Racism as a public health crisis, Healthy Chicago 2025, Infant mortality
Hi, I’ll be live-tweeting today’s Chicago Board of Health meeting for #CHIdocumenters @CHIdocumenters
09:00 AM Jul 21, 2021 CDT
@CHIdocumenters Had a few technical difficulties getting into the meeting but I got in at 7:04 and things are just getting started
Allison Arwady MD is currently giving an update and says that Chicago is actually doing pretty good in terms of COVID right now, positivity is at 1.5% positivity which is good since we want to stay below 2% but iffy since its up from 0.4%
We don’t have parts of the city that are dramatically unvaccinated, the lowest areas of vaccination of the city are around 30-40% and 90% of hospitalizations and deaths are among the unvaccinated
Anyone over 12 can call 312 746 4835 to schedule at home vaccinations! @DrArwady says more resources are moving into these at-home vax appointments as the mass vaccination sites are starting to close down. Take advantage of this if you haven’t yet!
Teens (12-17) have the lowest numbers of vaccination, though this is the group with the highest growth in vaccinations
Last meeting @chicagosmayor and Chicago Department of Public Health declared racism a public health emergency which is manifesting in community contact tracers who are engaging in communities of color and helping to slow the spread of COVID in these medically underserved spots
Read more about the declaration here: https://abc7chicago.com/mayor-lori-lightfoot-racism-chicago-department-of-public-health-news/10801185/
Last announcement is the expansion of the Narcotics Arrest Diversion program with the Chicago Police. Read more here: https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/chicago-police-announce-expansion-of-narcotics-diversion-program/#:~:text=CHICAGO%20%E2%80%94%20The%20Chicago%20Department%20of,11%20more%20districts%20since%20then.
Last announcement is the expansion of the Narcotics Arrest Diversion program with the Chicago Police. Read more here: https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/chicago-police-announce-expansion-of-narcotics-diversion-program/#:~:text=CHICAGO%20%E2%80%94%20The%20Chicago%20Department%20of,11%20more%20districts%20since%20then.
Board Member Joel Johnson asks “what’s the plan” for the declaration of racism as a public health crisis? How are we going to use the declaration as a mechanism for change?
@DrArwady answers that Healthy Chicago 2025 is the main operational response, Healthy Chicago Equity Zones where community organizations will be receiving funding and a good amount of agency in how to utilize and distribute those resources
Janet Lin asks 3 questions: one about how mental health initiatives are involved in the Narcotics Arrest Diversion, one about the investigation of sequencing of repeat COVID patients, and one about preparations for Lollapalooza and ensuing COVID mayhem
Regional Innovative Public Health Laboratory (RIPHL) is a partnership with Rush and is the main force that is collecting information on the sequencing of repeat covid patients
Lolla is always a cause of emergency visits, but this year they’re requiring vaccinations and negative COVID tests. The parties/indoor gatherings around Lolla is the most dangerous, but @DrArwady feels like Chi is in a good enough place in terms of COVID that it’ll be ok
Dr. Arwady also assured that the Narcotics Diversion program will be closely intertwined with existing mental health initiatives
Last question asks how race will be addressed in the Narcotics Diversion program because Black men are historically the most affected but the most neglected by the city, so many are currently in prison in Chicago from minor narcotics offenses
Arwady answers that it’s an issue that has to be addressed from many angles and one of the main ones is making sure that people have access to mental health resources. The Department of Public Health can’t help with the more justice related issues but hopes to support
Board member Matthew Davis asks about the low level of teen vaccinations and how to deal with the children of anti vax parents
Dr. Arwady answers that in this part of the state there isn’t much of an anti vax parent issue as much as it is that parents are supportive of vaccines but they need to be present or sign consent forms for their child to get vaccinated which can be prohibitive for vaxs at school
Board president Carolyn Lopez thanks Dr. Arwady and says that next meeting will be in person
Have been moving kind of fast, here is more info on Healthy Chicago 2025 from earlier https://www.chicago.gov/city/en/depts/cdph/provdrs/healthy_communities/svcs/healthy-chicago-2025.html
Food Equity Council will be established and is dovetailed from Healthy Chicago 2025 and will limit barriers to food pantry access, limit barriers to urban farming, and the city is hiring a food equity policy lead
The city will be split into 6 Equity Zones which will focus on hyper local public health initiatives to close the life expectancy gap. Right now they’re focusing on COVID but are projected to expand more to violence prevention and narcotics
These zones will also distribute resources to existing community organizations
Paid sick leave must include personal care for family members, day care providers must be trained in mental health, medicaid will now cover doulas, and mothers can stay on medicare for up to a year postpartum (IL is the first state to do this)
988 is a mental health/suicide prevention hotline that they’re trying out and seeing how it will interact with 911 and mental health responder initiatives https://abc7chicago.com/suicide-hotline-number-988-fcc-prevention/6320466/
No questions, moving on to Jennifer Vidas’ presentation from the Bureau of Maternal, Infant, Child and Adolescent Health (MICAH)
Infant mortality is one of the top drivers of the racial life expectancy gap, contributing 0.65 years
Severe maternal morbidity rate is 2.5x higher and pregnancy associated mortality ratio is 6x higher for Black women. Expanded postpartum care, resources to communities of color and access to mental health resources are all a part of the solution
WIC provides access to healthy food, health screenings, nutrition education, etc. and CDPH is the largest provider in Chicago and is known to be successful at reducing infant death, obesity, food insecurity, etc. Plus they operated through COVID!
CPS is one of the biggest partners, specifically a vision program that provides free vision exams and glasses, an oral health program that contracts with dentists to go into schools, and CHAT (sex-ed) which provides free testing + condoms
Lead poisoning prevention is a newer initiative with inspections and nurse case management https://t.co/H6uTUE8yFR
Family Connects Chicago is an attempt to better meet the needs of families with newborns and parents/pregnant people. https://www.healthychicagobabies.org/family-connects/
Most families express a wish for some kind of support or education in the weeks after going home with a newborn and Family Connects hopes to provide that. Nurses connects w families in home then help connect families to resources in community
This is the guidelines for where Family Connects will be providing support for these families. https://t.co/9mgu92b9bf
It’s an “evidence based program” that decreases maternal anxiety, emergency medical care, increases home safety, and helps close the racial health gap
Current partners for pilot program are Mount Sinai, Humboldt Park, Rush University Medical Center, and UChicago Medicine
Board member Matthew Davis notes that the data on lead poisoning is from 2017 and is wondering if there are plans on updating these stats
Vidis says that in the last year the number of children getting tested has fallen dramatically (unsurprising because pandemic). There’s a new data report that should be coming out but probably not this year.
Debra Wesley asks about how the racism as a public health crisis declaration is being addressed through Family Connect
Family Connect is giving new insights that can inform how the larger public health system can target resources effectively to decrease racial disparities. It is through the universality of the program that they can better see how to serve families that “fall through the cracks”
Janet Lin says that the program seems very hospital-centric, how can Family Connect be more community centric and serve families who choose to not go to hospitals? And how can Family Connect interact with WIC to bring information and support to a community?
98% of births are happening in a hospital so Vidis feels that this is the most effective way to achieve universality. They had conversations about if they should be doing prenatal care but they don’t have the capacity currently to tackle something that big outside the hospitals
President Carolyn Lopez cuts off the questions and answers at 10:30 and says that any further questions will have to be emailed and there are no public comments this time. Meeting is adjourned at 10:32!