The air is feeling heavy this month. Fires burning from my home county in California through the woods in Oregon and into our Washington backyard. I worry about the long-term effects of this air on my daughter\u2019s young lungs, on the health of people who are pregnant and their babies, as yet another negative health exposure on those who are black, indigenous, and people of color. As another layer on top of COVID-19. Not being able to breathe becomes even more the story of 2020.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
News stories stick in my mind as this smog sticks around our region. One of these is unnecessary and unconsented hysterectomies of ICE detainees<\/a> in Georgia. This is on top of facilitating conditions that spread COVID-19, \u201cgross disregard for health and safety standards, lack of medical care, and unsanitary living conditions.\u201d We can be shocked by this disregard for human autonomy AND we need to take action. We need to understand whether this is happening in our state.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our country has a history of medical experimentation; sterilization of black Americans, of indigenous Americans, of people of color, and of those with disabilities. This history has informed and been informed by the paternalistic nature of traditional clinical encounters. An imbalance of power that does not serve the person but the system.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our job here is to push. To ask why and how much. To ask who gets to be healthy, who gets to live a long life. I felt lucky to be able to facilitate a conversation last week on how clinical care can assess and address the social determinants of health. This is not just a buzzword for us \u2013 this is an opportunity to have a bigger input on a person\u2019s health. We work to approach this with humility and an appreciation for the efforts of our community. What do we need to dismantle in order to build a healthy population? Feel free to join us on October 15th<\/sup> at 8am when we meet for the second time.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019d also love to remind you of our two webinars this month \u2013 9\/24 Partnering with Schools in Youth Suicide Prevention<\/a> and 9\/30 Implicit Bias and Racial Inequities in Health Care<\/a> \u2013 both from 12-1. These are both heavy topics, yes, but ones that need to be discussed, destigmatized, and dismantled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ginny Weir, MPH
Director, Bree Collaborative<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The air is feeling heavy this month. Fires burning from my home county in California through the woods in Oregon and into our Washington backyard. I worry about the long-term…","protected":false},"author":88,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_bbp_topic_count":0,"_bbp_reply_count":0,"_bbp_total_topic_count":0,"_bbp_total_reply_count":0,"_bbp_voice_count":0,"_bbp_anonymous_reply_count":0,"_bbp_topic_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_reply_count_hidden":0,"_bbp_forum_subforum_count":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7138","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qualityhealth.org\/bree\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qualityhealth.org\/bree\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qualityhealth.org\/bree\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qualityhealth.org\/bree\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/88"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qualityhealth.org\/bree\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.qualityhealth.org\/bree\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7138\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.qualityhealth.org\/bree\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qualityhealth.org\/bree\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.qualityhealth.org\/bree\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}