesn't produce the results that we want. So a lot of our health surveying is about mental health and then also just from an organizational perspective, how can we use our actual physical building to encourage and or invite people in possibly.
1:38:06 : SSCDC : Who are seeking digital counseling services but like I say, you don't want to be at home talking about your stuff with your stuff in the next room mike. So it's just an idea about literal the physical bill environment that we can connect people digitally, but if they don't have that privacy, it's it doesn't increase their efficacy.
1:38:27 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : All right. Thanks so much.
1:38:31 : Nkurunungi, Lara : There was one other hand up. I think it was Kimberly, Yeah.
1:38:34 : Kimberly Kadziolka : Hi, can you hear me? Can I hear it, ok. So I think one of the other things and I I did note this in the chat that this has to be a multi system approach, right? Because oftentimes and I would probably argue in every time somebody who's experiencing mental health challenges also have other challenges that we're talking about today.
1:38:55 : Kimberly Kadziolka : One of the things that we've been doing at the care management coalition, if you don't know, we are a group of nine organizations that all help the family in some way. And, you know, it's, we recognize that it's important that, you know, here at parent network, we help families of children who have special needs, but oftentimes, you know, we might have a parent who's really struggling with that.
1:39:16 : Kimberly Kadziolka : So it's it's easy for us to, you know, call up our friends at mental health advocates that are, you know, right upstairs and literally walk them over to get the support that they need or if, you know, oftentimes, you know, a family might have a child in the child welfare system or the family's involved in the wealth child welfare DSS system, and, you know, our friends at app that can go over and, and.
1:39:36 : Kimberly Kadziolka : Start supporting them. So I think that, you know, there's so many silos in not just in government here in area county, but also in our provider network because of our funding streams, you know, if you are have services and OPWDD, you can't access in OMH and DS it's all, you know, I've worked in all systems and I know how difficult that can.
1:39:57 : Kimberly Kadziolka : So I think, you know, we really need to take a proactive approach to a multi pronged attack to, to this, so, and that's all I had to say.
1:40:09 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Excellent. Excellent points.
1:40:12 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I'm.
1:40:16 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : And I'm seeing.
1:40:18 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : This chat slow down a bit. I don't see any other hands raised unless you do Laura, so we could maybe.
1:40:26 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Can't see any.
1:40:27 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Okay.
1:40:29 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : So yeah, excellent discussion around this topic.
1:40:34 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : We'll move to the next, health condition, kind of the family of health conditions that came from our research and surveying of the community.
1:40:45 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Which was obesity weight, weight management and nutrition. We kind of grouped these together cause a lot of the conversation around it tended to overlap and.
1:40:56 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Weave together.
1:40:59 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : These three topics. So it was a little difficult to kind of separate them. So the information around this starts on page forty four, I will say what often kind of was a side conversation around this topic in particular was access to things like gyms.
1:41:20 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : The ability to ride or bikes or walk around neighborhoods safely and kind of back to one of our earlier conversations around just access to healthy foods, so kind of the preventative aspect of these issues also emerged around them. So any discussion that anyone would like to have around o.
1:41:40 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Besity, weight management, and nutrition, again, any of those talking points we'd love to hear from.
1:41:55 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Give everyone some time to.
1:41:58 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Think about it.
1:42:11 : Nkurunungi, Lara : And here on this one actually, this is Laura just didn't build from our community research that we did. It seems like a lot of the providers we spoke with discussed how so many complications are related to.
1:42:28 : Nkurunungi, Lara : And obesity.
1:42:31 : Nkurunungi, Lara : If you know the patient could lose some weight, it would help with a lot of other health issues they had. And then speaking with the community, it seemed like.
1:42:40 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Patients aren't very receptive to hearing that.
1:42:44 : Nkurunungi, Lara : You know, they're, they're kind of tired of factors telling them, you know, everything is related to your weight you need to lose the weight. So I don't know if the issue there is stigma or.
1:42:55 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Kind of how we approach that.
1:42:58 : Nkurunungi, Lara : I guess it's kind of a culture thing where, way weight is kind of viewed as.
1:43:05 : Nkurunungi, Lara : You know maybe not so much a medical condition in some aspects.
1:43:14 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thanks.
1:43:16 : Broderick Cason : And this is Broadrick. So, Ellen.
1:43:21 : Broderick Cason : Doctor Bursting and others could speak to this better than me, but I think one of the other issues that we have to be careful of is the whole self esteem and all of that issue around the, how you get designated as obese. That silly chart.
1:43:40 : Broderick Cason : Gives people the impression that there will be clearly you can look at them and they're they're not obese, but the the way the numbers are set, you could be three pounds over the weight based on height that says your obese, and now you got kids who, you know, have body shamed and all this.
1:44:02 : Broderick Cason : I think we really have to figure out how to.
1:44:05 : Broderick Cason : Update that thing or advocacy around better ways to, to identify that. And the way we do it now is just, I think it's, we do more harm than good with this whole, guess what? You're clinically obese. Well, you're not. Right, so anybody want to speak to that, that's great, but just as a fyi.
1:44:26 : Broderick Cason : I think that there are a lot of issues that go around that self esteem, as I mentioned in others, so just want to point that out.
1:44:37 : Carol Murphy : The project is alright, this is Carol I, you know.
1:44:42 : Carol Murphy : It it all goes back to nutrition and access to healthy food. Here on the east side, we work with a lot of the seniors who are living below the poverty level. They come and get fresh fruits and vegetables from us twice a week, you know, if you just tell somebody they have to have to lose weight and the only option they have for a grocery.
1:45:02 : Carol Murphy : Store is the gas station next door. They make great bride chicken. Let me tell you, but they have very few options for healthy eating. So, you know, if we don't solve these issues of access to food that is healthy, you know, I think we're setting.
1:45:23 : Carol Murphy : People up to fail.
1:45:29 : Broderick Cason : Had to belabor it and I don't disagree with you, but my whole point, what you just raised the whole nother issue and concern that we've been talking about with nutrition and available access to quality food and healthy food. My thing is, are we really diagnosing people correctly that don't even really have that as an issue? Okay, that they're.
1:45:51 : Broderick Cason : Obese to begin with, and some of these seniors that you go into senior centers and you see them participating in.
1:45:59 : Broderick Cason : All of the exercise programs and all the things and they aren't pretty, they are in good health, but the way it's, it's registered, right? Makes you clinically obese and I just think we gotta be careful how we categorize people, especially younger people.
1:46:19 : Broderick Cason : People with that.
1:46:27 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : This is Gail Bursing. You know, I have to say that.
1:46:33 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : To conduct a, you know, an evaluation of obesity or any type of health problem, I mean, looking at numbers is important, but, you know, also there's, you know, other assessment too, and I would hope that the healthcare provider would provide the information but also it kind of interpret like, oh, the results is, as.
1:46:54 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : You suggested. So, you know, explaining that they're on the borderline or however, this, this and this is healthy with you and this is what I suggest. So it's not just your obese yes or no. I mean there's other messaging that should come with it. I mean, that's the whole point.
1:47:12 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Hopefully, that happens.
1:47:14 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thank you, doctor Chrissey.
1:47:17 : Nkurunungi, Lara : And I will say to that a lot of the providers we spoke with did acknowledge the barriers people have to losing weight. It wasn't, you know, that they were.
1:47:26 : Nkurunungi, Lara : You know, trying to blame them for that, but acknowledging that they have, you know, challenges to access food and exercise and all that.
1:47:35 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : And, just to jump in on, on Laura's point, the other thing we, we heard in the mix there too is, connects with a lot of this conversation we talked about with lack of providers. So providers often don't have the time to have these conversations in a, you know.
1:47:56 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Long sit down and then you know walk through the, you know, all of the, you know, factors that are driving it, so it's it becomes a challenge to have these discussions in the, in the effort to see all the patients that have other health, health needs as well. So, I think we did see another couple of hands, so I need to not be talking and let.
1:48:16 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I think Frank I saw a hand.
1:48:19 : Frank Cerny : Thank you. So I had an academic career in physiology exercise physiology, worked with obesity in some of my my research, and let me say.
1:48:32 : Frank Cerny : You you can complain about the numbers and how deceptive they might be, but they still point in a direction. We know clearly that if you are overweight, there are health risks associated with that and we cannot ignore that. Number one. Number two, somebody who exercises and is overweight is healthier than.
1:48:52 : Frank Cerny : Someone who is normal weight and does not exercise. Number three, we as a culture have kidded ourselves that we can solve most of our health problems with pills. Pharmaceutical companies have sold us a bill of goods that that seem to leave us off the hook in terms of.
1:49:13 : Frank Cerny : Taking personal responsibility for our health including obesity, weight management and and so on. So let's, let's not kind of ignore the the personal responsibility that we need to encourage here.
1:49:29 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thanks Frank, and then I think we.
1:49:33 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Did we have another hand.
1:49:34 : Nkurunungi, Lara : And Jessica, did you have your hands hand up.
1:49:37 : Jessica Tufte, CCNY : Ah yes, thank you.
1:49:39 : Jessica Tufte, CCNY : My name's Jessica tuffie. I'm from CCNY. I just wanted to add into this conversation, yes, I think there's a, a large element of personal accountability related to this weight issue. I think that given that this is a public health space, we're also failing to acknowledge the massive failings that are our general culture and system.
1:50:00 : Jessica Tufte, CCNY : Has provided. Everybody in this way. I mean, there is a sugar lobby. Sugar is known to be highly addictive and it's in a lot of our purchased foods. I think that there needs to be thought around advocacy and other motions towards those profiting off of people eating processed foods and all of those sorts of things. And we live in a.
1:50:21 : Jessica Tufte, CCNY : Push push push culture where product productivity is everything and the easy food options are the ones that you can grab off the shelf and eat. And those are the ones that contribute greatly to obesity. And I sure like I absolutely doctors need to be having conversations all this stuff, but I think the larger element here is related to a lot of those.
1:50:42 : Jessica Tufte, CCNY : Systemic things that really keep us from being able to make impactful health behavior change.
1:50:51 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thank you very much, Jessica.
1:50:55 : SSCDC : Yeah, sorry. So just me speaking from my personal experience. So I am Latina and I think one of the things that Broadrik was trying to bring forward is that while this group and other medical professionals may have concessed this about what they feel medically and scientifically and from a data perspective, obesity is.
1:51:16 : SSCDC : My latinual culture and people who are from the BIPOC community did not have equal participation in forming the biomedical system or in providing feedback for that. So for me who struggled with my weight, my entire life and now as a parent of a bigger kid, right? My lens of what is health mean for me.
1:51:36 : SSCDC : As a Latina who I know Latinos go to the doctor less but live longer is impacted by my understanding of what it means to be a Latina in the biomedical system, especially a Puerto Rican female, which I'm not sure how many of you know what our relationship with has been with researchers and being tested. But in terms of like delivering messaging.
1:51:56 : SSCDC : There are some languages where obesity doesn't not translate effectively. So Mike from a perspective of a practitioner, you need to know who you're serving and what their relationship has been with the biomedical system and also understand that those messages that you're giving impact their health efficacy and their ability to see you as.
1:52:17 : SSCDC : As a trusted provider.
1:52:22 : SSCDC : That's.
1:52:23 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Fine, thank you very much.
1:52:29 : Andres, Jennifer : Hi, good morning. I wanted to add into Jessica's comments. You know, with systemic failures and and a personal, you know, note or experience. I do agree especially with school lunches with children, even out in the suburbs, you know, I I feel like New York State.
1:52:50 : Andres, Jennifer : Attempts to push a very, great program that is affordable, but I know personally, you know, an individual that works within our local schools that has told me repeatedly, you know, New York States a little bit process so they actually have to lower their pricing so that they can, you know.
1:53:11 : Andres, Jennifer : Win the bid, and with that comes choices, you know, they don't provide options to our schools that they do to other schools and and you know to echo Jessica's sentiments, you know, is the, the food and the menu really something that should be modeling healthy nutrition.
1:53:32 : Andres, Jennifer : Children cause it they're eating, you know, if their option is they get a hot dog every Thursday and pizza on Fridays, yes, does the menu talk that they get, you know, a vegetable, a fruit and and their mean meal? Yes. But it doesn't seem like.
1:53:50 : Andres, Jennifer : That's actually the case.
1:53:56 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thank you very much for that.
1:53:59 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Additional perspective on that.
1:54:02 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Alright, are we, we probably should move to the next one. We're, we're back on our our timeline. Yeah. Yeah. All right, so moving to just take everyone a heads up, the second to last topic that we'll be talking about, so this is again another.
1:54:18 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Health issue that emerged from all of our reviewing of data and from what we heard from the community, so we have violence related injuries, so this, this kind of was again an one that we combined issues that we heard from in the community, we heard about things like child abuse, elder abuse, domestic violence.
1:54:39 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : And then firearm injury injuries and deaths, so they're kind of slightly different categories of things are kind of broad, but we grouped them into a broader kind of statement about violence related injuries. So if anyone has any experiences trying to address these issues, any thoughts on the scope or.
1:54:59 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Severity of them, and on interventions or programs, we'd love to hear. So I see a hand.
1:55:11 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Christopher.
1:55:11 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Most people to mute.
1:55:40 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Looks like you're on mute now Christopher.
1:55:44 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I can hear you Christopher.
1:55:46 : Christopher Russell (He/Him) : Okay, sorry, and something was going on with my computer. Chris Russell from the shot Advocacy Center, the scott Pillar child Advocacy Center. Your best self. Part of my job is to actually go around and talk to students about safety especially around the topics of abuse through kindergarten to eighth grade, and that stems what's called aaron's law. Now, aaron.
1:56:07 : Christopher Russell (He/Him) : Actually passed in twenty nineteen, became effective January twenty twenty, but unfortunately with the pandemic, he kind of cut side pushed. But as we redouble our efforts to educate kids about.
1:56:21 : Christopher Russell (He/Him) : Abuse, a lot of schools didn't know about Arizona didn't remember Aarona until all of a sudden they get contacted by either us or somebody recommended our services and if you have kids in.
1:56:35 : Christopher Russell (He/Him) : Schools throughout your county, most likely they've heard from I've spoken with last year over twenty three thousand eight hundred kids about the topic of abuse.
1:56:46 : Christopher Russell (He/Him) : And as much as we're able to try to like go out there and do that, the conversation also has to happen at home as far as what abuse is especially from a legal standpoint.
1:56:58 : Christopher Russell (He/Him) : And how to prevent those types of things at home or if it's in the neighborhood and how best to help the children children's stay safe or even.
1:57:08 : Christopher Russell (He/Him) : Adults to stay safe.
1:57:14 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Great, thank you very much.
1:57:19 : Nkurunungi, Lara : You're able to unmute the bottom of your screen.
1:57:22 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Thank you, so my name is Michael Murphy. I'm with Rise Buffalo refugee, and immigrant self empowerment. So a comment about this and then just kind of generically all of the topics. So we primarily, of course, work with the refugee and immigrant population, from the the violence perspective, some of the.
1:57:43 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Conversations that we've been having with different ethnic communities has been in response to some domestic violence or intimate partner violence and others has to deal with.
1:57:58 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Gun violence, and one of the, the challenges is that there's a sort of a transition of how the communities are responding to shifts in generations. So we have, you know, foreign born populations coming into the United States through like refugee resettlement processes or other types of migration, and so as they a culturate into.
1:58:19 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Kind of the the American culture system, how they respond and then their children and grandchildren. So the response or the engagement from the ethnic communities in responding to these challenges is something that we're trying to figure out, and I know that was kind of a ramble, but for example, how does the ethnic community respond to.
1:58:38 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Challenges around intimate partner violence or gun violence when they're experiencing in one way? And I think this was mentioned at one time before, but then when there's like a code switching that happens maybe with the kids and they don't identify in the same cultural identity or in the same space as their parents or their grandparents and how they're involved in that.
1:58:59 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : So we're trying to figure that out especially from our perspective as a provider and a supporter of the process, but then also how we communicate that with all of you who are potentially primarily working with native born populations or not.
1:59:15 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Set or trained to work with foreign born populations. And we're seeing that too kind of overarching in the ways that.
1:59:24 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : The ethnic communities are engaged in these conversations and also participating. So as we have these conversations collectively ourselves, we're trying to understand how to then also, get invited to the table to be able to provide that perspective for mental health providers, biomed.
1:59:45 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Providers, social services providers, et cetera, so that the response is in a way that meets the needs of formborn populations where English isn't their first language, and sort of the cultural identities and the the cultural process is not necessarily apples to apples. So that's kind of what we're looking at.
2:00:05 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Are trying to figure out, as we look at the public health perspective for Irie county in Western New York. Thank, thank you.
2:00:13 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Excellent. Thank you. Thank you very much for those those comments.
2:00:19 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I think. Any other.
2:00:23 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Then let's.
2:00:25 : Carol Murphy : Oh, I heard a little yeah Michael I totally agree with you, with the.
2:00:33 : Carol Murphy : The cultural issues related to violence and and especially intimate partner violence. I think more time and effort also needs to be spent on looking at our.
2:00:46 : Carol Murphy : Black and Hispanic communities because.
2:00:54 : Carol Murphy : Intimate partner violence is viewed, how it's solved, how it's resolved, how it's the education, we, we try, we have very few intimate partner violence education initiatives and especially very little crisis services. We don't have anything.
2:01:14 : Carol Murphy : Past crisis services for individuals who are.
2:01:19 : Carol Murphy : In violent situations and to think that everybody is a one size fits all, and all of our programs tend to be, you know, written and directed at, predominantly white women.
2:01:36 : Carol Murphy : It's a mistake and it doesn't, you know, it, it doesn't even attempt to, address the real issues, the underlying issues, and the, the care issues in crisis and then after crisis. You know, it's it's a big problem in Buffalo.
2:01:57 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Great, thanks thanks for that additional perspective. So.
2:02:02 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : We're gonna move to our last topic though, which is the kind of family of substance use disorders. We did, again, kind of combine what we heard about.
2:02:13 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Issues around alcohol use, but also things like fetnall, all of the the substance use issues that that arise are kind of grouped in this category from what we heard from the, the community as well as.
2:02:27 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : From the data that we looked at collectively. So, the usual, anyone have any comments or thoughts on programs or resources that are being directed towards this issue.
2:02:40 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I actually see a couple of hands already, so we'll just jump in.
2:02:47 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : It's Michael again rise.
2:02:51 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : The, the, the conversation that we were having around this with with the communities with clients is helping people recognize that there actually is a an issue within the community, so this isn't probably that much different than a lot of native born communities as well, but what we tend to hear and, and see is a lot of it.
2:03:11 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Tends to revolve around alcoholism, but the idea that it's not actually a problem that needs to be addressed or that is a health issue, so there's some kind of again a cultural component to this and looking at how that can be supported. So it's working with and trying to help the communities understand.
2:03:31 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : That substance abuse and chemical dependency and our our challenges and then how they're linked again to mental health and how they're linked to biomedical and how they're linked to, you know, poverty et cetera. The this is kind of again an overarching thing, but it an additional component of this is a lot of the communities that we work with tend to have this.
2:03:53 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : That the systems should be responsible for solving these, these concerns and these problems, meaning that that families or individuals don't necessarily have to be responsible for.
2:04:04 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Trying to understand how to.
2:04:08 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Not fix but support these health issues that they should be able to go to a doctor's office, get a prescription, and somebody had mentioned this before about sort of a system of pills, but get a prescription and things should be fixed. So the, this substance abuse, all the other ones, kind of go back to is also how.
2:04:27 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : We're helping, trying to help the communities understand that it's also an internal conversation at home that families need to be having and that it's not always an external.
2:04:37 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : Issue that can be fixed by going to a doctor or going to a clinic or.
2:04:42 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : The schools or the hospitals or the police et cetera, that there does have to be advocacy within the communities, and that's a challenge.
2:04:51 : Michael Murphy RISE Buffalo : For a lot of folks.
2:04:56 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thanks very much Michael.
2:05:03 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Any other hands.
2:05:09 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Okay, I'm not seeing anything.
2:05:13 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Else. So with that.
2:05:16 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I, we've gotten through all the topics Excellent job seeing on time, everyone, and thank you so much for your comments. But before we officially end the meeting I just want to give everyone kind of the quick, preview of what is to come next in this chartship process. So, so now we review.
2:05:37 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Reviewed all of the data and information on each topic. So everyone on this call, I think is now an official expert on all of these topics. Hopefully this crash course helped you to kind of understand that along with the the information that we've provided already. So this on the screen is a link to the next step, which is now your opportunity after hearing.
2:05:58 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : The community, seeing the data and information that we've put together, you can now select your top three to five priorities using this survey. We can definitely put the link in the chat Blara, if you can get that going. I saw that out of the corner of my eye. But we'll be sharing that and it will go out with.
2:06:18 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : With the post meeting kind of thing that goes out through Webex too, so you'll see it in your email, and of course, we'll be sending that with all of the other information to support what we said the the recording, the, the slides, all of that will be sent out as well. And we're gonna also encourage you to share.
2:06:39 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : That kind of packet of information that goes out with other community members.
2:06:44 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : So if you have organizations you work with and things like that, we'd love to hear, what they would like to select as well. So feel free to pass that on to other members that weren't able to join us today. We are gonna leave that survey open for about a week. It'll close on five PM on at the end of this month. Alright.
2:07:05 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : And I don't know why that did that over on my other screen, but.
2:07:13 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : After the selections are done, we will then do a follow up community partner meeting. Again, the invite for this will be posted and shared so you don't have to scan it right away, but, the next meeting will be on eight thirteen where we'll actually then focus on those priorities and actually develop.
2:07:33 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : The implementation plan. What resources are we gonna dedicate towards this? Who, what partners can we leverage to help make progress towards that issue? So actually the the work of kind of designing what the next steps are would happen in that meeting. And so more to come, the details and information that we'd, we'll.
2:07:54 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Go for that meeting will also be sent out after this. So with that, I'm going to turn it over to Kelly for a final thank you.
2:08:06 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Mike and Laura, thank you everyone for joining us today, the conversation in the chat was very robust. We'll be able to pull all of that as well as the, the conversation had in the room.
2:08:22 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : I I I simply cannot thank you enough for you to take the time to dedicate to this process to ensure that we can have a plan that we have created together, that we will implement together to ensure that our area County residents are the healthiest that they can be. If you have any questions, please feel free to reach out to us.
2:08:43 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : We have our general health equity email up there. Please, please please please do not be afraid to reach out to us. Do not or maybe let me be positive in that and please reach out to us. We encourage you and invite you to reach out to us, not just on this topic, but across the board.
2:09:04 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : The, the services and, and programs that we offer here in the office of health equity, including mental health for estate mental health came up as a conversation piece. We offer mental health first aid for adults and for youth. Free of charge to participants, we provide the training, the resources, the whole package.
2:09:23 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : We come to where you are. We need four people in the room, so it doesn't have to be a big training, but we want to equip folks with all the tools that we have as well as to pull together all of the resources, knowledge, expertise, understanding that you all have. And, and we.
2:09:43 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Really hope and intend to do that with this chocchip process. So in the chat is the link to the survey and you'll receive that as well as the link to register for the work session. This was worked, but we're, we're gonna dive deeper now that we once we establish our three to five areas and come up with some solutions. So until.
2:10:03 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : The next time I greatly appreciate each and every one of you tremendously, thank you.
2:10:11 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Thank you everyone.
2:10:23 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Thanks.
2:10:36 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Recording has ended ending the meeting.
2:10:39 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Alright, thank you.
2:10:41 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Job everyone.
2:10:43 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Thank you.
2:10:45 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : All right.
2:10:48 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : People ended up participating.
2:10:52 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Eighty seven.
2:10:53 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Wow, it's a black more than ten.
2:10:58 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : All of a sudden, like woo!
2:11:00 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Yeah eighty seven folks. Wow. So probably seventy if you take out, we had a couple of staff attend.
2:11:09 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : I'm able to get like the full report, so I even could be more than that that like came up.
2:11:14 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : I mean it was devices, seventy, some devices.
2:11:17 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Together with people. Yeah.
2:11:20 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Good.
2:11:22 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Great, thanks folks.
2:11:23 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Alright, was this helpful, I mean for you I mean is it gonna influence what you do? You think.
2:11:30 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Oh yeah. Yeah. So really appreciate everyone's assistance facilitating. That was.
2:11:38 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : I mean I just I don't know, I just I don't know about you. I just feel overwhelmed by.
2:11:43 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : What I mean, just the the challenge before us, even the circumstances.
2:11:51 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : When you hear all of it late laid out, all of the, it's like, like thirteen, like, I don't know, it feels weird that we have to pick from those to like all of them should be fixed, right? So.
2:12:06 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Plus the ones that didn't make the list, right?
2:12:08 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Okay, yeah, plus yeah the fifteen other things we heard about, you know, that were also important. So.
2:12:15 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : It's a lot, but we'll do our our little piece, right?
2:12:18 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : One by the time. Yeah.
2:12:21 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : We got this.
2:12:22 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Okay.
2:12:23 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : So is, is this gonna be available like for for listening? Yeah.
2:12:29 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Learning, it'll take a second for that recording to.
2:12:32 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Right, right.
2:12:36 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : But, and then we kinda, we have a little site spot on the website to post stuff so everyone should be able to have access to, to the, the document we put together. This recording, the comments, everything so that then they can share that with other partners.
2:12:55 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Or, or people can just use this conversation if they want for whatever means. Sounds good.
2:13:02 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : So are you gonna write like a report of a summary of what people said today?
2:13:08 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : Yep.
2:13:10 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : That is the plan. I'm gonna click the AI assistant button and the ai's, no, we'll like look at this along with now the link that goes out is a survey for people to like say which of the ones they heard from they think are the top ones. So we'll have some quantification to go with the conversation.
2:13:30 : Nkurunungi, Lara : Listening will use our, our qualitative data and analysis software to kind of summarize it all.
2:13:38 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : I don't know, it's gonna be tough to, to pick. Yeah.
2:13:43 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : It is.
2:13:49 : Wiese (Him/His), Michael : All right.
2:13:51 : Burstein (She/Her), Gale : Thanks. Good job.
2:13:54 : Wofford (She/Her), Kelly : Take careful folks.