Monthly Archives: July 2021

July 21, 2021 | :

In March, the board of directors of the Association of Governing Boards of Universities and Colleges (AGB) released a new mission statement focusing on achieving justice, equity, and inclusion at all institutions. That mission statement came with three strategies: calling for governing boards to apply equity to all their processes; for institutions to apply an equity lens to the entirety of their organization; and for institutions to contribute to the equity of their surrounding communities.

On Wednesday, the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education (NADOHE) hosted a webinar to discuss strategies to achieve this three-part goal. A panel of experts advised that diversity officers should be a part of every major conversation happening at an institution, and that changes made in an effort to improve equity should be made fully transparent to the public.

Dr. Kevin McDonald

Dr. Babur B. Lateef, a member of the University of Virginias (UVA) Board of Visitors, said that achieving AGBs first goal of having a fully supportive board committed to the idea of equity, is critical to the success of their new mission statement.

In these polarized times, you can be faced with bad press about critical race theory or some nonsense, he said. But if the leadership is unanimously behind this effort, a lot of that press will float to the side. People give up when they know the leadership is behind it.

Dr. Kevin McDonald, vice president for diversity, equity, inclusion, and community partnerships at UVA, said diversity officers are charged with creating strategic plans and implementing those into different areas of an organization. That task, he said, becomes easier when there is a shared responsibility for all to engage in intentional conversations around equity.

We need a shared narrative, McDonald added.

Applying equity across the whole of an institution, will look differently according to where institutions are in their own journey, said Lateef. But no matter what stage of that journey the institution is at, he said, if [it] doesnt have diversity, equity, and inclusion in its mission statement somewhere, it needs to get there.

Dr. Clyde Wilson Pickett, vice chancellor and chief diversity officer at the University of Pittsburgh, said it was important to remind boards, faculty, and staff of why institutions were created in the first place: to provide students with access to a quality education. Institutions that incorporate equity will help to promote a sense of belonging in their traditionally underserved populations, a feeling that is starting to decline for many students from diverse backgrounds, he added.

Dr. Clyde Wilson Pickett

Institutions must engage with surveys, the panel said, to self-assess their progress. NADOHE President Paulette Granberry-Russell said she has no doubt institutions can do this work.

You can measure success or failure of any policy, any guideline to promote equity, diversity and inclusion goals, she said. First, you identify a goal. You develop baseline data, and then you engage in a set of strategies and tactics that will help move that agenda. Then, evaluate whether those measures have contributed to that success.

Institutions that make changes with full transparency should also share disaggregated data with the public, which can help with AGBs third goal of greater community involvement.

There are times when our communities feel excluded from the life of the institution, said Granberry-Russell. When were more transparent, we build more trust. Too often we dont trust our communities enough. We fear our being transparent and sharing data and positions will lead to disappointment. It can be uncomfortable, but its not bad. Were still standing.

Liann Herder can be reached at lherder@diverseeducation.com.

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Diversity Experts Focus on Making Boards and Institutions More Equitable - Higher Education - Diverse: Issues in Higher Education

Oil and gas extraction activities, including fracking, drilling, and production, can release radioactive materials that endanger workers, nearby communities, and the environment. Radioactive elements are naturally present in many soils and rock formations, as well as in the water that flows through them. Oil and gas exploration and production (E&P) activities can expose significant quantities of these radioactive materials to the environment.

An aerial view of frack pad site in Jefferson County, Ohio, in November 2020

Ted Auch/FracTracker, CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0

The radioactive material unearthed during oil and gas E&P is known as naturally occurring radioactive material, or NORM. When it has been concentrated or exposed to the environment by industrial activity, its called technologically enhanced NORM, or TENORM. In our new report, A Hot Fracking Mess: How Weak Regulation of Oil and Gas Production Leads to Radioactive Waste in our Water, Air and Communities, we reviewed TENORM in the oil and gas industry, how it is released into the environment, and how it is regulated (or not) at the federal and state levels.

Throughout the oil and gas development process, radioactive material can enter the environment both accidentally and intentionally. During production, equipment such as compressors, pumps, and pipes may be exposed to radioactive material. The waste management process also presents many opportunities for radiation to be accidentally released, such as in spillage or leakage of waste in transit or from the pits, tanks, or landfills where it is stored. Additionally, wastewater and equipment may be brought to facilities to be processed for reuse, sometimes in other drilling or fracking operations. There are also reuse methods that intentionally reintroduce radioactive material into the environment, such as road spreading, in which wastewater is sprayed onto roads for dust suppression or deicing. Another form of intentional reintroduction is the use of so-called land farming, a waste-management approach in which industrial waste, such as oil and gas drill cuttings, is mixed with microbes that help break down contaminants and then mixed with soil. If these wastesare not properly managed, they can potentially present unacceptably high human health risks.

When it comes to oil and gas exploration and production, the greatest radiation health risk is cancer due to exposure to Radium-226 and Radium-228. Underground oil and gas reservoirs often contain elevated levels of radioactive materials in comparison with that found aboveground, mostly Radium-226 and Radium-228. Once drilling begins, radioactive materials that would have otherwise been confined beneath the surface can be released into the air, onto land, or into surface water or groundwater. As they become concentrated, it leads to environmental contamination and can accumulate in peoples bodies.

Radium-226 and Radium-228 can cause health effects that depend on levels of exposure. Most epidemiological data come from studies of radium watch dial painters, radium chemists, and technicians exposed through medical procedures in the early 1900s. These studies, as well as studies on experimental animals, indicate that chronic exposure to radium can induce cancer.

Unnecessary exposure to Radium-226 and Radium-228, both present in many forms of oil and gas waste, will increase the risk of cancer. Radium also decays into radon isotopes and, when inhaled, deposit radiation in lungs, causing lung cancer. In fact, radon is the second-leading cause of lung cancer in the U. S. Radon decay products, including lead-210 and polonium-210, are also present in high levels in gas handling equipment and can further contribute to cancer risk.

Improper disposal of oil and gas waste can spread unnecessary exposure to radiation far beyond oil and gas site workers and into surrounding communities. Without proper regulation of this waste, unsafe management and disposal practices will persist, workers will continue to be unnecessarily exposed to radiation, and communities living nearby will continue to face health risks from unregulated radioactive material. My colleague Amy Mall details the regulatory gaps in oil and gas TENORM management here.

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Radioactive Material in the Oil and Gas Industry - NRDC (Natural Resources Defense Council)

Aging and Disability Services (ADS), a division of the Seattle Human Services Department (HSD) that serves as the Area Agency on Aging for Seattle and King County, received two awards from the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging (n4a) at a virtual awards program on July 20one of them the top Innovation Award winner for 2021.

ADS Community Living Connections Collaborative Funding Process initially received one of 15 n4a Aging Innovations Awards. The Aging Innovations Award is n4as highest award category. During the conference general session that followed, HSD/ADS was announced as the top Innovation Award winner for 2021 and the recipient of a $2,500 prize.

Age Friendly Livelive and online events coordinated by the Age Friendly Seattle team at ADSreceived one of 21 n4a Aging Achievement Awards announced at the conference.

The 2021 n4a Aging Innovations and Achievement Awards recognize AAAs and Title VI Native American Aging Programs that develop and implement cutting-edge approaches to support older adults, people with disabilities and their family caregivers. Among the selection criteria was the ease with which other agencies could replicate the program in their communities. N4a published program descriptions in its 2021 Awards Book.

Per the n4a media release, With service gaps, no additional money to bring new providers on board and a need for an even stronger focus on meeting the Seattle Human Services Department, Aging and Disability Services (ADS) racial equity goals, ADS devised the Collaborative Funding Process. The Collaborative Funding Process is a new approach that enables community-based agencies to determine how they will collectively deliver services. Unlike a traditional funding process where the AAA or, in this agencys case, a panel, makes funding recommendations, collaborative funding means agencies work together to decide funding allocations and service expectations. Over seven months, participating agencies met with a racial equity consultant as they identified funding and service delivery levels for each network provider agency.

The 20182019 Collaborative Funding Process resulted in over $3.7 million in 19 provider contracts that began in January 2020, including contracts with five new providers, said Mary Mitchell, interim Aging and Disability Services division director. Collaboration enabled the network to support new agencies serving LGBTQ and south Asian elders and African American caregivers without adding more money. The network also gained greater capacity to serve south county residents, where needs are greatest; offered improved access to transportation services; and improved network communication overall.

Age Friendly Live comprises two ongoing online event seriesCivic Coffee Hours and Close to Homeand other events designed to reduce social isolation and increase opportunities for civic participation among older people. According to the Age Friendly Seattle 2020 Annual Report, more than 6,400 people participated in Age Friendly Live events or viewed them later on the ADS YouTube channel last year.

Over the past two years, through intentional outreach to immigrants and refugees, simultaneous interpretation during in-person events, and online event streaming with auto-captioning in a choice of world languages, we saw exponential growth in the number of participants, said Mitchell. In 2019, staff intentionally sought out immigrant and refugee older adults, starting with outreach to Russian- and Amharic-speaking communities, and arranged for simultaneous translation during in-person events (with interpreters speaking into a transmitter and guests wearing headphones ADS). Later that year, ADS received requests for interpretation in Khmer and Vietnamese as well. When audiences began to exceed room capacity, staff reached out to The Seattle Public Library, which joined us as a co-sponsor, made larger meeting spaces available, and increased outreach to older Seattle residents.

Then, COVID-19 stay-at-home orders presented an additional challenge, Mitchell said. How could we offer online events that supported our multicultural audience? Staff studied options for live streaming in multiple languages as well as captioning for people who are hard of hearing. They selected Microsoft Teams Livea webinar platform that provides captioning in multiple languages and retains language choice in video recordings.

We also recognized the risk of social isolation during the pandemic, so staff created Close to Home: Stories of Health, Tech & Resilience, a second series intended to reach older people who were confined at home, said Mitchell. Every program included local COVID information and public library resources as well as Community Living Connections services that we fund. Once we return to in-person events, we expect to offer a choice between in-person attendance and online viewing.

To ease online program access for individuals who are uneasy about joining online events, Age Friendly Seattle promotes a single web link. Each program is promoted through e-mail and social media, emphasizing language access. A phone option is available for people without Internet and Seattle Channel TV now broadcasts recordings in the weeks that follow.

Earlier this year, Age Friendly Seattle received an American Society on Aging Award for Excellence in Multicultural Aging in recognition of their intentional outreach to immigrant elders.

For information about upcoming Age Friendly Live events and links to past programs, visit seattle.gov/agefriendly/events.

Need aging or disability resources? To access local services, call Community Living Connections at (toll-free) 844-348-5464. Calls are confidential and free of charge.

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Area Agency on Aging for Seattle-King County Wins Top National Award - Human Interests

TROY, N.Y., July 22, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- 13 BIPOC-led organizations, whose work centers around elevating and amplifying community voices, are the recipients of the inaugural Changemaker Fund, created by Healthy Alliance IPA, sister organization of Alliance for Better Health, and United Way of the Greater Capital Region. From distributing COVID-19 vaccines to sowing food equity from an Afro-Indigenous farm, this years Fund recipients are charting a course for positive change. Collectively, they are working to address wide-ranging systemic inequities, including mental health, food security and sovereignty, housing, youth success, and financial securityparticularly among Black, Latinx, immigrant, refugee, and rural communities.

This years awardees are: BirthNet, Black Nurses Coalition, BlueLight Development, Capital District Latinos, CEK RN Consulting, Centro Civico, In Our Own Voices, Miracle on Craig Street, Mom Starts Here, Mission Accomplished Transition Services, Soul Fire Farm, U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants, and Youth FX.

Grassroots community-based organizations are integral to reducing health disparities, but are often underfunded, said Erica Coletti, CEO of Alliance for Better Health. We created this fund in partnership with United Way to provide resources as a step toward addressing that void. Together, we believe that the best way to make a difference is to work alongside each other, be intentional, and remain laser-focused on our shared mission to address inequities of all kinds.

The Changemaker Fund provides unrestricted operational funding, technical support, and leadership development for the awardees. Each of the Funds recipients will receive an initial award of up to $25,000, with the opportunity for additional funding in the future. As part of the program, organizations will implement Alliances digital referral platform, Healthy Together (powered by UniteUs), to send and receive referrals across a network of medical, social, and behavioral health organizations, and contribute to the ongoing collection of social determinants of health data. Awardees will also have the opportunity to participate in a tailored learning curriculum, ranging from leadership development training to interactive workshops, designed to empower and connect leadership across organizations and within communities.

The Changemakers are having a major impact on our communities and neighborhoods, said Peter Gannon, President & CEO of United Way of the Greater Capital Region. Building on the success of the first cohort of Five to Watch, this partnership provides more significant financial support for more organizations while enhancing the capacity-building cohort model.

This partnership is an example of how collaborative funding supports those in need and most apt to affect real change. By promoting collaboration across the philanthropic sector, Healthy Alliance IPA and United Way are working to address resource gaps and reduce the burden of multiple applications and reporting requirements for awardees, making it possible to more meaningfully target systemic problems.

About Healthy Alliance IPAHealthy Alliance IPA, one of the first IPAs in the region focused entirely on social determinants of health, collaborates with community partners to address social needsfood insecurity, housing assistance, benefits navigationbefore they turn into medical problems. Established in 2015, Healthy Alliance IPAs sister entity, Alliance for Better Health, engages medical, behavioral, and social service providers in developing innovative solutions to improve community health.

About United Way of the Greater Capital RegionUnited Way of the Greater Capital Region is an organization that fights for the health, education, and financial stability of every person in every community. It unites donors, volunteers, and community organizations in a common mission to strengthen our community and improve social conditions in the Capital Region and beyond. Learn more at http://www.unitedwaygcr.org or http://www.Facebook.com/UnitedWayGCR

Media ContactsLaunchSquad for Healthy Alliance IPAalliance@launchsquad.com

Claire Reid, Chief Impact OfficerUnited Way of the Greater Capital RegionClaire@unitedwaygcr.org

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Healthy Alliance IPA and United Way of the Greater Capital Region launch fund to support BIPOC - GlobeNewswire

When the surgeon general of the United States speaks, people tend to listen. So Vivek Murthys recent 22-page report proclaiming that the spread of misinformation through social media has become an urgent threat to public health, and that more needs to be done to combat the issue, is bound to get some attention.

He has a point: Social media is at the heart of misinformation.

But social media also has the power to drive public health discussion, a point that runs through the report but is never highlighted. Thats why we believe that solving the misinformation epidemic will require that medical trainees like us along with members of the broader public health community not only keep a sharp eye out for misinformation campaigns but that also actively engage friends, families, and loved ones with evidenced-based conversations on these same platforms.

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As physicians in training and social media users, we have seen firsthand evidence of this positive side of social media. On Twitter, for example, adding the hashtag #medtwitter to a tweet makes it visible to countless individuals interested in the latest updates in medicine. Social media also offers opportunities for various stakeholders such as politicians, venture capitalists, academics, and others to share their insights and find solutions for the most challenging issues of our time.

As the U.S. engages in a campaign to increase vaccination rates and combat the rising outbreaks of the Delta variant, much of the conversation has centered on issues related to vaccine distribution, future health care transformations, and worsening health inequities. Moving beyond the pandemic, we believe this kind of cross-talk should be leveraged to create networks of professionals that share credible health information and ultimately chart a pathway for improved long-term public health.

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Social media platforms serve as great ways for stakeholders to communicate primarily because these platforms have millions of users across multiple areas of expertise and are already optimized to facilitate interaction about shared interests. Since the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the hashtag #Covid19 on Twitter has created a feed that doctors, public health officials, politicians, economists, and others have used to share their work.

The general public also benefits because this joint feed facilitates cross-disciplinary virtual panels that have helped educate and disseminate credible updates about the pandemic. Even though Covid-19 is biological in nature, addressing its societal implications require collaborations to devise innovative solutions, and social media has facilitated that cross-talk faster than ever before. What would have taken multiple phone calls and emails can now take a single retweet, message, or comment.

For example, one of us (P.J.) recently messaged multiple physicians over Twitter who were sharing novel insights into the pandemic. Upon connecting, the physicians expressed interest in creating a joint feed to share the most up-to-date news in health. What emerged was a Twitter account titled: Health News Around the World, which now is used by multiple physicians to share the most recent up-to-date health news occurring on a daily basis.

That is just one of the ways we have leveraged the power of retweets to share stories of what moving to a Covid-19 free world would look like. In fact, we recently took part in the #thisisourshot movement to help foster collaborations with national student medical groups such as the Student National Medical Association, the Latino Medical Student Association, and the American Medical Womens Association to highlight issues of vaccine hesitancy in different communities. More importantly the This Is Our Shot movement also aims to support the broader efforts of more than 25,000 health care workers who are working to get our population out of this pandemic.

One of the most inspiring aspects of this campaign has been the opportunity to use social media for people to share stories about the communities they love. Ultimately, this campaign has promoted vaccinations as individuals not only feel heard but are getting information from sources they relate to.

Another example of social media facilitating cross-disciplinary collaboration comes from the release of Clubhouse, an audio-based social media app that allows people across the globe to join virtual rooms and talk about topics of interest, including Covid-19, vaccine distribution, vaccine hesitancy, and more. Since its release in April 2020, the app has skyrocketed in popularity and now has more than 10 million weekly active users.

Clubhouse is much like Twitter, but its competitive advantage comes from the fact that Clubhouse allows individuals to talk to one another through an audio interface. As medical students, we were interested in using Clubhouse to battle misinformation about the Covid-19 pandemic. We invited faculty members at Yale, where we are both students, who were actively researching Covid-19 and created multiple rooms in the All Things Covid club, which was started by a group of physicians to help answer questions about the evolving Covid-19 pandemic. These rooms attracted thousands of listeners and helped fight misinformation through voice-to-voice interactions that would have otherwise never occurred. Today, this club has nearly 45,000 members and continues to hold weekly town hall meetings, each of which promotes cross-talk across people of all backgrounds and helps set the stage for innovative solutions.

Instead of reining in the use of social media, we believe that the medical community should go on the offensive and fight misinformation on social media domains by coordinating networks of reputable individuals who can serve as sources of credible information on these domains. This will allow students, attending physicians, epidemiologists, health care entrepreneurs, and many others to engage with family and friends within and outside of medicine to help spread truthful information in the same way leaders with large platforms can engage their spheres of influence. Most importantly, social media will allow anyone in medicine and health care more broadly to promote inclusive discussions that get at the heart of individual concerns.

Whether it is by hosting interactive Clubhouse discussions that allow individuals to openly voice their concerns or creating trending movements like #thisisourshot, social media has the potential to engage and resonate with local communities. One of us (V.A.) recently had an in-person discussion with a staff member at the VA Ann Arbor Healthcare System who was reluctant to get vaccinated because of concerns that extremely rare side effects, like Guillain-Barr syndrome that might be associated with the Johnson & Johnson vaccine, would be a greater danger than the virus. Upon further discussion, these concerns appeared to arise from online rumors. These concerns stemmed from what the staff member had read online. Although the conversation ended with the staff member feeling confident that he would not get vaccinated, given that he has already had Covid-19 and felt that Covid-19 was being sensationalized in media, it offered a glimpse into the need for the medical community to more actively engage in the social media arena.

Well-meaning discussions like that one that connect trainees, the academics who train them, researchers, and members of the public is what intentional social media engagement can foster. For doctors and doctors-in-training like us, the moment has always been right to prioritize science and public health. But its important that this be done by first taking into account the diversity of perspectives, experiences, and cultures that exist within the medical community itself and the broader society. Only by intentionally engaging in cross-disciplinary conversation can the medical community create the durable coalitions and political willpower necessary to improve public health in the face of current and future pandemics.

Victor Agbafe is a candidate for dual M.D. and J.D. degrees at the University of Michigan Medical School and Yale Law School. Prerak Juthani is a candidate for dual M.D. and M.B.A. degrees at Yale School of Medicine and Yale School of Management.

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Fight medical misinformation on social media with more information - STAT - STAT