Wellness and our environment

It's no secret that environmental issues affect residents of Bayview Hunters Point more than residents of most other neighborhoods. Ongoing town hall meetings focus on Hunters Point redevelopment activity and the environmental impact on those living nearby.

Meetings are Thursdays at 7pm at 150 Kiska Road.

The National Plan for Action, which captures the status of minority health disparities in our country and proposes 20 strategies for their elimination, is a thoughtful and thorough collaborative effort of representatives from community, faith-based and non-profit organizations, academic institutions, foundations and Federal, State and local agencies.

Comment on OMH’s National Plan for Action until February 12, 2010.

The Environmental Protection Agency has modified the regulations for hazardous materials that are recycled, changing its Definition of Solid Waste rule published in October, 2008. Such hazardous materials are also known as “hazardous secondary materials.”

The EPA is requesting public input on a draft plan for assessing the potential impacts of this hazardous waste recycling rule on low-income, minority and tribal populations.

Communities for A Better Environment (CARE) has issued a Request for Proposals directed toward “eligible entities to help their communities form collaborative partnerships, develop an understanding of the many local sources of toxic pollutants and environmental risks, set priorities, and identify and carry out projects to reduce risks through collaborative action at the local level.”

The closing date is March 9, 2010. Find information online.

Seva* listens to BVHP about health issues

Photo: Participants in a program started by Dr. Risha Irby-Irvin, a Seva* team member who has just won a prestigious award. From left, Robert Dickerson, Dijon Shepard and Jamil McQuinn join Taniqua Alexander, right, and other program participants on a field trip to the set of the TV show CSI.

What if policymakers at all levels heard from those who live, work and play in San Francisco’s Bayview Hunters Point neighborhood about real experience and grassroots responses to community health and wellness?

Seva*, a partnership between the BVHP community and San Francisco General Hospital’s Internal Medicine Residency Program, believes they should. Residents of Bayview Hunters Point can expect to live on average 14 years less than residents living on Russian Hill, according to the highly-regarded Health Matters online tool.

Residents, doctors, community-based organizations and leaders from throughout the neighborhood are engaged in a series of grassroots dialogues that have taken them from the table of the African American Community Health Equity Council to the gym at the Willie Mays Boys & Girls Club.

Seva* participants are listening to the people who suffer most from health disparities and other challenges affecting wellness, and discovering untapped community wisdom for addressing the needs of the people who live within that community. A policy and advocacy tool is being developed to amplify grassroots experience and knowledge.

There are still involvement opportunities for anyone interested in Seva*’s work. BVHP organizations can host a community dialogue and sign-up as an organizational supporter, and individuals can serve on the Seva* Accountability Council to review drafts of the brief. Contact Roberto Ariel Vargas for more information.

*Seva emerged from relationships built within the Southeast Sector Food Access Working Group, and is funded by University of California Partnerships.

The student doctors who are part of the Seva* team are remarkable for their commitment to making the world a better place for all people through good healthcare provision. Several of them have made recent contributions.

For instance, Risha Irby-Irvin, MD, who is in her third year of residency, was honored by the American Association of Medical Colleges for her work in designing and implementing the Summer Empowerment Academy, a program that offers support and guidance to teenagers from low-income communities and seeks to inspire them to pursue higher education.

Risha started the program with her husband Nathan, an emergency medicine resident at Highland Hospital in Oakland, to address some of the social determinants of health. Why?

“I work at San Francisco General Hospital,” she says, “and every day I see the effects of poverty, violence and a lack of educational opportunities.”

See more about Risha’s work and this presigious award online.

Devora Keller, MD, co-authored a paper called “Health Literacy: New developments and research” in the Journal of Communication in Healthcare about health literacy in vulnerable populations.

The fact that it often seems like doctors and patients speak different languages lends urgency to Devora’s contribution, and is a big part of the reason Seva* exists. Email Devora if you would like to learn more about her work.

Basim Khan, MD, one of the student doctors most involved with Seva*, pulled up to a meeting in Bayview last weekend with a car packed to the roof with boxes of relief supplies for Haiti. Those who know Basim are not surprised by expressions of his concern for others, like this one. Now, those who read the Los Angeles Times shouldn’t be surprised either.

Basim authored a high-profile opinion piece, for that newspaper’s November 5th edition, on the need for more primary care physicians and better community-based healthcare provision. He noted that, fifty years ago, half of all American doctors were primary care physicians, a figure that has dropped to a third.

That fact is alarming since, as Basim says, primary care physicians “are a patient's advocate, an ally in a system that is becoming increasingly complicated, overbearing and even dehumanizing.”

Not to be outdone by his students, Seva* organizer and UC Primary Care/Internal Medicine Residency Program Director, Sharad Jain, MD, was seen on CBS channel 5 recently. He talked about the prevalence of obesity which he and other providers have been seeing for years on the front line of healthcare provision in our area.

See the full interview with Sharad.

The entire Seva* team is proud of the achievements of these and other involved doctors at SF General Hospital.

New "guardians" of BVHP food access

The Southeast Food Access (SEFA) Working Group has launched a Food Guardian Project in Bayview Hunters Point.

Sabrina Wu has been hired to coordinate project, and has been working to hire six "Food Guardians" from the neighborhood who will work to improve access to healthy food. Ashley Clark, Kenneth Hill, Jameela Toups, and Antonia Williams are the first to join the Food Guardian team, and are already learning how to raise awareness about sustainable food systems and healthy food access here.

The group will be administering a survey of community members to better understand the affect of a market like Tesco's Fresh and Easy when it opens in neighborhoods like ours.

Sabrina is looking for locations for interviews of women parents or other guardians of young children, and for for bilingual Cantonese and Spanish residents to join her team. Contact her by email or at 415.581.2444.

New corner store food study

Photo: Community youth participated in a healthy food preparation demonstration last fall.

A study by Temple University's Center for Obesity Research and Education shows what Bayview Hunters Point residents have known for a long time, that finding a source of nutritious food can be difficult. We live in a world of corner stores where we are not likely to find much fresh produce.

The study, published last October, concludes that, on average "only 11 percent of the items stocked by a typical urban corner store would even be considered healthful."

Finding nutritious food is even more of a challenge for young people who lack transportation to supermarkets located outside the neighborhood, and who have no memory of a time when fruits and vegetables were plentiful here, even at corner stores.

The study found that 53 percent of the fourth- to sixth-graders studied shopped in corner stores, and many shopped in corner stores both before and after school, five days a week, consuming up to 3,560 calories per week in junk food and soft drinks.

Even children eligible to participate in free or low-cost school nutrition programs chose instead to snack on less healthy foods. Those children offered a variety of explanations including that transportation arrives too late for school breakfast programs, that they don't like the food the schools offer, or that "it's just not cool" to eat in the cafeteria, under the watchful eyes of adults when they can buy a snack at the store to nibble at their leisure.

Learn more about the study online. An emerging Healthy Corner Store Network can be found on Google Groups. Search for "Healthy Corner Stores Network" or click here.

Learn more about the struggle to improve food access on this blog.

Innovative workforce readiness program

Need work?

How does your resume look? Is that cover letter strong enough to land an interview? Do you need any help polishing your communication skills?

If you answer “yes” to any of those questions, the Work Readiness Program at the Bayview Branch library may be just in time for you. It is being presented by the African American Interest Committee of the San Francisco Public Library.

John Weber will lead the program, called Focusing on Rewarding and Restoring Dignity (FORWARD), which he designed to empower economically-challenged individuals to overcome personal barriers to landing and keeping a job.

Invest in yourself, on four Thursdays from February 4th through the 25th at 6pm, at the Bayview branch library on 3rd and Revere. As space is limited, register right away by calling 415.355.5757.

Gardening in the rain

by Joti Levy, Willie Brown Academy Garden Educator

The rain is a magical element that brings both blessings and challenges to a garden.

As I forged through traffic with my windshield wipers on full force and downed caffeine into myself, I could not help but be thankful for the overflowing water that was filling the reservoirs, nourishing the soil and bringing so many new mushrooms and vegetables to life.

I also thought anxiously of my new starts lying in their raised beds. Would my romanesco broccoli with their beautiful fractals just starting to bud make it?

I arrived at the garden, and to my delight found that the plants were not yet flooded. Some beds were holding puddles of water next to their plants. I asked the students of my fifth grade class what to do.

They told me all the things I had thought of, but I loved hearing their creative minds moving.

“Put a tarp on top”, one student said.

That could lead to a lack of evaporation and hurt the plants.

How about canopies or a hole in the raised bed?

Now I am putting on my galoshes, rain pants and rain coat, covering my tool shed to prevent more moisture from seeping in, and heading out to use my students wisdom so that my romanesco broccoli can live out its term. I can’t wait to learn math with the fractals that come out of those broccoli as we make a yummy dish in the not so distant future!!