health services. so, without further ado, i'd like to first start, and i think today we'll go in alphabetical order and start with supervisor avalos. but also i wanted to take a moment and see if supervisor cohen who had suggested that we have today's ceremony, if you had any opening comments you'd like to make. >> wow, thank you. it's good to see you all. hello, san francisco. how are you today? [cheering and applauding] >> i'm so excited to be here because today is actually the first time this chamber has had an opportunity to recognize, like supervisor chiu said, the giants that are on my list, our mental health community. so, it's a pleasure to work with the mental health board and the department of health to kickoff today. i don't want to belabor the issue. i have two giants i'm excited to be introducing today. so, without further ado, supervisor chiu, please, let's begin. thank you. >> let's start with, begin the alphabet, supervisor avalos. >> thank you, president chiu. i'd like to call up to t

health department is also available, san francisco health department is also available to discuss and meet with residents to address their concerns at any time. they are here tonight to receive your input and comments firsthand. thank you very much for your time and we will continue to provide new information as it becomes available. >> thank you, ms. brownell. i know that a couple of issues really came up for me that i heard from the public comment at our hearing in september. one was, of course, the concerns about the reports that have come out about these new potential sites. the second was that residents had observed what they perceived to be safety violations in terms of how contractors were cleaning up the land. and third, of course, were the current health of the residents and what can they -- and who can they go to for their current health needs. or when they are suspicious some of this might be from contamination on treasure island. you had said that based on the memo that we had gotten from the navy, california department of health, department of toxic and control substance,

in bringing leadership to our public health work in and around issues of mental health. joe brings her background working for the sheriff's department and jail health services, and now is a leader of community behavioral health services. jo has been one of the most important city leaders for our therapeutic court system such as our behavioral health court and other models that really seek to keep individuals who have mental illness out of the justice system and to the district 7 honoree we actually have a better court based on what the goals of laura's law were and our lcs court and so many innovations and jo is tremendously respected by all the members of her department and it is difficult because mental health is never run as adequately as it should be, but throughout the organization jo is someone who is respected for her intellect, experience, knowledge and leadership. so mayor lee wanted to recognize and honor jo for her work. (applause) >>> thank you, board of supervisors, mostly for your ongoing support of mental health. when i go to sacramento and meet with my co

health services, and all of our health care providers, thank you for being with us today. but the real reason why i stand before you is because i come to honor two women, and i actually would be remiss if i were not able to honor -- i could not honor one without acknowledging the other. please put your hands together and please give a warm welcome for ms. lavonne kelham king and wanda [speaker not understood]. [cheering and applauding] >> as you can see, they brought their own fan club. i'm not the only one that's a fan of these ladies. i want to read you some shocking statistics. 67% of the youth particularly those that are found in bayview are ex poemsed to at least one adverse childhood experience. 12% are exposed to four or more. this is a testament to the reason why we need our mental health care warriors on the front line every single day. we as a legislative body have a social and fiduciary responsibility to make sure that we continue to fund organizations and fund our community partners that are helping us address thoughtful culturally competent programs that are r

this program provides direct health care to the uninsured by utilizing existing health clinics, government hospitals, partnerships with local health care providers, there are several options as to the method of compliance with the employee spending requirement, in hra, health reimbursement account where employers earmark the funds and pay out only when actual medical costs are incurred by their employee, furthermore, after two years or 90 days after the employee's termination, employers can retain any unused funds for their own use. the city option where the city contracts with a third party specializing in health care spending accounts to administer the employee's medical reimbursement account and the funds remain available to the employee for life unless there has been a period of inactivity for 18 months, in that case, the city reclaims the unused funds. the last option is privately paid insurance plans, the office of labor standards enforcement reported in 2010 that 860 out of 4 thousand employers used the hra option. the total amount allocated to the employees were 62.5 million dollar

so, we'll now move to the department of public health. welcome. >> thank you so much, supervisors, i want to give you a sense of the city option we've been talking about, then go into the department of public health response tos the civil grand jury report, so we used the term healthy san francisco broadly within san francisco, but we're really talking about from the department's perspective in terms of our response, the city option. that is the option that allows an employer to indicate that they would like to contribute dollars to the city and county of san francisco and their employees will get either eligibility for healthy san francisco and enroll in that program or their employee is not eligible for healthy san francisco either due to age or residency or perhaps they have dependent coverage and they will get a medical reimbursement account. to date, since the implementation to have employer spending requirement, a little over 1400 employers have selected the city option. of those employers and the funds that they've contributed, 62%

they still have stigma attached to that name, mental health. so, it's really incredible that these individuals in this agency that's run currently by dr. jones who does pretty incredible work in the community in the western addition. (applause) >> that, you know, that they provide culturally competent services. and, so, the person that we're honoring today is it a willis. she's the program coordinator from west side community services in the western edition. tia wallace has been faithfully and compassionately working with children youth and their familiesates west side community services for 12 years. * as the program coordinator for both their team core and [speaker not understood] case management programs. these two very important programs focus on serving at-risk youth ages 0 to 25 in the western addition. * 10 in this capacity, kia has touched the lives of young people and their families ask has made a significant difference in our community. can i ai provides valuable support to other community-based organizations * in the western addition

system and working on its way down to people who are providing the health. we're in the process now of doing a medical home program and so it's a lot of pressure being put on the workers and see what the patients go through every single day and there are people that should be covered that are working at these places that come to us not covered that can't get their medicine, that we have to do all kind of work around to make sure they get the health care they need, so it's my belief that the money for healthy san francisco needs to go straight into healthy san francisco, we need to cut out the middle people, it's just another mechanism to black people from getting health care from what i see from the patient care end. >> thank you very much, next speaker, mr. lazarus? >> good afternoon, supervisors, chamber of commerce, we appreciate the opportunity last year and way back in 2006 in working with the city in developing healthy san francisco program, the health care security ordinance, it's a complicated issue, much that was broukt up from the grand ju, we appr

the mental health board is doing. it's there to improve the lives of people in our community and thereby improving our community. so, thank you all for your support for mental health. please keep it up and let me know what i can do for you. [cheering and applauding] >> our next presentation will be by supervisor jane kim. >> thank you. and also i wanted to say real quickly, laura guzman, i love the work that you do so much and i think our city would be so much less if we couldn't call mnrc one of refuge in our city. mental health, i want to thank former supervisor bevan dufty and supervisor malia cohen for suggesting that we honor individuals that work in this area for mental health awareness month. for many reasons this issue is something that is of great importance to me. one, because of the district i represent. this is actually one of our top priority issues in our district. it is something that we in our office face every day, how do we address the issue of mental health in this city. and second, for me it's very

it is key to recognize that recovery, as it were, or a public health approach to behavioral health requires a broader overview, not just, as tom pointed out, not just specialty care. it is the full spectrum of care because some problems are just risky problems. the person was drinking three drinks and has minor problems. if we don't address that, then when we-we wait long enough, they'll go from three drinks and minor problems to six drinks and major problems at a single setting. so what you want is this integrated recognition and the differentiation of, okay, well, how do we intervene at specific points, and that notion of staged intervention has been raised, and it's an important one. not everybody needs the same intervention at the same point in time. so, what we're promoting is education at all levels, counselors, social workers, psychologists, psychiatrists, working with organized medicine, organized social work, organized psychology, using strategies to help educate existing professionals because, remember, the overwhelming number of existing professionals exceed those who are in trai

health care.ning about the health care law that governor romney signed into law in massachusetts with christine mcconville who and she reported for the boston globe as well in massachusetts. we have a phone line set up for massachusetts residents, 20 2-385-3885. democrats can weigh in and ask questions at 202-585-3880. independents, 202-385-3882. look how the health care law played out. 90% of adults covered, nearly 1 # 00% of kids covered, and 79% of residents get insurance through their employer, and they have eight providers to choose from. one of the details is insurance premiums increased over 2006 to 2010 by $70. take us through how this plan has in a sense worked out. >> guest: well, most people would tell you the effort to get people insured has worked out astoundingly well. the state now has the numbers that you gave. people have insurance; however, the cost of insurance for everybody has increased. advocates of the health law say, well, the first goal is to get everybody insured. we did

half hour forty five thousand americans die every year because they have no access to lifesaving health insurance what's the only real solution to our nation's health care woes an answer in just a moment and americans love their facebook and their twitter and even their amazon but as great as those things are they come in quite a price our privacy or our privacy rights doomed in the age of technology. you see mitt romney lives in a different universe than the rest of us in mitt romney's universe the top tax rate is fifteen percent in our universe it's thirty five percent. and mitt romney's universe the entire world is a bank account from the cayman islands to switzerland but in our universe we have checking accounts at the nearest bank in town and mitt romney's universe corporations are people in our universe well you know that's just ridiculous unless you sit on the supreme court and mitt romney's universe there is no health care crisis in america you see in an interview with the columbus dispatch newspaper romney doubled down on his notion that uninsured americans can still get the ca

, those affect health. the great thing about having muni be free for youth, and all youth. i don't think it should be income-tested either. is that you get young people on public transportation and they get used to it and they become your riders later on. so i think it's -- i think, like daniel said, the nuts and bolts of being able to pay for it, we have to figure out. but this is a priority. i think public transportation can transform this city into something completely [tk-efrplg/] or different with the health, public safety, and other things so we have to start thinking big. >> miss selby. >> chris i will give you my $5 as well. this was not a san francisco riders position, but i think we should have free muni for youth and i believe it should be for all youth for a slightly different reason than andrew. it's kind of the idea of social security. i think when we have rich people and poor people getting benefits, it sticks around. so we have a lofty goal, 62% of our trips are taken in cars and we want to

thomas argon who heads up the population public health unit. we are led by barbara garcia who is also the principal investigator of this project and i'm going to turn it to her. clap lap >> okay. as supervisor campos said, he can't wait to get inside. one of the things about this grant, the face of staff is usually a grant with research. it is either study participants or services. but this is a little different one. we were the only health department in the country to receive this. most of this went to universities. one, we didn't have as big overhead as universities do. two, we have a lot of experience in doing building. and, so, we really had to work at making sure nobody got disrupted. i do believe i have a big thank you to real estate because i think we did give them i understand general election a couple times out there. -- indigestion i want to thank them. i see win of the employees who resigned as a retiree, he was instrumentsal. (applause) >> this took space planning and trying to figure out space and it's all you know in san francisco

the promise of the health care security ordinance is to provide health care for workers in san francisco that is easily accessible. health reimbursement accounts do not fulfill this promise. when businesses use the health care surcharge to earn large profits, i must repeat, the public trust is violated. hra's may be technically legal, but are they ethical? we really don't think so. thank you. we'll take any of your questions. >> thank you very much. could you respond to the question that i raised earlier about the fact that this is 2011 data, 2012 data will presumably come out whenever -- you know, next year, and to just respond to the concern that that data is from before the change of law took effect that places restrictions on the ability to give us the health surcharge when we're not spending the money on health care, etc.. >> i'm matthew cohen. i'm glad to be before the supervisors, for one thing, this is the information we had, and when we saw this information, we found that even though we knew more information was going to come out subsequent to that, this is really indicative of

it has three main health outcome goals, to reduce hiv incidents, to improve health and wellness outcomes for people living with hiv, and to reduce hiv-related disparities. i'm sure that sounds familiar to many of you because that's certainly aligned with many of the san francisco's efforts. the fourth goal is to develop a more comprehensive coordinated response to the epidemic nationally and this is something that we really have been working on at the federal level and also bringing forward the state and local responsibility in terms of how we address this epidemic. and i just want to really acknowledge the mayor's support at the local level, making sure that federal, state and local resources are brought forward to address this epidemic and it is something that we are really committed to as we move forward, continuing to implement the strategy. and we have our work cut out for us. at the entertioner international aids conference in july this year, the cdc reported that only 25% of people living in the united states with hiv has a suppressed viral load. so, only one quarter of people hav

and the health of the families at serious health risk. these fake online pharmacies is cut rate prices, phony return addresses, 800 number's, and elaborate marketing schemes with authentic looking websites to sell their goods. some even include fda logos in their advertising. the fda doesn't have anything to do with approving or licensing pharmacies. licensing a pharmacy as you probably know is actually done at the state level. these websites also tend to offer deep discounts with prices that people might think seem too good to be true. and that is probably because in fact it is too good to be true. so be safe rx is trying to focus on some of these issues, understand what american consumers are looking for, but also help them to help themselves to be safe. our new website is www.fda.gov be safe rx. we provide important information about the risks and provide advice how consumers can protect themselves from fraudulent online pharmacies. patients and caregivers can go to the site to better understand the potential risk of what they are buyi

tavis: health is as personal and issue as there is. health is personal, our religion, our faith is a personal issue. people do not open up easily about those issues. they want to know what the process was. that is why i asked that. you made a statement that is worthy of going back to. this notion that people lose their dignity when i walk into a public hospital waiting room. most americans have never sat in a public waiting room at a hospital. what do you mean when you say that walking in there oftentimes cost one his or her dignity? >> i remember the first time i went to thailand. we were rebranded at the -- to highland. we work rebranded -- we were rearended at the 580. i remember thinking, i am going to be here for a while. there are more pressing issues than me. you are being forgotten. nobody is focusing on you. it is not that the people do not care. the system does not have the resources to handle the volume of people. when you walk into a public hospital waiting room, sometimes for low acuity primary care health care, you are de

health emergencies.st, a news update from c-span radio. >> laurence pope, the new u.s. envoy to tripoli, liberally -- libya and his first remarks says the u.s. would continue "on the continue on the path" of chris stevens who was killed in a terrorist attack. he went on to say the u.s. is determined to bring to justice the perpetrators of that attack. the incident has triggered a debate in washington over whether the visitor -- ambassador and mission were given sufficient protection. turning to the economy, the commerce department says retail sales rose sharply in december, reflecting higher consumer confidence and improve and the job market. consumers bought more cars, gasoline, and electronics. sales rose just over 1 percent in september after a 1.2% rise in august that was revised higher. both were the largest since october 2010. stock futures reacted to the games are seeing gains. s&p 500 futures up 7.9 points. the dow adding 60. the nasdaq 100 are of 19. those are some of the latest headlines on c-s

of public health. this was the period when the chronic disease activities were picking up. this was also the era of aids, and a lot of the resources that were being used for other communicable diseases got shifted over to try to deal with the aids problem. and so we watched the infrastructure erode to the point where the local and state health agencies couldn't do their normal baseline functions to monitor-- what we consider the essential role, which is to monitor the pulse of the health of their populations. david bennett: in some marginalized populations and in people in jails and prisons, we found we had a big challenge on our hands, and there was a wake up call, a good response, and i think we've now turned the corner, but hopefully, we've learned our lessons, that the fact that we're now seeing a decline in tuberculosis doesn't give us any guarantees for the future. another thing that haunts me is, now, there are other much more common problems such as measles and some of these other ones for whic

as well as developing ways to proactively address rising health care costs. as a final note while we can and we should and we will focus on consensus measures to address this challenge, i would also like to suggest that the board of supervisors is able to take measures now to address this issue. it is tempting to commit the entirety of today's resources to today's problems. but we also need to take into account the needs of tomorrow. saving isn't the most thrilling thing to do, but i know that you value the long-term fiscal health of our city, supervisors just as i do and you will make decisions that benefit the city today, as well as in the future. thank you. our final question by supervisor campos. thank you. thank you mr. mayor. it's good to see you. i believe i'm not alone with my colleagues on the board of supervisors as i respectfully submit to you today that mayoral question time is not as useful as it could be. i certainly would appreciate the opportunity to engage with you about important policy issues facing my district and facing the ebb entire cit

many of our services are now being looked at for coverage in general health, health insurance.we have a long ways to go. we are trying-samhsa is actually is being quite the leader in helping our general health field and our insurance companies to be able to see that family therapy, educational classes, other medical and psychological services are indeed very appropriate for the consumers and the patients and the family members and people that are in long-term recovery, as it were, to get all of those services covered. we have a long ways to go, but we are working very hard to get the country ready for 2014 when health reform will actually take hold in a bigger way and we'll have so many more thousands of americans that will have health insurance coverage that they've never had. we know from the research that when family therapy is integrated with substance abuse treatment, outcomes are enhanced. we know that we have better rates of engaging people in treatment, better rates of keeping people in treatment when they would otherwise drop out, improve long term outcomes, lowering s

, those affect health. the gat thing about having muni be free for youth, and all youth. i don't think it should be income-tested either. is that you get young people on public transportation and they get used to it and they become your riders later on. so i niel sd, the s ndts l b ngtubnsrtattrm hi mecomp [t/] ubsty, and otgs so we >> chrii will give you m is wast a san francisco riders position, but i think we should have free muni for youth and i believe it should be for all youth for a slightly different reason than andrew. it's kind of the idea of social security. i think when we have rich people agbenefits, it around. we have alofty goal, 62% of outips are taken in cars and we want drop this to 50%. this ia goalwe he hd for gootoe at one thing we'roing o do s atwe don't have chool bus htakus, have them bike and walk. it's only $8.9 million. we can get $76 million if on average we speed up muni by one miles per hour. >> thank you. we have a few more transportation questions here. next one is for mr. da

there are lots of people who use our department of public health services, human health services, shelters, but the outreach team is composed in particular to reach out to folks who had the inability because of their disabilities to make these connections. and so we were put together, you know, staffing from the department of public health, from human services agency, from a nonprofit, cats, one of the wonderful thing about cats is that they actually hire people who formerly were homeless, who formerly were people with substance dependence and these are folks who have now recovered and they want to give back. so our co-workers are people who have actually been through the experience themselves along with some of our psychiatric and social work perspective, this one-two punch is a great way to address the needs of people who are still suffering and having a hard time with their disabilities. we found out very quickly chasing people around the city, from corner to corner, some people liked certain areas, some people moved around, was inefficient and was difficult because we wouldn't always f

health insurance, and said we need to expand health insurance by making sure everybody has health insurancece that is in place, we will start looking at the cost of health care. the discussion came out because there is a theory that health- care costs are a two-headed beast. we have this enormously growing health-care industry, and costs are rising. people are living longer. the care that we get down is really expensive. mri machines, arthroscopes -- all of the other things that you expect when you go in with a headache, you want somebody to do a scan of your brain instead of just telling you to take two aspirin. so, there is a massive increase in health care cost that is eating up more and more of our government's budget. at the same time, there is a growing number of people that are uninsured. it could be one in the same. they could not afford the insurance because the health- care costs so much, insurance costs so much, but for whatever reason, people are not insured. romney care went after one head first, the on insurance, and now they're going after the second part, and obama-care is l

department, san francisco health department, but by an independent health department. and i'm talking about ucs. i'm looking at these babies. i doubt if they live to see 15 years old. i'm looking at them. i'm looking at some of these adults that might be dead in the next 10 years or 12 from inhaling all of that toxic that's out there. you cannot see radiation. ain't no such thing is it safe. what that young lady asked, do she live there? no, and i bet she wouldn't go out there and stay an hour. if she run out there i bet she run back. my statement was to some of the supervisors before when the report was made, the health department gave report and the supervisors supported the eir. a lawsuit had to be filed and they found out that you all was wrong. not you, but i'm talking about the supervisors was wrong. in year 2000, the voters of this city voted that no toxic land be turned over to the city until it was clean to residential use. that shipyard, one part of it was turned over. but guess what? nothing is being built. it's still radiation over there. people are dying i

the community health network. we are a system of care that was probably based on the family practice model, but it was really clear that there are special populations with special needs. the cole street clinic is a youth clinic in the heart of the haight ashbury and they target youth. tom woodell takes care of many of the central city residents and they have great expertise in providing services for many of the homeless. potrero hill and southeast health centers are health centers in those particular communities that are family health centers, so they provide health care to patients across the age span. . >> many of our clients are working poor. they pay their taxes. they may run into a rough patch now and then and what we're able to provide is a bridge towards getting them back on their feet. the center averages about 14,000 visits a year in the health clinic alone. one of the areas that we specialize in is family medicine, but the additional focus of that is is to provide care to women and children. women find o

-- on health care. seven 5 cents of every dollar is spent on chronic diseases. most of them are preventable. is about losing weight, not smoking. all of those things add up to increased cost in society. this plan addresses the true rising cost of health care. if the public does not become engaged in the public does not work with us to pursue optimal health and wellness, the cost will continue to rise. gdp will be just under six trillion dollars. when we look with in the plan itself and we look at some of the issues that are there as far as funding, first of all, i am concerned the plan calls for reducing more payments to doctors and hospitals. at a time when you put 32 million into the system and doctors are already struggling, that might not be the way to go. when you look at the organizations that are being established within the plan, if they work, if you save money and improve quality, and then you may reap benefits that will drive the cost of the system down. a lot of variables i am concerned with,

women want to be able to walk into the va health care and receive the gender-specific health care that we deserve. recently, i was in the hospital in february. i stayed in the emergency room for 15 hours because they didn't have a room for a woman veteran. 15 hours with a life-threatening condition because they needed to find a room for me. women veterans deserve to go into the va health care system and to the hospital and get treatment as wick ri and as -- as quickly and efficiently as our male counterparts. what women want is to be understood there are gender-specific differences that we want medical professionals to understand that women need particular things. mammography is one of them. all of the mammograms are outsourced, so we go out on a fee basis to get those, to get our mammograms. but it takes a long time to receive, um, the results. what we want is for the va to understand that while we have gender-specific differences, we still deserve the same time limits that they give to, in some ways, our male counterparts. what we're asking for is not a separate facility to walk into