Environmental Justice Health Summit

On Saturday June 10, I attended a Health Summit at Verde Elementary School in North Richmond.

I arrived just in time for Chuck Mckitney's presentation on health disparities in Contra Costa County. Chuck works for the Contra Costa Health Department (so an appropriate speaker on the subject). A few statistics that shocked me - Richmond accounts for 15% of the CC county population but 70% (!!) of its homicides. African Americans between the ages of 15 and 35 are the most likely to be victims or perpetrators of these homicides. Chuck also made some not so shocking comments - poverty is linked to poor school performance and high violence rates.

Young people are at highest risk to be the victims/perpetrators of violence, getting preganant, or abusing substances in the afternoons (3-6pm). I wonder...what happened to afterschool programs and the like? Too expensive?

Chuck went on to ask How much does violent crime cost? Consider incarceration, trials, treating a gunshot wound, and loss of income. Every $1 spent on prevention saves $100s on enforcement.

During a Q&A session that followed, an outraged audience member brought up Seneca. She witnessed 5 children "waddling in contamination" and urged that the kids shouldn't be there. Amen.

Theme for today: The ER should not be the first time a patient gets seen. There should be preventive care and health care...at least in school!

Interesting fact: Latinos don't arrive in this country with high rates of obesity. The lack of available good food and activity cause the rates to rise. A study shows that looking at several generations of latinos, the longer the family member has been in the US, the more obese the person was.

The next speaker was a woman from the Asthma Coalition which also operates through Contra Costa County. Their main goal is to prevent environmental triggers of asthma through policy. One way they do this is to train residents to be advocates. Community empowerment= good. African American children and women show the highest national rate of asthma. Many ask why asthma is an environmental justice issue. Hmm.

A shocking thing I learned from this presentation is that children are currently not allowed to carry their inhalers on them. In addition, funding for school nurses has been cut so that there is at best one per district. What is a child supposed to do when s/he has an attack on the playground? At the very least there should be education programs and there is currently a proposed bill to allow the children to carry their inhalers with them. The Pacific Institute has a great report on a major cause of this asthma.

At this point of the day, Cassie, Verde Elementary School's Garden teacher, took those interested to see this amazing urban garden. The garden is funded by United Way and has been around for approximately 10 years. The garden provides veggies for the school's weekly salad bar and integrates programs like nutrition education.



There are beds shaped like Africa and South America to teach the kids about their heritage. In the backdrop of the garden is Color Spot Nursery. This has been somewhat of a problem for the garden in terms of weeds but the nursery is due to close and who knows what demon will take its place.