Transcripts For CSPAN Campaign 2020 Pete Buttigieg Holds Hea

CSPAN Campaign 2020 Pete Buttigieg Holds Health Care Equity Roundtable In... July 13, 2024

Everyone, thank you for coming and welcome to our Health Equity round table with mayor Pete Buttigieg. Wed like to welcome everyone to Nicholtown Baptist church and were so happy that all of you are here today. As we all know, leading up to saturdays primary, that Health Equity and health care is a major issue throughout South Carolina, but predominantly in our africanamerican communities. And we have gathered together an esteemed panel to come here today and discuss this with mayor Pete Buttigieg. It has his plans and vision regarding Health Equity for the africanamerican community, if he and when he becomes president of the united states. So again, were very thankful for you to be here. We are going to go around our panel and have everyone take 30 seconds to a minute to introduce themselves, who they are, what they do and why they are here. So we would like to start with the young lady at the end and we will work our way around. My name is alicia edmund. Im a 15year health care professional. I was a health care executive. I have lived in various areas of the country and as i relocated here to greenville and this area, its undergoing a lot of change. I have a strong interest as i built my family here and grow within my career here as to how the politics will affect the community that i will live and work in. My name is javetis. Im here on behalf of the Community Group. We are a community of young africanamerican male professionals who give back to lowincome communities by mentorship and a lot of that focuses around Health Care Initiatives as far as obesity, exercise, things of that nature. So im super excited to have a seat at the table to see whats going to be done for our youth to make sure that were able to have part in Health Care Equity that were talking about and discussing today. Happy thursday, everybody. My name is stephanie. I always like to say, im the face and the voice out here in the community trying to help, to educate our people. Im very excited to be a part of this Health Equality round table discussion to really bring some of those questions to the forefront that do affect us in our black and brown communities. Im a radio personality. People always ask me all the time what i do. I say i do business. Thats a plethora of different things. Im honored to be here today. Hi, everyone. My name is alicia. I serve on the laurence city council and chair of the laurence democratic party. Also c. E. O. Of Sullivan Health care which is a Health Care Contracting service specifically to thank contracts that contracts to Different Health care facilities. Im here as well to see how we can talk more about creating more Health Equity in the community. Hello. I am tracy. I am the owner of blue realty and associates, as well as coowner of hssb home care. Im excited as well to be here as a Small Business owner and entrepreneur and health professional. Today i want to hear more specifically the things you plan to address during this election. Hey, good afternoon. My name is jessica. I work at the ymca but i also have a Consulting Company where i work primarily with educators and i teach folks about the impact of poverty and trauma on the brain. And i work with a variety of young people who are experiencing poverty and trauma and so im excited to talk more about how we can support them. Good afternoon. My name is dr. Frank clark. I am a psychiatrist who practices in greenville, South Carolina. Decided to be excited to be here to advocate not only for our profession but also our patients, as Mental Health disparities are something that i see day in and day out. Thank you for being here. Hi, my name is caroline. I am the c. E. O. And executive director of new mind health and care. Which is a Behavioral Health program that specifically deals with people who are returning from incarceration or families that have been affected by the criminal justice system. There are a lot of trauma, theres a lot of need for juvenile Mental Health. Theres a lot of need for reentry Mental Health and behavior modification that is not covered by any expanded medicaid. I am also the Vice President of upstate pride, where i advocate for lgbtqplus folks. We are two very narge nalized populations that are in need marginalized populations that are need of health equities. Im very interested to hear how the plan will address those. Jalen thank you for being here. I am the first vice chair of the greenville democratic party. I have the blessing of being here, able to moderate this great discussion. Like for the mayor to open up with a few words and get right to it. Pete sounds good. Thank you for moderating and thanks to everybody for being part of this event. I think this is a really excellent combination of insights and experiences to bring to bear. Ill try to be fairly brief in presenting what we envision as part of the campaign because i think this would also be a Good Opportunity to get a sense of your stories, those you serve, the priorities that you have seen emerge and since weve brought a few friends along with cameras, its a chance, i think, very literally to shine a light on some of the struggles, but also some of the solutions that you have seen and that you have pursued. My hope is that well be able to illuminate how different and better president ial leadership would be supportive of the work that youre doing. One of the themes that youll see across all of our policy work, but especially when it comes to Health Equity, is the belief that not all of the answers have to come from washington. But more of the funding should. Because we see a lot of work that is happening at the local level or at the regional level where solutions are being developed. Especially when it comes to Health Inequities that need to have more of a wind at your back in the form of resources. But that we need to really tailer in a way thats going to make sense on the ground. I was reviewing some of the statistics of the challenges that you all are dealing with specific to South Carolina. A state that has the ninth highest mortality rate for women and that is something that we know here and also across the country is three times as likely to occur for black women as for white patients. Here in South Carolina, the seventh in the nation for adults with diabetes. It is now the case of approximately one in six africanamericans residing in the state are living with diabetes. We know from hivaids data that the majority of new diagnoses are in the africanamerican community. Many of these issues, i know, are very close to home here. As in different ways theyve been close to home for us in the community that i served as mayor for two terms. A community where we saw the effects of violence and trauma and the need for care that is informed by understanding adverse childhood experiences. Where a lot of these challenges of reentry were at stake. Where also there are a lot of Creative Solutions like the partnership with 100 black men that had nurses in barbershops finding men a little more willing there to, for example, be part of screening for diabetes than they were in a clinical environment. These were exactly the kind of local collaborations i think that we need to do a better job of supporting. And funding. At the federal level. So part of what weve proposed in the context of the Frederick Douglass plan, to dismantle the effects of systemic racial inequality in the country, is a real focus on intentionally dismantling the Health Inequities. That means within the first 100 days steak a national Health Equity task force that will specifically map out where these inequities are sharpest. It also means creating and investing in what were calling Health Equity zones. Again, this is an example of where that will be defined and decided by local partnerships. Local government, nonprofits, community leaders. But should have federal funding to help design a strategy and then make sure that strategy can develop with support from the department of health and human services. I believe that we can act to end the h. I. V. Aids epidemic by 2030. That we can tackle a diabetes epidemic that has been heading in the wrong direction in many ways in many communities. And that we can end this crisis of Maternal Mortality in a country that is lagging behind almost all developed nations, especially for the experience of black and other minority women. We also need to make sure, excuse me, i have my own Health Moment here. We also need to make sure that were investing in the profession. Part of whats driving, we know, the issues around Health Equity, things like the Maternal Mortality gap, is that theres often a lack of cultural competency. And there is bias. Explicit and implicit in the system. That means training our Health Work Force to be antiracist and to combat these kinds of bias in the clinical environment. It also means simply recruiting and empowering more clinical professions professionals who come from the very communities that have been excluded. So when we talk in other areas of the douglas plan about things like investing in hbcus, for example, its not just out of a regard for hbcus and the work that they do, but also out of the knowledge that a next generation of africanamerican doctors, nurses and researchers need to be supported so that we can close the disparities in who is represented among the Decision Makers and the practitioners. Knowing that that builtin cultural competency will lead to Better Outcomes at the clinical level. I also think that we need to recognize that health is not only the job of the department of health and human services. That, for example, when we look criminal Justice Reform and deincarceration, that influences health. For those dealing with Substance Abuse or Mental Health challenges, which is a huge proportion of those who are incarcerated, that that makes it that much harder to get continuity of care. When were talking about housing. Housing is ininseparable from concerns of health. We saw it in our community, for example, with the challenge of lead poisoning. Im pleased to say that the water is not the problem where i live. I was the mayor, i was in charge of the water, we saw to it that the water was good. But we had terrible problems with lead poisoning because the houses themselves, in lowincome families and older neighbors neighborhoods, where houses were built before the ban on lead paint, were the most likely to show up to high exposure to lead. These, of course, were also the neighborhoods where people were disproportionately red lined into. And so if were talking about things like housing desegregation, that is also a Public Health issue. So my point is that there will need to be an office of Health Equity injustice, not only in health and human services, but this needs to be in the considerations of d. O. J. , this needs to be in the considerations of h. U. D. And every department that is working on things that e. P. A. That ultimately reflect on Public Health. Coverage is important. I think that coverage is probably dominated the debate a little bit disproportionately so i dont want to dwell on it too long. But i do believe it is necessary to ensure that everybody can get covered. Thats the idea of the medicare for all strategy that we favor. That everybody would have access to a quality public plan. If its lowincome folks, then it will be subsidized so they dont pay anything out of pocket. As your income rises, we still make sure that its never more than 8. 5 of anybodys income to pay for premiums to get on an excellent plan. And i believe that we need to establish monthly outofpocket caps on how much somebody can have to spend on prescription drugs. The reason it has to be monthly is right now, even if you have insurance, a lot of times you have a yearly cap. And you see people delaying coverage or delaying filling in a prescription or getting a procedure so that they hit it in the right month. Which makes no sense medically. Of course most of us dont experience the economy on a yearly basis. The bills come in every month. So i think the outofpocket caps should be monthly too. I want to make a conings mention a couple other things that i think are impacting south carolinians in tick and need to be addressed through an equity lens. One is environmental justice. So 56 of africanamerican residents in South Carolina are in the same census tract as a superfund site. This points to the need, first of all toirnings crease the funding to clean up superfund sites, but also to look at how housing segregation has played a role in sending families into areas where they are made vulnerable to Health Issues simply by where they live. And then you layer on issues of contamination with things like food deserts, even exercise deserts. If theres not a place where a parent knows they can take a child to play that is safe. This too is a question of Public Health. The other thing i would point to is the need to support small water utilities. I know what the community of denmark has been up against and not the only one. Where there havent been the resources for lower income communities to be certain of access to clean, safe drinking water. So im proposing as part of our trilliondollar vision for Infrastructure Investment that there be a dedicated fund for supporting communities that are trying to enhance their Water Infrastructure to deal with these issues. So i could go on but im going to stop here because hopefully that gives you a flavor for the kind of interventions that i believe we can undertake. Its all based on this philosophy that weve got to start thinking about politics and government first and foremost in terms how it affects everyday life. The biggest impacts on everyday life are for those who have often been most directly excluded by policy in the past. And now is our chance to get it right. So having laid down some of those markers, im very eager to get into a conversation and learn more about what is impacting the people you serve, answer any questions i can about our vision and gather any input on how we can make it more tailored than ever to the work that youre doing. [indiscernible] [laughter] jalen i like the eagerness. What i was going to say was, everyone on the panel, i probably have the least amount of health care background. So im really interested to hear how the conversation is going to go and to learn what everyone has to say to really hear about everyones experiences and hear their questions. Since you seem very eager to ask the first one, were definitely going to throw it to you first. [laughter] i thought about it because for a years years i served as a marketer director for new Horizons Community health services. We talk about making these medicare for all that would want it. But my concern would really be, we can make it available for them and even make it free, but them having access to get there is a concern. So i really want to know how can that piece intertwine with the plan for the medicare for all or even if its free, i mean, you know, how can we, feern you being a president , say this could be inclusive with making sure were going to have this available for them, how do we make sure they can get there to make those appointments . Pete its a great point. Theres so much in the sizzle of the debate of getting everybody insured, but what good does it do you if you cant get to a provider . If you dont have the transportation to travel to a provider. Or if the providers in your area are closing. Whether were talking about the federally qualified Health Centers which are doing such a remarkable job but are clearly underresourced. Whether were talking about the closure of rural he is talking about the closure of rural facilities. By the way, one thing that rural facilities that have closed have in common, its in states that refuse to fully expand medicaid. So its something that deserves to be raised at a time when you have a president who i think claims to be caring about Rural America and were not really seeing that. The provider shortage, i think, theres two things. Theres a shortage of providers and theres this transportation issue. The provider shortage is why its not enough to just create medicare for all who want. It we also have to set reimbursement rates that encourage people to go into underserved areas and encourage people to go into areas of practice where theres not enough people to do it and in particular i think thats true of Mental Health. Where we are seeing another great thing is they have done often a remarkable job of having primary care and Mental Health care right alongside each other. Its not just about physically locating them next to each other. But that sure helps

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