[SPEAKER_03]: meeting is officially open. First is review of the minutes from January 2024.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Janelle, do you have those in your inbox?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, I got the agenda. I don't think there's any issues. Motion to approve the minutes.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Second.
[SPEAKER_03]: Minutes approved.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Second. Jenny, can you take a roll please?
[SPEAKER_03]: Okay, yep.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Katherine Chabonet? Yes.
[SPEAKER_07]: I just wanted you all to to meet.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: And he's been a very busy man since the day he arrived. So, Jason, I don't know if you want to introduce yourself, give us a little background and tell us some of the great work you've been doing, including the coordination of the point in time. Sure.
[Jason Stone]: Yeah, so my name is Jason Stone. I am not the lawyer. I do get that pretty much every day. He is not me. Yeah, I started here in November. I had been working as the social services coordinator and or manager in Wakefield for 2 and a half years roughly before starting here. Most of my professional experience has been in. In around the substance use treatment world, I worked in a residential program for years, and I worked for ad care hospital of Worcester for 16 years before joining the city, the town of Wakefield 3 years ago now. So, it's been a lot of. What I had focused on in Wakefield, we did a lot of heating assistance, a lot of SNAP benefits, so I had some knowledge of that before coming here. And then even though the role is the same, at least in job title, in Medford as it was in Wakefield, and even though the towns are only six and a half miles apart, very different role so far. a lot of homeless outreach coordination, a lot of requests for services from folks who are in desperate need here in Medford. One of those things, as Marianne said, was helping to coordinate the pit count. So I had been only peripherally familiar with Pit counts over the years, I worked at a program in Lawrence for a number of years, and a couple of my staff were volunteers for their pit count. Other than that, I knew very little about them until. About a month and a half ago at this point, for those that aren't familiar, the pit or point in time count is a, it's an annual thing as dictated by HUD. and in Massachusetts by EOHLC, in which we try to get a real-time one-night-a-year count on the number of people who are actively unhoused in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and really in the country. Theoretically, everybody across the Commonwealth and across the country is supposed to do it on the same night. That way, you're getting an accurate count. And we were focused on Medford, obviously, but we collaborated with ABCD out of Malden. As our homeless outreach coordinator partners, and because they do mold and Medford Everett, we helped coordinate. Essentially, for mold and Medford and Everett, we were able to thanks to Marianne and connections there use a facility at tops. To have sort of a global hub to start the evening at, so that everybody could get trained in knowing what to do, knowing where their areas were. And then we dispatched teams. We had close to 60 volunteers signed up. We had less than that actually show up. So we had to alter the night of a little bit. But the pig count took place the last Wednesday in January. We started training at 6. we went out to count around 7, and I was in the last group to come back around 1030. We ended up coming back to City Hall here in Medford. Um, and it went all right. Um, it was my first pit count. It was a lot of people's first pit counts. It was, uh, the person who was coordinating for us from ABCD. He had not done one here, but he had done a couple in Los Angeles, uh, in years prior. So he was at least familiar with how they should operate. Um, definitely learned a lot for next year, but all for all intents and purposes, it went pretty well. Um. Yeah, and so as Marion said, I kind of otherwise stay pretty busy here depends on who calls or who walks in the door. I do have office hours at the library now every Wednesday morning from 10 to noon that's been going on for about. A little over a month at this point. It's been pretty good. I do get people the first couple of weeks where we're still sort of advertising it and letting people know that I was there. But the last three or four weeks, I've had people show up and sometimes occupy me for the entire two hours that I'm there. Once they ask questions about the things that I can maybe help them with, or at least point them in the right direction of, I try to tell people that I am not a service provider. I'm a service connector. I'm not your personal therapist or psychiatrist or social worker. I will help point you in the right direction of where to get those things, help you fill out applications, help you do, like, whether it's MassHealth or had a lot of requests for assistance with immigration resources. So that's been an interesting thing to sort of learn on the fly. But yeah, I think so far so good. It's been a really quick, I think it's been three months now, just over three months. I'm halfway done probation. So, so far so good. It's been really, really quick. But I think so far so good anyway, but that's not really up to me to judge.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: has been doing great. He's also doing fuel assistance applications at the library as well for those people in need. And he works very closely with our recovery coach, our contracted recovery coach, Chris Zuma. And they run a Wednesday evening recovery support group as well. So that's been ever expanding. So that's been really nice to see as well.
[Jason Stone]: That has been nice, yeah, and we've been able to actually now get back into helping folks with sober house scholarships. There's a few of those out there now for Medford folks who were looking to get into sober housing or to, and that's our recovery coach calling me right now, getting into sober housing or to stay in sober housing in the Medford area, so.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Any questions for Jason?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so what's the pick count? What's the number?
[Jason Stone]: The number, I don't have the official number because Ethan was waiting on reporting to come back from a couple of places. So the way that my understanding is, it's probably about 14. I'm not 100% sure on that, but it's probably about 14.
[SPEAKER_03]: And how do you actually find them? And how accurate is that number? I mean, how do you know how many? How would you define that number?
[Jason Stone]: I think it's pretty accurate based on just my experience so far in the calls that I've had and the inquiries I've had. I did spend a little time going out with Officer Lawless from Medford Police the week prior to the pit count. So he could give me sort of an overview of the normal spots that people are known to be unhoused in. There are certainly some locations in Medford that are more popular for that historically than others. Medford police and Everett police, not Malden, did give us heat maps of all of their calls for service for unhoused people in a certain area in a calendar year. We did get a heat map of all the calls for service. That's where we find out about a lot of folks is from neighbors, either calling the mayor's office or calling DCR in some cases, because we have DCR land obviously here in Medford and then them coordinating with us. So. My sense is that the number is fairly accurate, particularly for such a cold night. A lot of folks go to the Malden warming center. They are not necessarily counted on the pit count because they're at the warming center. So the warming center does their own version of reporting for the pit count. But we broke up the city itself into eight zones and then attached teams of two or three to go out to those eight zones, plus the DCR areas. DCR didn't do a count for us, which I would have preferred, but it didn't, because we were doing overnight, it didn't match up with their rangers hours. That being said, they did clue us into the spots that they know about where there were unhoused people. I won't get into the specifics as to why, but they're trying to get a little more into looping in the actual communities that they know of unhoused people living on their property, because they don't want people unhoused on their property, but they also don't want to just go in and evict them, for lack of a better word. So they've been trying to reach out to us, ABCD, Elliott, et cetera, when they have people in those areas to say, look, We're going to give these folks a three week notice because we don't want them in Middlesex Fells, for example. But we want you to help do some outreach and try to connect them to services so we're not just going in and wiping out their campsite. So we've done a lot of that recently. So I did the DCR areas because those were all spots that I knew and I didn't want to have random volunteers walking up into the fells at night. So those were spots that I knew. So my sense is that the account was pretty accurate. Yeah, sorry.
[SPEAKER_05]: I would also say, because I was there when the volunteers came back, the other big issue we have is people living in cars. Yeah, it's a lot harder to capture. So we did have some observations of folks that we suspected to be living in their cars. But we think that that's it.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: You're a little quiet. Can you turn up your volume? Thank you. Sorry.
[Jason Stone]: Yeah, that was a pretty, that is something that I wanted, that I tried to tell people, at least if I knew their areas, where they were going. To be mindful of folks that were in cars on those particular, like the cold, cold nights, we don't have an awful lot of people who are what you sort of envision as traditionally unhoused or living in encampments because it's cold out. But we do have, Most of those folks, most of those 14 that I know are folks who are living in cars or vans, et cetera, et cetera. But they tend to have a spot that they usually park at that's either off the radar or whatever. And then folks were instructed to gather data as best they felt comfortable. Ideally, it involves a five-ish minute survey with whoever you encounter. That being said, if you feel like the situation itself is not comfortable. If you feel as though the person is sleeping, under no circumstances do you wake them up, et cetera, et cetera. So you just gather the data based on what you can see, where the spot was. If you can get an idea of roughly how old the individual is, roughly the gender of the individual, report that stuff out. But yeah, so that's like the 25 cent version of an answer for you.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Any other questions for Jason?
[SPEAKER_03]: One quick, what is in your estimate the percentage of psychiatric illness in the homeless versus economic homelessness?
[Jason Stone]: It would be hard for me to parse out the difference between the two because the like if you view it as a Venn diagram, it's almost perfectly overlapping my experience now, which comes first. I don't necessarily know. I don't necessarily know a lot of the folks in that. That sort of detail yet, but generally it's both economic and psychiatric. It's just a matter of which came worse and which is exacerbating the other. My experience, anyway.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Thanks, Jason. Thanks for letting me do it.
[SPEAKER_03]: Proud to do it. 1-800-STONE.
[Jason Stone]: Yeah, if I had a nickel for every time.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: So last week, we had a great meeting here in the chambers of City Hall with a lot of providers. We had a great speaker and a panel and that was all thanks to our OPO office, Catherine Dinger is our manager. She did a great job, her and her team, putting this whole summit together. And it was about cultural connections to care, a lot of kind of what we were just talking about. connections to behavioral health and substance use programming. I asked Catherine if she could give you the presentation, but I think it's interesting for connections to all kinds of care that we're working on right now with our community. Catherine, I know you were a little bit muted the last time you tried to speak.
[SPEAKER_05]: Can you hear me any better?
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah, a little bit.
[SPEAKER_05]: Okay, great.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Also home with pneumonia, just so you know. So, yeah.
[SPEAKER_05]: So the urgent care system works great at Lawrence Memorial, by the way, last night, getting my x-rays at 1030 at night. So thank you to the healthcare providers out there. But yes, home with pneumonia. I'm going to give you just do a brief overview. As you know, actually, speaking of Melrose Lawrence Memorial, when they came, Melrose Wakefield did the site overview, they received the D.O.N. funds, and then the D.O.N. funds were put back into the communities to apply for grants. And the City of Medford applied for a grant to really look at these cultural connections to care. How are residents that maybe don't speak English, or English is their second language, and from different backgrounds accessing both behavioral health care, substance abuse treatment care, and medical care. What are the barriers? So four years ago, the team under Penny's leadership started this project. And I'm just going to give you a brief overview of their findings, and then the products of their findings. So Mary Ann, can I share? Can you allow me to share my screen? Okay. And I'm going to share. OK. Hold on just a moment. Okay, so our community outreach team, which many of you are familiar with, is a 10-member team, and they speak Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Arabic, Haitian, Creole, English, and represent the BIPOC community as well, and really try to understand what are these cultural identified barriers to seek behavioral health care. And what they did was they hosted focus groups, they did surveys, and they had a lot of community conversations to understand really what are those barriers. So this project started in the spring of 2022, and they were really looking at residents that are living and working in Medford, and prioritized the experiences of BIPOC immigrants and families who speak ESOL. So they had toasted community conversations all over the community, and these numbers are not representative. Arabic-speaking community groups, Haitian Creole, and all the different language groups I talked about. And what they found was the barriers to behavioral health care were there's just a lot of limited awareness and the process of how to engage with behavioral health care. and the accessibility and cultural understanding. There's a lot of stigma and fear and a lot of shame, a lot of shame in accessing behavioral health care. And they talked a lot about the opportunities for how we could engage more and learning more to not burden family, loved ones, the community. They also learned that there was a lot of limited awareness around what mental and behavioral health issues are, what is worth seeking health care for. A lot didn't know that you can get help for things such as anxiety, depression. They just didn't know they were the clinical process. And they just have a fear of, of the extreme of getting held for psychiatric reasons versus the different tiered steps of behavioral health care. And so these were just kind of questions to consider as we need to look at this in the community, communicating what is worth seeking health care for. Cost and affordability to care was another factor. Long wait lists, transportation came up quite a few times, and people not having access to computers for telehealth. And language and cultural understanding. They also saw a few providers from similar cultural backgrounds. So we, you know, these are things that we, and we also wanna look at how things are interpreted. If someone just put something into Google Translate, it might not have the same intentions that it was intended to. They talked a lot about the barriers to behavioral health care and the stigma and fear and the fear of, you know, they're already in vulnerable situations in this country. And if they are connected to a system, does that put them at increased challenges for getting jobs or getting even deported? So that's something that, came up. and then the idea of shame. And really, you know, we had a lot of conversations around the faith community and in these different cultural groups, how much shame comes to light. And what was great about the event, we, you know, what we wanted to do was after the four years of this work, we hosted a panel last week and in our panel included a lot of our community members, And they talked a lot about shame and how that really is one of the primary reasons and barriers to accessing behavioral health care. And a lot of people, you know, some of the quotes that came out were, we are Arabs, so I will say this open. When we have a problem, we try to solve it in secrecy. Another thing that came up, most Haitian families hide mental health issues and we do not seek help. We just deal with it until it gets to a paralyzing point. And so that's a theme we saw over and over again, people not getting care early enough until it got to a point where hospitalizations and other kind of emergencies, crisis situations. And we actually, our team is dealing with one of those right now where it was not dealt early enough in the schools asked us to help intervene. And then a lot of people really looking at religious based responsibility for addressing some of the behavioral health conditions. So you can kind of see some of the quotes here that were really helpful in helping understand the issue. And we really talked about some of the opportunities, what we can do to destigmatize and increase those connections for care, supporting our personal growth and development, burdening loved ones, and really taking our key takeaways to the next steps. So what can we do next? One of the things our team did was created a multilingual media campaign. So this was a social media campaign, and it was billboards and a print campaign. This campaign, I'm going to go through the different languages. This is the English version, and you can see it in the different languages. This campaign was social media print and a billboard on 93. Overall, we reached well over 30,000 individuals. You can see the social media campaign alone reached 12,000 people, and it was in different languages, and it was pushed out through our community engagement team. on language-based social media channels and WhatsApp. And that's where the conversations and sharing really happened. So we were delighted to see that people were not just looking at the posts, but they were engaging and commenting and even clicking on the resources. So our social media person was able to kind of go through and dissect and show that this social media campaign really had a big impact. So in the billboard, in the print media. So this was really just to kick off the conversation and last week's symposium brought together our caregivers in the area. And we really wanted to talk about what are our next steps in reducing the stigma and addressing these barriers that our team identified. and we have a really good plan going forward and through our Medford Connects team, we feel like we got some great ideas last week and are gonna be able to really implement them with our community liaisons and connectors. So, does anyone have any questions?
[SPEAKER_07]: Absolutely. Sorry, I was going to say really, really great work. And I enjoyed the presentation. Did anyone talk about barriers to actually accessing care, behavioral health care, and what that was like? Or is it strictly just these resources are here and folks are not connecting to it? How do we get them to connect? Because I'll say from the state level, because I do a lot of state level work, one of the barriers we always hear is it's hard to find available behavioral health providers.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so that is definitely something that came up. Yeah, some people not knowing and then those that do know have reached those long wait lists, things, you know, what's great is that the state now has the the behavioral health centers, so the regional behavioral health centers, and then the helpline that can connect people. But it still doesn't help with some of the wait lists questions.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: And insurance barriers too, we heard.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, insurance barriers, language, we have, you know, a lot of people that are coming up in the emergency shelters have been through significant trauma. And a lot of them don't speak any English. So how are they, you know, getting that behavioral health care that they need? So, um, It's great places like CHA, Elliott, Riverside, you know, a lot of our big behavioral health providers are working on this issue. And many of them were in attendance, and kind of really taking in what our community engagement team had to say. But there's, yeah, there's a lot of work that needs to be done around this.
[SPEAKER_07]: That's helpful. Thank you.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Yeah it was interesting last week too, it came up about the senior population as well, half of the Mystic Valley folks if you want to.
[SPEAKER_05]: Yeah, so yeah, the senior population. They had some really mystic Valley had some really interesting stats where I can't remember. I have medicine brain right now, but I can't remember the exact percentage of they have a lot of great free behavioral health programs for the senior population, and I think they said that 80 to 90% are. utilized by Caucasian people that are white. So we know that non-English speaking folks are not taking advantage of those resources. And then the other interesting part of our panel was the faith-based community and talking about how that's something that we're working on here in Medford is working with our faith leaders to provide things like mental health first aid to deacons and church leaders and to talk about how we can encourage folks in the faith community to take advantage of these free trainings, but also to look at, and this is why, you know, the Board of Health is really interesting to think about this is what is that next level down of care providers like community health workers? How can we train them to do some of the behavioral health work at the community level to kind of build more tiers? I think that's it, Marion, unless there are any other questions.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Thank you, Catherine. Any other questions? Okay, so more to come on that. We'll keep you posted on the work being done. But it really was a great program last week that we all did. So I want you to be aware. Okay. So today we have a couple of folks joining us for the other business portion of our agenda because this just kind of actually just came up today and I wanted you to hear about it. I think in the past you've all heard that we're part of a regional public health excellence grant hosted by Melrose and there's five communities. that we're able to share resources. Last month we appointed Libby, who is a regional inspector as a health agent in Medford, so that she'd be able to go out and do food inspections for us here. So she's part of that regional grant, shared resource that we have, shared inspector. They also pay for education and training for inspectors so that we're all getting our competencies up and being on the same page, which is terrific. But now we have to enter into an inter-municipal agreement, an IMA, for the Public Health Excellence Shared Services Grant Program with all the communities. So we have with us from the Mass. Association of Health Boards, Attorney Cheryl Sabara, and I think, Mike, look, Hugo, yes, hi. Mike, we'll see you too. who can explain what the IMA is all about and why we need it. And then we also have Deanna Wu with us. And Deanna is our Shared Services Coordinator who keeps us all honest and working. But I'd like to turn it over to Cheryl or Mike to talk a little bit about what an IMA is and why we need this now.
[SPEAKER_04]: Well, I can start and then Mike, you can take over because you've been working with these collaboratives more than I have. But this is part of an initiative from the Department of Public Health. I'm not sure how familiar, Marianne, your board is with the Public Health Excellence Collaborative Program. Are they familiar with the program? Okay, great. As you know, it's a grant program, the intent of which is to augment the public health services that the city already provides for its residents and its businesses. The intermunicipal agreement is a contract basically that sets forth what the duties and obligations are, for the collaborative and it also sets up a governance board where each municipality has one vote so that the advisory board actually directs how the collaborative works. What are their priorities? What are the services that they want to share? How the collaborative spends the grant funds? that come in from the Department of Public Health, and there are 51 of these collaboratives throughout the Commonwealth, and I believe it involves 320-something municipalities. are part of one of these collaboratives. And the goal is to augment services and to really balance out services so that it doesn't matter what zip code you live in, you are Receiving the same number of services that everyone else is so that if you live in Medford versus living in New Bedford or living in Peru, Massachusetts, everyone is entitled to. to very robust public health services, and this is a way to help that along. This collaborative has been working together for quite some time, but they have not signed an inter-municipal agreement. The reason this is necessary is because this collaborative is formed pursuant to a statute that permits shared services to happen across municipalities. Normally, with an agreement like this, an IMA, the chief executive officer of the city or town is the one that would be signing this. Because this is also public health oriented, the grant requires that the Board of Health also sign the agreement. The agreement really sets forth What the obligations are, it's pretty simple. It talks about the admin fee that Melrose will get because Melrose is the host agent for the grant. So Melrose collects the money. and signs and pays all of the invoices that the collaborative incurs. However, Melrose doesn't make the decisions. The decisions are made by the entire collaborative. So this is, I believe, the final agreement, Mike. It's been vetted, I believe, by every municipal attorney has looked at this and reviewed it. MHB was the primary author. We have a template that we've been asked by the Department of Public Health to create, and then each collaborative can add whatever needs, whatever specific sections they would like to add. If there's anything that's unique, then they would add that. I believe this is, it mentioned that the collaborative itself is the, governing board so they would decide who to hire, whether to hire them as employees or as independent contractors, and what kind of services that you want. I think either Mike or Deanna would be able to tell you what the services are that this governing board is intending to utilize.
[SPEAKER_01]: I think Deanna, why don't you go ahead and talk about the progress that you've made and what's planned to be made at this point?
[SPEAKER_00]: Sure. So right now we're still building our team, but we do have Shelby, the inspector trainee, who's been supporting Medford, newly supporting Medford on inspections. And then we recently, as of This is her third week. We just hired a regional epidemiologist who will help with data support. She could also help cover some of the communicable disease reporting that needs to get done. We're currently working on hiring a regional public health nurse and then have thoughts on a regional communication specialist as well. All together, we're hoping to offer fill-in services for people who are taking vacation or are going on medical leave and whatnot. And then just helping support each other through this work. I think about flu clinics and how There's a lot of it. It tends to be like an all hands on deck event. So being able to provide more people who can vaccinate or offer the counter support of covering even while the nurse, for example, is prioritizing flu clinics. That's that's where we are right now.
[SPEAKER_01]: I don't know how much how much you're aware of the participation that you're that your city has had in this program, but just a little bit of background. Your group is funded to the tune of $561,000 a year. The funding is completely safe from being taken back by the federal government for the next three years. It's all been All of the funds have been spoken for. It's funded by $200 million from ARPA, $52.6 million from a CDC grant, and another line item from the state legislature for 9.1 for this year, although in the past it's been as high as 15. And once we get through spending the ARPA funds and the CDC funds, we will see that number go up appreciably, hopefully, if there's any sense left in this world. We'll see this program funded indefinitely. It's been codified. There is a new Chapter 111, Section 27D that's been amended as of about a month and a half ago. If you look it up online, you won't see it yet because they're still rolling out how it's going to be implemented. It requires reporting by boards of health on an annual basis. It requires the Department of Public Health to use those reports to ask the legislature for more money on an annual basis. Uh, there are requirements for data collection and data usage, and those who use maven will be happy to know that. And if you're using maven, you already know this, but the board should know that that maven, which has always been a 1 way street. of your boards supplying information to the Commonwealth. Now that data is all being crunched and sent back to you. So you'll have an idea of where you stand and where the state stands on various reportable diseases. And so we actually have a guidance document that we've put together that's online. It's on our website. But Deanna, I'll send you a copy if you'd send it on to everybody. I'd appreciate that. that lays out what the new statute is and what your obligations are. You all, as board members, have an obligation to do a training. And we, as MAHB, have an obligation to make sure that we offer that training to you. And our training schedule is, I think the closest one to you would be Marlborough, and that's on May 10th. We're doing one in Plymouth on the 4th of April, and one in Northampton on the 26th of April. Those are an all day Saturday thing for board members and it is going to be extremely comprehensive. So that's kind of the background of what the grant is and what it's bringing to you. And at this point, the the state has stopped. further funding. They've given each of the grant groups the first half of the funding that was given back during the summer and fall, and they're holding off on the third payment or on payment number two, which is actually the third quarter payment. They're holding off on that till the IMAs are all in. Just so you know, you're not the last one. You're not on a bad person list of any sort. We're still working on about a dozen. I think we've got it down to 10 at this point that are left. Cheryl's number is right, there's 51 groups, I'm sorry, 321 cities and towns are participating. We're forming two more groups, one out in Western Mass, one in the northeastern part of the state. We may see a couple of groups get realigned and broken up, and then there are around seven or eight towns that did not take advantage of getting in, who are clamoring to get in because The whole new statute is not an unfunded mandate because if you are a member of a collaborative, the state's picking up the tab for everything. If you're not a member, the state's picking up the tab for all your trainings and your computer equipment, but there'll be other costs. And as a practical matter, you'll never get to the front of the line. on any trainings that you want your staff to go through because the PHE groups will always be able to get on and onto the waiting list ahead of anybody who's not. So that's basically it in a nutshell. And as I said, we'll send our document out to Deanna and she'll distribute it out to everybody.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Thank you. Thank you, Michelle. And I just want to add to the trainings have been really invaluable. I know we have a couple of the inspectors, all three of the inspectors on, that may want to join in. They've also developed these training hubs so that we're able to participate. And our training hub is in Salem. And they have expert staff, technical assistance staff, that if the inspectors run into issues with food inspections or housing cases, they were able to call on the folks at the training hub to see that they come right out and they'll assist and actually go on the inspections with them. or they'll give them advice over the phone, whatever's needed. So that's been really nice. And it's nice because as a collaborative now, we're all, and as all of these PhD grant programs, we're all gonna be on the same page. Like Cheryl alluded to, providing the same level of service, consistent. So especially if you have a restaurant chain that has a place in Medford and a place, and new that they're both going to get the same inspection and they're both going to have the same information. So it's really consistency to across the board. That's really great. But I think the trainings have been invaluable. You know, we don't always have a large budget in the city for attending seminars and programming, and that's really useful. And thanks to PHE inspectors have been able to go to a lot of them. And I think Z is going next week to, where are you going? Holyoke. She's going to Holyoke for DEP training.
[SPEAKER_04]: The expenses for all of that are covered by this grant program as well. The program was actually developed as a result of the conclusions that were found in the special commission on local and regional health that met for several years. We developed a blueprint for public health excellence. What we found is that at the time that the commission was formed, which was back, I'm going to say about seven or eight years ago, that there was really an inability of a lot of cities and towns to meet The statutory and regulatory minimum standards that boards of health are supposed to be supplying to their residents. So the goal, the initial goal of the blueprint was to. Get all cities and towns up to that those minimum standards and once that's accomplished, then we would look at foundational public health services and look at the array of services that board should be providing either themselves or through other. community-based organizations or hospitals or whoever the clinical partners might be. So the new law that Mike mentioned really codifies that report. And if you want to see that report or the executive summary of that report, you can just Google Blueprint for public health excellence in Massachusetts and you'll find it.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or I'll attach it to the same email so that they get it.
[SPEAKER_04]: Or that.
[SPEAKER_01]: Or that. Of course, the best thing is that your dues for MHB are paid for by the grant. That's the best benefit, I think.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: I do this for a membership and a lot of social stuff, but also, again, that's something, you know, cities and towns can't always afford to be able to do. It's very helpful for us. So just the, we have, with us, besides Bedford, we have Malden, Melrose, Stoneham, Winchester, and Wakefield, who are part of our public health excellence grant, our shared services program. And we've worked together it's it's great because, you know, as a group we've worked together on emergency preparedness and so we're very familiar with working with each other, and it's a pretty great, great group to work but so, and Dan has been a huge help because now we are going into the. Foundations of public health services and that's a lot of work ahead of us with the data that we need to collect and see where we're at as far as being able to meet those a little bit different for us here in Massachusetts because we don't operate on the county level. So some of the services are a little bit like maternal child health. It's not something that we can do directly, but we certainly can make sure that it's here present in Medford, whether it be through, like Cheryl had said, community-based organizations or the hospital. So yeah, so that's what's in front of us now, and really connections to care again is huge. So that's gonna be part of the foundation of public health services. and so that was a lot, but along the shot of it, Dr. Kladowicz, I'm going to ask each of you to sign this IMA. So I will be sending it over to you, the mayor, and you will have to sign on. And it's a 19 page document and it's pretty detailed and outlines, you know, who the membership is, who the governing bodies are, what Melrose's responsibilities are as the lead agency and the fiscal agent. But it's, so it's, I think it's very detailed and covers everything we need to cover.
[SPEAKER_04]: Don't be too frightened about those 19 pages. Several of those pages are just signature pages. The bulk of it is 8 pages.
[SPEAKER_03]: Is there any auditing mechanism in place to audit the funds flow through Melrose?
[SPEAKER_04]: Yes. Make sure they go where they're supposed to go. Yes. It's in the bulk of, it's in the meat of the grant. You'll see it. It's in, and everything's public and DPH is auditing this constantly.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. It's a grant. So the, the towns and the cities and towns have to agree to do certain things in order to receive that money. And the host agent is responsible. for making sure those things are done. And there's a grant manager at DPH, and there's a DPH liaison who has this region. So yeah.
[SPEAKER_03]: I just want to make sure we have someone to make sure that they are doing what they're supposed to do. Absolutely. In Melrose.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Okay. One of the most stringent provisions in their data is that the funds are being given to supplement, not supplant existing programs and funds. So if your mayor says, you know what, next year we're gonna cut the health budget by X number of dollars because we're getting this service from the grant, that won't fly with DPH, they can't cut your funding. If you're getting a duplicate, duplicate service, they'd have to keep the funding in your health department to be used somewhere else in the health department. They can't go painting highway stripes and putting new stoplights up with your money as long as you're part of this grant program.
[SPEAKER_04]: Which is why the mayor has to sign off on it.
[SPEAKER_01]: It does come up and I'll just say this because you are the board. If you're starting to feel that that's happening, give Cheryl or me a call and we will help you to describe or to discuss what the obligations of your city are.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah, so I'm not worried about shortchange in Mefford. I'm worried about being shortchanged by the people receiving the money. Historically, that's been an issue with the hospital, so that's why I'm very cautious about that. And I would recommend we double down on that to make sure that that happens.
[SPEAKER_04]: Yeah. And that's why the advisory board is set up the way it is, where it's equal representation. We're struggling with one of the IMAs where, you know, the host thinks that they are in charge of everything and they're not.
[SPEAKER_03]: Yeah. I've been subjected to that. That's what I'm talking about.
[SPEAKER_01]: Yeah. Don't hesitate to call us if you're starting to feel that way. Sure. You bet.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Any other questions or thoughts or considerations? Deanna also has to report quarterly to the state on how the money's being spent and where it's going, so.
[SPEAKER_00]: Yeah, lots of checks and balances in place. Just one quick thing, I forgot to add that the grant is also, we got a one-time approval to pay for the YRBS administration, so we're gonna support the YRBS administration in Medford and the other five communities as well.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: This is great news. So I will have this sent over to you, Dr. Miles, for your review and signature, and then send it up to the mayor's office as well. And thank you, Cheryl and Mike and Deanna for joining in at short notice. I know it was short notice to describe this, but I didn't want it to wait another month. So I'm glad you're there.
[SPEAKER_01]: My pleasure. And if Jason is new to you guys, you've got a good one now, let me tell you.
[SPEAKER_03]: And if you could just send us an email with a couple of choice documents that we should be aware of, that would help me a lot. Instead of having to fish through like one or two things I should know about and a website or document, whatever it is. Okay, so what I'm gonna send you, doctor, is the- Give me the three document, the must read documents that bring me up to speed with this stuff.
[SPEAKER_01]: Okay, we got you covered. Okay.
[SPEAKER_03]: Cool.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: have a motion to adjourn. We have a motion to
[SPEAKER_03]: Motion to adjourn at 1.29.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Thank you very much, second? Second, Cathy. Thank you, Cathy, take a roll. Dr. Plowitz?
[SPEAKER_03]: Yes.
[MaryAnn O'Connor]: Cathy Chabonier? Yes. And Jenny Beitel? Yes. Thank you very much, everyone. Thank you. Spring's coming. I hope so.
[SPEAKER_07]: Take care.