greg wagner? >> good morning, chair and members of the committee. greg wagner, acting director of the public health. thanks for the hearing. i want to thank my co-chairs for all the work that's gone into this hearing and this process. so as you mentioned, supervisor mannedalman and the sheriff, one of the themes of this core and process and recommendations, there was a need for increasing behavioral health services so that we can get people into an appropriate care setting where they belong rather than occupying a jail bed, which is, of course, good for their health outcomes and for driving down the jail population. a number of the recommendations were focused on adding capacity to our system. there are a few listed here. in the prior report, we committed to adding 15 behavioral health beds at hummingbird place. as you know, the program sis up and running. the 15 beds are in use. the respite beds, they're open and in use. another recommendation was to fund 30-plus conservatorship beds. that resulted in 40 dph beds, a little more than the recommended

greg wagner, acting director of the department of had been health. so we have in our priorities for the department and our strategic goals, one of our goals being public health is committed to a diverse and inclusive workplace where all employees are treated with fairness, dignity, and respect. and i will tell you about some of the things that we are working on, but i also want to be clear that we have a long way to go. there's a lot of work to do over time to get us to where we need to be. we have a list of items up on that screen here. we've added two new fge recruiters, and part of the role of those recruiters, as was discussed in the hearing, was to discuss outreach when we have positions, to increase the pipeline of black and african-american applicants into the department. so those recruiters are reaching out to particular areas. examples: the black nurses association. the association of black social workers, and really making a concerted effort to try to encourage applicants that will improve the diversity of the department. we have, as also h

we want to provide the interim director greg wagner with a grasp how we are doing in terms every response work close with the private ambulance companies and encourage dph as a whole. the ems is under dph to again sort every commit to shared goals and partnerships as it is related to how we provide pre-hospital medical care. that was very productive. as i said last week 15 through 19 every day we were out giving introductory remarks to the officers' academy. on the 15th a few you have us were at a long overdue but requested by the party that received care. we had a patient reunion. that was a young man and i would like to credit john baxter for putting this together there. was a young man born in 1990 delivered and made the paper. he was born right at the toll plaza in oakland. his mother told him the story he was delivered we one of our members that was working for the ambulance company in 1990. they had never met. we brought them together, and i will pass around a little story about that. it was a great eunion fiction. -- reunification. marshall is a young man in schoolworking as an emt