January 13, 2016 – RI Future

January 13, 2016January 23, 2016

Public Health: health disparities and impacts on health care institutions

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The Environmental Justice League of Rhode Island (EJLRI) has created a brilliant position paper, “National Grid’s Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) Liquefaction Facility: Toxic Hazards in the Port Providence: Proposals for a Just Transition” that eviscerates National Grid‘s plans to build a new liquefaction facility for fracked LNG at Fields Point in South Providence. Over the next few days RI Future will be presenting the EJLRI’s position paper in its entirety.

Public Health

All of the above issues discussed in this position paper are also public health issues. In looking at the social and environmental determinants of health, public health paints a picture that helps explain why particular populations are more likely to be sick. Issues of potential disasters, environmental racism, climate change impacts, and economic inequality are all public health issues. The EJ League is the backbone organization for COHEP (Community Organizing for Health Equity in Providence), a collaborative effort with DARE (Direct Action for Rights and Equity), PrYSM (Providence Youth Student Movement), and the RI Doula Collective. COHEP is funded through the RI Department of Health’s “Health Equity Zones” (HEZ). As a place based initiative that works to develop collective impact strategies to address health problems and health disparities, COHEP’s HEZ work focuses on a few neighborhoods in South Providence including Washington Park, a front-line community to Port of Providence. Research and GIS mapping conducted as part of the HEZ community assessment show that Washington Park has largest concentration by far of chemical exposures in Providence, and also has the highest concentration of leaking underground storage tanks:

EJLRI Position Paper_Page_24 At hearings and public events about the proposed liquefaction facility, multiple community members have spoken out about issues of high asthma rates in the community being a major concern. Public health data backs up this concern, and shows that the area is one of the state’s largest asthma hot spots. While most of the state has asthma rates of 04.4 percent or 4.56.2 percent, most of Providence has asthma rates of 8 – 10.3 percent and the neighborhood next to I95 and the Port has the highest levels in the state at 10.4 – 15.4 percent. (link)

On top of the high level of children with asthma, the front-line community and asthma hot spot next to the port also has some of the highest levels in the state for Emergency Department visits or Hospitalizations due to asthma. Among children with asthma living next to the Port of Providence, 15.5 – 24.1 percent have had an Emergency Department visit, compared to rates of 03.3 percent for more affluent neighborhoods in Providence. Similarly with asthma related hospitalizations, for front-line neighborhoods adjacent to the Port or Providence, children with asthma had inpatient hospitalizations at a rate of 5.1 – 8.3 percent compared to the rate of 00.7 percent in the more affluent neighborhoods in Providence.

In addition to the many health problems and health disparities impacting the neighborhoods of South Providence and Washington Park, there are also public health impacts relating to healthcare facilities in these communities. The Lifespan and RI Hospital complex is the largest and most visible concern, containing the state’s only level 1 trauma center, Rhode Island Hospital, Women and Infants Hospital, and Hasbro Children’s Hospital.

In addition to this major hospital complex, there are many other healthcare facilities within a close radius (1 to 2 miles) from the proposed liquefaction facility and close to the other hazardous facilities in Port of Providence. These include but are not limited to:

Hasbro’s Medicine Pediatrics Primary Care (245 Chapman St) this facility offers primary care for children, and also offers specialty services for chronic conditions including asthma, diabetes, and hypertension, which exist at very elevated levels in this neighborhood. The facility also offers gender and sexual health services. It falls within the one mile radius of the proposed liquefaction facility.

Providence Community Health Centers (375 Allens Ave) PCHC serves approximately 50,000 patients in Providence, many of whom are low income, uninsured or under insured, and suffering from health problems impacted by social determinants of health. This location has their administrative building for all 9 health centers in Providence, as well as the Chaffee Health Center which serves patients. It is located within the half mile radius of the proposed liquefaction facility.

Providence Community Health Centers Prairie Avenue complex (369 Prairie Ave) this health center location also includes the asthma and allergy specialty clinic for the entire PCHC health center system across Providence.

Fertility Solutions (758 Eddy St) specializes in fertility treatments and in vitro fertilization and other related services

New Beginnings (717 Allens Ave) offers perinatal and ultrasound care

It is clear from this limited list, that any cumulative or emergency related impacts from the proposed liquefaction facility would not only impact the whole state’s health care system, but would particularly impact health care services related to maternal and child care, reproductive care, chronic disease care, and emergency response services. Ongoing background pollution and risks in this area should be seen as a public health crisis. Any potential future disaster impacting the port could cause a public health emergency of unimaginable proportions.

No pressure, House of Reps, but people are dying

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The Good Samaritan Act was passed in the RI Senate last week on the second legislative day of the season and the enthusiastic support the Act has received from Governor Gina Raimondo and Speaker Nicholas Mattiello gave advocates hope that the bill might be on the fast track. Those hopes were dashed last night when the vice chair of the House Judiciary Committee, Representative Doreen M. Costa (R District 31 Exeter, North Kingstown) motioned to hold the bill for further study.

Larry Berman, communications director for the Office of the Speaker, explained that, “It is customary to hold almost all bills of substance after the first hearing. The exceptions are for minor bills such as marriages. This enables the committee members and staff to review the testimony and many times there are changes made after listening to the testimony.”

The bill exempts “from liability any person who administers an opioid antagonist to another person to prevent a drug overdose. It would further provide immunity from certain drug charges and for related violations of probation and/or parole for those persons who in good faith, seek medical assistance for a person experiencing a drug overdose.”

The bill under consideration in the House is identical to the one that passed in the Senate and it seemed all the members of the House Judiciary Committee were on board with the bill, or at least anxious to be seen sitting in support of it. I have never attended a committee meeting where every member was present when role was called. Even Committee Chair Cale P. Keable (D District 47 Burrillville, Glocester) noted that having no absentees at a committee meeting “hasn’t happened in a long time.”

“Overdoses represent a public health crisis,” said Dr. Nicole Alexander-Scott, director of the Rhode Island Department of Health, in her testimony before the committee, “that is as urgent as any crisis we have ever confronted in Rhode Island in the past.” Both Director Alexander-Scott and Maria Montanaro, director of the Department of Behavioral Healthcare, Developmental Disabilities and Hospitals presented evidence that the law saves lives.

Jonathan Goyer, who is in recovery and works as an advocate combating drug addiction and overdose told the committee, “No pressure, but as I’m sitting in the back of the room, there’s a good chance that as we all sat in here, that we just lost another life… and I don’t think we need to wait until next week, I think it needs to pass today.”

But the bill did not pass, and will not pass this week.

Larry Berman told me the Good Samaritan Act, “is tentatively scheduled to be posted for a vote at the next Judiciary Committee meeting, Tuesday, January 19, and then it could be brought to the floor for a potential vote by the full House on Thursday, January 21.”

No pressure, House of Representatives, but people are dying.

You can watch all the testimony in the video below.

And you can watch Jonathan Goyer explain how Narcan helps save lives here:

A lesson in the use of Narcan

January 13, 2016January 13, 2016

Underage sex trafficking in Providence to be discussed at San Diego conference

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The decade-long partnership between Family Service of Rhode Island and the Providence Police Department, and their work on sex trafficking issues, will be a focus of an upcoming international conference in San Diego on Wednesday, January 27^th.

The 30^th annual “San Diego International Conference on Child and Family Maltreatment” is sponsored by the Chadwick Center at Rady Children’s Hospital, San Diego, and the University of California School of Medicine in San Diego. The conference’s focus is on multi-disciplinary best practices to prevent, investigate, treat and prosecute child and family maltreatment.

Col. Hugh Clements, Jr., Providence’s police chief, and Family Service of Rhode Island senior vice president Susan Erstling, PhD will present “Partnering With Police: Current Practices and Lessons Learned around Early Identification of Rhode Island Minors at High Risk for Sex Trafficking and Sexual Exploitation.”

Family Service of Rhode Island, a statewide non-profit, has partnered with the Providence Police for more than a decade on crime prevention and victim services. Family Service of Rhode Island also partners with the Rhode Island State Police and the East Providence Police on similar initiatives.

As part of the presentation, Family Service of Rhode Island has developed a video featuring Providence Police Detective Koren Garcia and Family Service of Rhode Island’s police liaison Carla Cuellar discussing how they work together with victims on issues relating to the legal system, emotional trauma, and medical care, and the role of Hasbro Children’s Hospital’s Child Safe Clinic.

https://youtu.be/zk5SADffDc8

“I urge everyone interested in sex trafficking issues, particularly persons in law enforcement and social work, to watch this video. It provides a real-world look at the day-to-day problems confronting victims and first providers,” said Dr. Erstling. She noted that January is “Human Trafficking Awareness Month.” Dr. Erstling is senior vice president of trauma, loss and children’s services at Family Service of Rhode Island, which is the regional site for the National Child Traumatic Stress Network.

“We are pleased to share the firsthand practical knowledge we have on helping traumatized victims with professionals from across the nation and beyond,” said Margaret Holland McDuff, CEO of Family Service of Rhode Island, who helped create the agency’s partnership with the Providence Police a decade ago.

Col. Clements and Dr. Erstling will be joined at the presentation by Amy Goldberg, MD, pediatric specialist at the Lawrence A. Aubin Child Protection Center, Hasbro Children’s Hospital. Dr. Goldberg will address the pediatric and medical aspects of child sex trafficking as well as collaborative strategies in conducting interviews, medical evaluations, and follow up care to reduce re-traumatization, avoid criminalization and to recognize the significant developmental and physical aspects of having been commercially exploited.

[From a press release]

January 13, 2016May 3, 2016

Fossil Free RI statement on Invenergy power plant hearing

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At its public meeting today, the Rhode Island Energy Facility Siting Board postponed ruling on giving grassroots groups and individuals the opportunity to get a fair hearing of their objections to the Clear River Energy Center, a fracked-gas power plant proposed by Invenergy, based in Chicago, IL. The board will announce its final ruling on this matter at the next public hearing, scheduled for January 29.

The two remaining members of the three who should make up the board serve at the pleasure of Governor Raimondo, who is on record supporting expansion of the “natural” gas infrastructure. As a result, Janet Coit, one of the two board members, is in a bind. She is Director of the Rhode Island Department of Environmental Management and an avid environmentalist. Last summer, she spoke at the Sierra Club-sponsored rally, “The Environment is Everyone’s Business.” Coit is painfully aware of the toll climate change is already taking on life in Narragansett Bay. At the rally, she referred to a “profound experience” she had looking at colonial nesting birds on Hope Island. She said: “There are several islands in the Bay that used to host colonies of nesting terns and now they are submerged.”

Said Lisa Petrie of Fossil Free Rhode Island: “We’re calling on Governor Raimondo to wake up and recognize that building more gas-fired power plants threatens the future of our state and of humanity as a whole.” Indeed, the Invenergy proposal is inconsistent with the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s 2009 Endangerment Finding, which determined that greenhouse gas emissions endanger public health and welfare of current and future generations. This language parallels that of the 2007 denial of a fossil-fuel plant permit by Roderick Brembly, Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment. Obviously, team Raimondo is lagging reality by almost a decade.

Fossil Free Rhode Island reiterated that Governor Raimondo’s policies violate Article 1, Section 17 of the Rhode Island Constitution, the supreme law of the state, which clearly specifies the duty “to provide for the conservation of the air, land, water, plant, animal, mineral and other natural resources of the state.”

The Conservation Law Foundation has put forth that, by increasing Rhode Island’s greenhouse gas emissions, the Clear River Energy Center would violate the Resilient Rhode Island Act of 2014. The foundation urged the Board to terminate its deliberations, which would effectively deny Invenergy the permit it seeks.

The Burrillville Land Trust, in a blistering take down of Invenergy’s proposal, argued for the same and writes: “We are being denied an opportunity to respond in a meaningful way because of mis-information, inadequate information and outright absence of information.”

Governor Raimondo has tried to make the case that Invenergy’s Energy Center will bring jobs to Rhode Island. The Rhode Island Building and Construction Trades Council, in its request for late intervention, agrees with the governor. This view is untenable and Fossil Free Rhode Island referred to a recent report of the Political Economy Research Institute of UMass in Amherst that states: “New investments in energy efficiency and renewable energy will generate more jobs for a given amount of spending than maintaining or expanding each country’s existing fossil fuel sectors.”

Fossil Free Rhode Island once again drew attention to current research that shows that, given the urgency of dealing with climate change, “natural” gas has a larger greenhouse gas footprint than coal and oil. In other words, Invenergy’s proposed power plant is bad for Rhode Island on all counts: physics, economics and morality.

Sister Mary Pendergast, one of the individual intervenors, said: “I do not think that the spiritual and moral issues of environmental ethics will be adequately represented by excluding my testimony. Any decision the Siting Board makes that is good for the corporation, but not for the environment, is a bad decision and we will live to regret it.”

The Board referred to the ambiguous rules under which they operate. They seem to interpret the rules as the requirement of attorney representation. This interpretation would exclude virtually all members of the public who filed for the status of intervenor. Pat Fontes, representing Occupy Providence, said: “The refusal to admit the voice of Occupy Providence in the deliberations of this board would symbolize and contribute to the likelihood that ‘government of the people, by the people, and for the people’ will indeed perish from the earth.”

[From a press release]

RI Future covered the hearing here: Strong public opposition to Burrillville power plant at hearing