Will County Public Health & Safety Committee met Dec. 1.
Here are the minutes provided by the committee:
I. CALL TO ORDER
II. PLEDGE OF ALLEGIANCE TO THE FLAG
Ms. Ventura led the Pledge of Allegiance to the Flag.
III. ROLL CALL
Chair Rachel Ventura called the meeting to order at 11:28 AM
| Attendee Name | Title | Status | Arrived |
| Rachel Ventura | Chair | Present | |
| Meta Mueller | Vice Chair | Present | |
| Mica Freeman | Member | Present | |
| Debbie Kraulidis | Member | Present | |
| Raquel M. Mitchell | Member | Present | |
| Annette Parker | Member | Present | |
| Margaret Tyson | Member | Present |
Also Present: M. Cowan and N. Palmer
Present from State's Attorney's Office: K. Meyers.
IV. APPROVAL OF MINUTES
1. WC Public Health & Safety Committee - Regular Meeting - Oct 6, 2021 11:00 AM
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Margaret Tyson, Member SECONDER: Mica Freeman, Member AYES: Ventura, Mueller, Freeman, Kraulidis, Mitchell, Parker, Tyson |
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Margaret Tyson, Member SECONDER: Raquel M. Mitchell, Member AYES: Ventura, Mueller, Freeman, Kraulidis, Mitchell, Parker, Tyson |
1. Sunny Hill Nursing Home Updates - October 2021
(Sunny Hill Nursing Home Updates - October 2021)
VI. OLD BUSINESS
1. Opioid Update
(Dr. Kathleen Burke)
This item was discussed after Item #4.
Dr. Burke stated I sent out a presentation, in advance, so everyone could look at the data. Sometimes, when you are reviewing all of the data in a meeting it gets confusing. I want to focus on something we seem to forget about, and that is the success of my department and the programs we are able to provide because of the support of the County Board and the funding we have gotten. We had a Workforce Development project going for the last year and half, which will be ending in July. Hopefully, we will qualify for an earmark that Senator Durbin has placed for continuing it. Right now, we are looking at the completion of the recovery coach program. We have been working on placement in full-time positions of our interns, which was the goal of the project: you would be trained and you would work in Will County in a behavioral health program. One of my graduates, one of my successes, wrote a letter thanking us.
Dr. Burke read the following letter: “I would like to start off by saying thank you to Dr. Burke and Connie Dewall for an opportunity to be a part of the recovery coach team. It has been an honor to be employed and mentored by you two the last year and 9 months. I appreciate the opportunity you guys gave me. I’m forever grateful. As of November 27, 2021 I will be no longer apart of the team. Thru the internship you guys have provided I am now working full-time at the Existential Counselor Society. I will be the operations manager over there. I will be managing the operations side and employees. I will be doing Discharge of clients. Intake of clients. Day to day operations. Along with insurance approvals and concurrent review for insurance for the clients while they’re at our facility. Along with facility inventory. Along with several other little things to make sure the facility is running smoothly. I will be working full time. 40-60 hours a week. 5-6 days a week. Once again thank you Connie and Dr. Burke for this opportunity. I appreciate everything. Sincerely Michael Keane”
Dr. Burke continued that was a good example of the work we are doing and I wanted to share that with the Committee. Last month we distributed 600 naloxone boxes throughout the County and that brings us to a total of 3,743 since January. I want to reaffirm that naloxone is the only prevention against an overdose death. It is a harm reduction strategy, and it is important that as we see opioid overdose deaths rise, that we continued this effort. Our overdose deaths have gone up over the last year for a total of 79 as of September. I don’t have October’s data, because I wait for the Coroner’s official data and we don’t have that yet, for October. As of September we had 79 deaths, a 20% increase over last year. The trend is not good. The reason for that trend, as I have identified, is COVID. COVID has had an impact on people’s access to care. Isolation has exacerbated their disease. Fentanyl is in the community and it is poisonous. Fentanyl is being seen in all of the drugs where we are seeing overdoses; not just opioids, but cocaine and methamphetamines. That is a scary thing for us. We had 501 hospital emergency overdose visits so far this year. Five hundred, and that is the tip of the iceberg of people we need to help. We are attempting to connect with those ER patents in order to get them into care. My temporary housing project is grant funded. The purpose of this project is to create an interim step for people waiting to get into treatment. They are waiting for a bed to become available or they have tested positive for COVID, and they need medical clearance. This situation has become bigger than we expected. There is a need to address this in a bigger way, by the County, as far as short-term housing for people who have no place to go, while they are waiting to get into treatment or they tested positive for COVID. If they test positive, they need to be isolated and they are being discharged from the treatment facilities. I am speaking specifically to Stepping Stones. They do not have room to house COVID positive people, because their physical space will not allow them to isolate. They have looked to my programs and other programs to house those folks in hotel rooms. Housing someone in a hotel room, who is COVID positive, is out of my scope. It makes me very uncomfortable and I don’t do it, unless it is an absolute emergency, because that patient requires medical supervision and my folks do not have that background. We are struggling with this, because we don’t want people to die while they are waiting for care. COVID has placed us in a situation where that is problematic. There are a couple of us, who have talked about the Homeless Resolution, and housing, and it needs to be addressed. There needs to be solutions. Historically, we have used shelters to put people who are between housing or treatment centers are full. They had to reduce their capacity because of the public health requirements. We have a bigger crisis with opioid overdose deaths. COVID has exacerbated that, and in a County with a limited supply of behavior health services, we have had to reduce those even more because of COVID. We are going backwards with this situation. I am not sure what the solution is, except to create these interim steps. We are trying to fill the gaps with the grant funding I can get from the State. This need for short-term housing and this need for interim placement is not going away. COVID is not going away, and we need to be able to address this in some long-term fashion. The Legislative & Judicial Committee passed a Resolution requesting the repeal of what they call the IMD restriction. The IMD restriction is part of what limits the number of beds that some facilities can have for Medicaid. They are limited to 16 or 17 beds and they can’t expand. There is an artificial barrier excluding our ability to expand for the population that needs the help the most. That Resolution is a positive step for the County to ask the federal government to take that restriction away, and get rid of the barrier. It is the only barrier Medicaid places it on where people can have their care given and it needs to be removed.
Ms. Tyson asked is the legislation for the federal government to reduce the barriers for interim housing on the floor or is it coming up in the congressional process?
Dr. Burke replied the IMD Resolution is not on the floor. I am not asking to have that included in our Federal Agenda that Mr. Schaben is putting together and that will move forward. The conversation has been within the National Behavioral Health Association, but it has not come up for a vote. You need to make the chatter, to force the issue, in order to get it up there. For the housing issues, there is nothing going on. We don’t have a solution. There is no Resolution, except the Homelessness Resolution that speaks to this as a public health emergency in our County.
Ms. Ventura stated thank you for sharing Mr. Keane’s letter. I think celebrating, when we have some small wins, is important. The last two years have been difficult with COVID and we have all had regular, everyday issues made worse by COVID. I like to bring forward every little bit of positive news. I want to highlight what Dr. Burke’s program does with the recovery coaches. In the Resolution it talks about outcome based. That is one of the big differences I see with the recovery coaches; their goal is to get that individual on a healthy path, back into society, working and being housed without substance abuse. It is not just need based. When we look at homelessness and other public health issues, a lot of time we look at them in a need based manner and throw a lot of money at it. However, that does not mean we always go back and see if the money helped solve the problem; did it make it better, did it make it worse and that is where the outcomes come in, when you look at what is actually happening at the end of the day. Are these people staying clean? Are they staying in a job? Are they staying in housing? That is the outcome part. The recovery coaches work with the individual from the beginning to the end. It is different than just giving them the resources, you are actually walking people through the resources. I really want to highlight how important that is in today’s world and we need more of that, not just in Dr. Burke’s program, but in so many other areas. Thank you for having that in your program, because we might use it to rollout programs in other areas. Have we made any progress with the MAT program at the jail, with getting the medically assisted treatment there?
Dr. Burke replied unfortunately, the project at the jail has been extremely difficult. We have been told that the only outcome the Sheriff’s Office wants this year, is a plan, not an implementation, but just a plan. We have struggled with getting more cooperation and support, for many legitimate reasons. The consultants who are working with us, from the State, are frustrated and they are attempting to find ways to move this. The State’s Attorney, Mr. Glasgow, has become very actively involved now. He was advocating for this project to begin with. Because he has had such success with the specialty courts, he recognizes the importance of working with the jail and people who are incarcerated with substance use disorders. All I can say is it is slow and it is kind of stuck, unfortunately.
Ms. Ventura stated you talked about the number of people going into our emergency rooms. At one time we had the warm handoff program; is that in all of hospitals? Do we have enough people? How is that program working?
Dr. Burke replied the warm handoff program is staffed by the recovery coaches. Family Guidance has a contract with AMITA St. Joes and Silver Cross. It has not been working very well. COVID shut the program down and we are trying to reactivate it. I asked Dr. Byrd, who heads up the behavioral health program at the Health Center, to help me reactivate that and to get the ER physicians to start medicated assisted treatment while the patient is there. Rather than stabilizing and discharging them; let’s get services started and get them transferred into care, even if it is on an out-patient basis. She has agreed to work with me on that. Amita is going through some changes and they told us that they will not allow any recovery coaches in the ER right now. We are hitting up against some barriers.
Ms. Ventura asked is Edwards a part of this program? Is there anything this Committee can do to help?
Dr. Burke replied Edwards is not part of the community group I work with. Edwards has a much more supportive ER department when it comes to behavioral health, they always have been. We do not have anyone placed there, because they are not in Will County. My program is focused on Will County.
Ms. Ventura asked is there anything the Committee can do to help with reactivating the program? Is it just a matter of waiting for what you are working on already?
Dr. Burke responded I need assistance in drawing attention to the fact the opioid epidemic is getting worse in Will County. We were on a very positive trajectory for five years and now, because of the situation with fentanyl and COVID, we are in bad shape and we need to re-emphasize that this is a crisis and it is an epidemic. This is just as serious as COVID, and I want to see that type of attention given to this problem. I am a little biased, this is my area of expertise; but we need to have all hands on deck. That means help from the Sheriff’s Office, the Health Department and Ms. Sojka’s housing projects; we need to pull together to figure out some resolution. If this Committee could raise awareness that would help with the Board and the community; particularly moving this up the ladder with the Board to make sure we make this point and that the BOH grasps the severity of the issue. This Committee could help me with that.
Ms. Ventura stated Speaker Cowan is on this call. Perhaps that is something we could do as a Resolution. Often times we have Gun Awareness month and we will talk about it at the County Board, and then we can push that out as a press release. Speaker Cowan is that something we could work with Dr. Burke on to bring awareness and get this out to the greater public?
Speaker Cowan replied we can definitely talk about ways we can help with awareness. I think this is a conversation for the ARPA funding and there might be room for this.
Ms. Ventura stated I might be opening a can of worms with my next comment, but when you talk about short-term housing while they are waiting for treatment, I know you have used hotel dollars to house people for that, but then you talked about COVID positive individuals who need medical supervision, is it because they need to be quarantined? Why are they not in a hospital?
Dr. Burke replied they are just testing positive. They are not sick enough to be in the hospital; that is the challenge. Everybody is screened when they are going into treatment and if they test positive, they cannot be admitted until they get a negative test. There has been no option for them, except for our hotels. There were some conversations, stemming from the Health Department and EMA about why organizations like Stepping Stones are not able to create space and keep them. It is because there is no physical space at these shelters. We need to address the fact there is no capacity more than anything else.
Ms. Ventura asked if we had the physical space, do we have the resources? Do we have the people to take care of them and the dollars to put these people in those facilities?
Dr. Burke replied no. They need medical care and my recovery coaches are only trained to take care of someone with a substance abuse problem and to help facilitate mental health services, they are not medical. Ms. Shawn West has been working on a project and she is funded to provide that medical care. She has 17 beds in hotels, where she is housing people who have medical problems. She is taking care of their medical needs, as well as facilitating our collaboration in mental health and substance abuse; we need more of that, with less restrictions. Some of the money funding that project is HUD related and HUD has a lot of restrictions on who qualifies and who can get in. We could expand that project and there are opportunities for some of the ARPA funding to address the fact that there are people who are testing positive, who need to be isolated, and they need medical observation; not necessarily treatment, but observation, but they need to be isolated until they can get to the next step of their care.
Ms. Ventura stated if it is just a matter of space so the Will-Grundy Medical Center can do observation and provide the care, and we have dollars for housing needs, we have two buildings; the old courthouse and the Copperfield Building. Those items have been going through the Capital Improvements Committee. The courthouse is set to be demolished and the other one needs a ton of money, which I don’t know that we are moving forward on. If this temporary, and maybe not those properties, but they are the ones I know of, if it is a matter of temporarily quarantining people, could we put up a cot and provide other needs for them to stay for the 10 to 14 days? Is that something our County could do? Mr. Palmer, is this an idea worth exploring? Could we provide, on a very temporary basis, locations for people to be placed so they can quarantine while they are waiting for other short-term housing?
Mr. Palmer replied I don’t think either of those buildings you mentioned are close enough to ready to do that. We would be better looking at other people or entities who are doing this. After talking with Ms. Sojka, part of the problem is some of the shelters had to reduce their capacity because of COVID. If they had 120 beds in the past, they are only at 60 now, and that is a problem. The properties you mentioned, the old courthouse and the Copperfield building, neither or those are equipped or ready at the moment. We would have to do the work first to do it.
Ms. Ventura asked does the County currently own any buildings where we could do something like that?
Mr. Palmer replied not that I can think of. We are not set up for that kind of work. I don’t know how the County is funding it, but DuPage County is using hotels. Hotels seems to make the most sense. That is what we did early in COVID. I believe Ms. McNichol and others were housing people at hotels because they are already set up and ready to go, to house someone while they are quarantining. Hotel occupancy is down at the moment and we would be better off investigating that.
Dr. Burke stated for the program Mr. Palmer was talking about, with Ms. McNichol and others, early in COVID, the funding ran out. It was working because there was collaboration among all of us to take care of those patients and to help. It was great, because everyone has their own expertise; you need all hands on deck in order to do that. With Ms. West’s project there is a group that could expand this. My group has a relationship with Posh Hotels. They trust us enough to monitor the people that we place them there and they don’t cause problems with hotel. That is one of the biggest barriers; hotels don’t want to open up their beds with no monitoring or conditions, because it interferes with their other customers. There are motels in town that would have conversations with us to create these opportunities and interim steps. I don’t know how long this is going to go on. The short-term funding runs out very quickly. Most of my folks, when they get placed, the longest they are there is two weeks. Usually, it is a week, until they can get clear with COVID.
Ms. Ventura asked I just want to be clear; is the first barricade the funding or the location? Is it identifying a location to put people?
Dr. Burke replied there is no funding involved to do it. We are all doing this in a silo, in a minimal way and what we need is a larger, more cohesive program and space. I have not gone looking for space, because I don't have the money for it. Secondly, it is out of my expertise. From a more collaborative perspective, among the Health Department, Ms. McNichol, Ms. Sojka and Ms. West, we could do it in a cohesive way, working together, but that takes more than the two or three beds I get each month. Ms. West's 17 beds are filled all of the time. We also have to be careful, because some of the hotels are not in safe locations.
Ms. Ventura stated one of the things we added to the Resolution was what Dr. Burke is talking about, these different entities working together. In the Homelessness Resolution, we added working with multiple departments to create a strategic plan. The CoC has done that collaboration, but this is to continue it forward, knowing we have these problems. It sounds like we need to do some work off-line, maybe talking with Mr. Palmer and Speaker Cowan on how the ARPA funding might be part of the solution. It sounds like long-term we are going to need some type of housing solution, which is why we have the Resolution to begin with.
Mrs. Berkowicz stated I appreciate your presentation. It is an exploding situation we are hearing at home, within our communities. You mentioned fentanyl. I would appreciate it if perhaps the Committee could get some input from the Sheriff. Could he come and discuss this with us? Could he tell us what he is seeing and what we are dealing with, here in the County? I would appreciate that. Is it a possibility that he could join us? Mr. Palmer, who would invite Sheriff Kelley?
Dr. Burke stated just so you know, I get my information from the Coroner's Office. The most reliable data, right now, on how many deaths are being caused, is from the Coroner's report. Ms. Summers might be a good person to talk to about what you are seeing.
Mrs. Berkowicz stated I realize that, but our Sheriff's Department is an integral part of keeping us safe and they understand how fentanyl is getting here and why it is getting here. I would like to get some input from them. I don't know how the other Board Members feel, but I think it would be appropriate.
Ms. Ventura stated I am okay with Sheriff Kelley coming. I would love to talk to him about the MAT program. I would appreciate if Mr. Palmer could reach out and ask Sheriff Kelley if he would come and present at our Committee. They can talk about fentanyl and what they are seeing in the County from that perspective and what they are seeing with the jail and how we can move forward with the MAT treatment. I have no problem with that. Mr. Palmer could you set something like that up for the future?
Mr. Palmer replied yes, I can make the request of the Sheriff or his people, whoever is appropriate to come to speak.
Mrs. Ogalla stated I understand the needs and issues that are going on here, from what you have said. Obviously, it is a very difficult situation to resolve. People get into drug use for various different reasons. Most of time, it is to medicate themselves for a deeper issue. When you guys work with a person, do you try to determine how this person got on the path toward drug use? Is that part of the process or do you just deal with the person at the time they are having the issue? I understand there might be times when you are not able to talk with them, depending on the situation they are experiencing. Do you look at the root cause? For some people, the root cause may be something that is possibly out of their control. Do we have certain situations that show that this happened to the person that caused them to do this? Is it possible there is no definitive answer there and there is not just one thing. Are we working to help people, at a point they are already beyond they are self-medicating. Is there anything that could be done in advance to try and determine what is the root cause? Could we put a program in place, early on?
Dr. Burke stated one of the most important things is, we could increase the number of behavioral health services within Will County. You are absolutely right, it is self-medicating. People treat their pain, emotional and physical, with substances. Trauma has been shown to be the largest instigator of long term drug use. Opioids get started because of pain relief through doctors and then it snowballs because there are other emotional issues that have not been addressed. We don't have enough doctors, psychiatrists or social workers in our community to take care of people. If we don't have the services, we can't prevent it. That has been the point of trying to increase the number of providers in our area to get the Health Department's program up and running and expanded so we can take care of our people who need these services. There is no access for them, even for people who want the services. That is my biggest frustration. I meet so many people who want care, but cannot get it, either because of their insurance, the lack of insurance or there is nobody to take care of them.
Ms. Ventura stated to just clarify; are you saying we don't have enough in the community as a whole, at private and public, or are you saying at our Health Department or at our Community Clinic, we need to bring in more of these providers?
Dr. Burke replied I am saying both. There are not enough private providers nor public service providers. When Will County Community Health Center opened up their MAT program, they ballooned and they are out of space. They are still taking patients, but they are out of physical space in order to handle more patients and more providers. The Health Department had to go through a whole certification by the State, which takes time. But now they are open and able to provide services. In my opinion, there needs to be a sense of urgency, in the same way there was a sense of urgency in getting clinics out into the communities to get people vaccinated against COVID. We need the same sense of urgency and the same sense of all hands on deck.
Ms. Ventura stated next I'm going to go to Ms. Olenek and ask her to let us know if there are things this Committee or the County Board can do to help encourage more providers. Is it a funding issue? Is it a State issue?
Ms. Olenek stated I wanted to add on to what Dr. Burke mentioned, and she is absolutely right with all of her information. It has been ten years since the Tinley Park Mental Health Center closed. That was one of the biggest mistakes the State of Illinois made. Our County was well served by that facility. When that facility closed, we all scrambled. By we, I mean any community mental health provider. There were no other large residential settings for people with behavioral or mental health issues. That has had a big impact and what we are seeing is it has been getting worse and worse and it is coming to a head. Then, when you put COVID on top of that, there is not enough providers in the community, Will County or the State of Illinois. We don't have enough psychiatrists or enough clinicians; there is just not enough in our region to address all of these issues. We don't have enough residential facilities. This is no one's fault, I am not laying any blame. As far as the lack of housing, for Dr. Burke's clients to go to with COVID, we are having difficulty placing people without addictions in residential or alternative housing. This is a problem, but there is not one entity, as Dr. Burke stated, that has the expertise or the resources. Ms. Ventura what you are talking about, in terms of putting these people in a building, that is a multi-million dollar project. You have to make sure the building is zoned properly, you have to have a building inspection, you have to make sure it meets all of the requirements for this kinds of facility, you need beds, dressers, food, a kitchen, someone to monitor it and security. This is a great idea, but it is a huge undertaking, and that is one of the reasons it has not been done. COVID just made everything a whole lot worse and made a lot of things come to light. I had a conversation with our resource coordinator, who has been placing people with COVID into the hotels. There is one main hotel that all of us use, Ms. West at the Will-Grundy Medical Center and other agencies use it. We are very thankful we are able to use this hotel to house these people, but it is difficult to get other hotels to want to do this. At the beginning of COVID, when we were really scrambling to find any kind of facility, we found there was not a lot of compliance with these individuals. If they are quarantining, they need to stay in their rooms, but they don't want to stay in their rooms, they want to go have a smoke, they want to go to the lobby and after they violated those rules a couple of times, we had to take them out of the facility, because they were putting the other people at risk. I could go on for hours. This is an extremely difficult and complex problem, whether you are talking about people with or without COVID, it is extremely complex and it is going to take a lot of money and a lot of expertise. I agree with Dr. Burke, we can all come together. This is not in the wheelhouse of the Health Department either. It is not in Dr. Burke's wheelhouse and it is not in Ms. West's wheelhouse; it is not in any of our wheelhouses to do any of this. If we come together, we can probably get it done, with a lot of money, and it is going to take time.
Ms. Ventura stated thank you for that. I was not trying to minimize the difficulties. I hear what you are saying.
Ms. Olenek stated I am not saying you were. I just want to make sure everyone is very clear, this is probably the main reason it is not done, or because it is very complicated.
Ms. Ventura stated what I am looking for are solutions. I recognize that these solutions may not be quick nor might they be easy. That is why I am trying to identify is it a location? Is it funding? What is it, so we have the right initial ask? If it is all of those things, how do we triage it? How do we set the first priority? If it is a funding thing, then we need to have this as an ARPA ask. It may need to be a priority that happens before we get the consultant. If we have people who need to be quarantined, who need treatment in other matters, that is the definition of public health; making sure we are protecting everybody. I plan to have a conversation with Speaker Cowan, but working together is the way to make this happen. Whether it happens on this Board or on the Health Board, or it happens on a joint Board, we should work with EMA. When COVID first happened, EMA was looking for a location for mass quarantining. I know they looked at a concert hall in Tinley Park. At that point, buildings were shut down and maybe it was a little easier to house people. Now that we are back to in-person in a lot of places and schools are no longer shut down, we have less options. Someone talked about the old Lincoln-Way High School. This may be something where we have to work with multiple entities to find a location and we may need to ask the State for more funding. What I am hearing is not just Dr. Burke having issues with people with substance abuse, but you are saying there are individuals out there who need to be quarantined and we don't have locations for them. That sounds like something the County should be working across the board, with multiple agencies, to find that location or perhaps multiple locations and then provide the funding, whether it comes from ARPA dollars or we go to the State and talk to the Governor and our State Legislators to ask how we can get more funding. Delta is still very much in our communities and Omicron is knocking at the doors. Luckily it is not in the U.S. at the moment, but this is the time we should be preparing for a worst case scenario. If we find a location and we get the funding and we don't need it, great. If we don't do that, how many additional lives could be lost, because of our lack of planning? I am not saying anyone here's lack of planning, it is just a matter of we have not walked these steps before. I don't have a solution today and I would like everyone to think about solutions. I will talk with Mr. Palmer and Speaker Cowan to see if there are more things the County can do. It it also looks like we need to work with EMA, the BOH and other entities.
Ms. Freeman asked is this something that the IDPH could assist us on? Do they need pressure to help us out with this need?
Dr. Burke replied I work very closely with IDPH, as does the Health Department for COVID and for substance use. They have requirements and guidelines, but this is a local response.
Ms. Freeman stated I know you work really heavily with them. I was hopeful that maybe with more pressure they would understand there is a need and say let's see what we can do.
Ms. Olenek stated I doubt it. I think they would look at it as a local problem and we need to come up with a local solution. They are there for guidance, information and data. You could go to the Governor's Office or to the State Legislators for funding, that would be a different story, but not the IDPH.
Mrs. Berkowicz asked the hotels that the COVID patients are housed at and some of the drug addicted clients, are those hotels closed for public use?
Dr. Burke replied no, they are not. They are open to the public. I want to reassure people that these are people who test positive, but are not showing active symptoms. I will not take anyone with active symptoms. They take a screening test and if they are positive we re-isolate them and we make them stay in their rooms. I have people who monitor my substance use people, nobody else. Yes, it is a public building.
Ms. Ventura stated please continue to report back each month, but in between, if you could reach out to us and we will reach out to you guys and see if there are any solutions here. If anyone has any ideas, please e-mail, Mr. Palmer, Speaker Cowan or myself.
2. Monthly Update from Sunny Hill Nursing Home
(Maggie McDowell)
Mrs. Jakaitis read the attached report from Ms. Maggie McDowell.
3. Monthly Update from Will County Health Dept.
(Sue Olenek)
Ms. Olenek stated I am going to start with some good news. Ms. McDowell’s report indicated we had to comply with the CMS rules, but we received information last night that there was a court decision, by a judge in Louisiana, who has enjoined the decision nationwide to block the CMS mandate. I had a conversation with our ASA first thing this morning and he verified that this means the CMS rules, at this time, are blocked and Sunny Hill and the Health Department are not required to enforce the vaccine mandate. He also recommended that we still move forward with a plan, which includes bargaining with our union leadership, to make sure that we have something in place if this gets reversed or if there is something that happens legally where we are required to enforce the mandate.
Ms. Ventura stated I looked that up, because I got that last night too. The judge’s ruling was that the Biden Administration does not have the authority to bypass Congress and issue such a mandate. I think it is good to move forward, just in case Congress passes it. It then goes to the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, but they recently blocked the mandate for businesses with more than 100 workers, the previous mandate. The fact that it is going to the same Circuit Court it appears that Circuit Court would uphold the decision.
Ms. Olenek stated that was the OSHA ETS that was blocked previously. That would have effected County employees, in general.
Ms. Olenek reviewed the attached PowerPoint presentation.
Ms. Ventura stated I have several questions. In the education bags you have, do we have flyers that answer questions on some of the main concerns? Such as, if someone is concerned about what is in the shot or some of the other things we have heard?
Ms. Olenek replied the flyers that are handed out and present at the clinics are on our website.
Ms. Ventura asked is there a place people can put these brochures up? The Health Department has them, but are we putting them at the County Building, the courthouse or public libraries? People who want to learn more might be going to those locations, seeing the brochure and grab them.
Ms. Olenek replied they are distributing them, I just don’t know how far and wide.
I can check and find out.
Ms. Ventura stated you talked about meeting with the FORCE for the media plan. I have seen some of the videos they have put out and I liked a lot of them, especially the more recent one “Don’t Wait Until it is too Late”. Have we done videos on educating how the vaccine works? How it lowers your chance of getting it and if you do get how it lowers your chance of death? Maybe we could have a doctor or someone who is versed in that explain to people from a medical standpoint. Have we done any videos like that?
Ms. Olenek replied yes, we have done that. Our website has a doctor and you can view the video. It was done from a medical perspective and a faith perspective. We did a lot of education with general information about COVID, very early on. So to answer your question, yes, they have approached all of those avenues.
Ms. Ventura stated I will definitely look for the doctor’s video, because I missed that one. Have we done anything about what is not in the shot? Something like a myth buster type thing?
Ms. Olenek responded we have done publications, but I don’t know if we have done a video. I don’t know if we will, to tell you the truth, those videos are extremely expensive and we are at the point now where we really have to watch our dollars. I can try to locate the actual document and maybe we do another one now that we have the Delta and Omnicom variants on the horizon and we now have boosters.
Ms. Ventura continued you said you were working with the ROE. I know that one flyer was sent out to parents from the local schools, because we got one, but it only gave the dates of the vaccines they were doing at Joliet West. If you could not make that date, I don’t believe the parents were notified of other options. Is it possible to work with the ROE to send out a flyer that lists all of the places your kids can get vaccinated: your pediatrician, the pharmacies and more importantly, the school sites that we have available or perhaps the hours of the Health Clinic? Perhaps you could add the number for the call center so parents who missed the first one have the opportunity to do another one?
Ms. Olenek relied I am sure the flyer had our website on it and it said if you need more information contact us.
Ms. Ventura stated I understand that Ms. Olenek, but sometimes people don’t take the time to go to the website. This is important information to spoon feed and it literally costs them nothing to send out an e-mail to all the parents in Will County, why are we not doing that?
Ms. Olenek replied because that information changes. It changes all the time. We would have to send out flyers every other week.
Ms. Ventura continued I don’t think it would hurt to send out another flyer. The number of kids being vaccinated is not even at 50%. Why would it hurt to send out a reminder to all of the schools in the district saying as of today’s date, here are the places you can get vaccinated and this is what the County is doing to help make this easy on parents to get their children vaccinated, for those who want it.
Ms. Olenek replied I will send something to Dr. Walsh and ask him to send it out.
Ms. Ventura asked do we know if there are boosters available for the 12 and older age group yet?
Ms. Olenek replied they are looking at that. It is going through FDA right now. They do expect it, but I don’t have any timeline; it is in the works.
Ms. Ventura stated how does the State mandate still apply to healthcare workers? Is that just the testing mandate that you are continuing or is there other aspects to that?
Ms. Olenek replied basically we are going by the OSHA mandate and the State mandates. For our own reasons, we want to make sure that our unvaccinated are being tested.
Ms. Freeman stated my son was home over Thanksgiving break and he mentioned he needed to get his booster, as did my husband and I. We were able to get on your website and make three appointments, go in and get our boosters. When we left my son said “that was pretty impressive”. He said it was pretty much the same routine he experienced at his university. It was quick and easy, it is 15 minutes out of your day, so go get your boosters.
Ms. Olenek stated thank you. It is nice to hear the good comments.
Mrs. Berkowicz stated earlier Ms. Olenek or Dr. Burke mentioned that IDPH could not provide any funds to address the issues Dr. Burke is having with her program and that we are on our own as a County. You just shared the incredible grants you received from IDPH regarding the COVID. Because so many of the individuals that Dr. Burke is seeing not only do they have drug abuse issues, they are also COVID positive; is it possible that some of the funds you received could be used to help those people that are in Dr. Burke's program? Is it possible for us to use some of that money?
Ms. Olenek replied the first thing I need to do is look at what the needs are, specific to our agency, to continue what we are already doing. We can't give up doing the vaccinations, we can't give up doing the outreach. We have to keep doing those things so we continue to get people vaccinated. The other issue is, I know that one of those grants would probably not be applicable to that. When you get grant funding, typically there are deliverables, a specific thing that you have to demonstrate. I know one of those grants you can't use, but the other is a more general and I can certainly see how much of that funding might be able to be used. We need to look at what it is going to cost us to continue what we have been doing in regards to the vaccinations.
Mrs. Berkowicz stated I would appreciate it if you would do that. I appreciate how serious COVID is. My mother is in the hospital with COVID and it has been tough and apparently, she is going to get through this. However, I know that with Dr. Burke's scenario, these people have a very critical situation that could very well end their life, if they do not get the care they need. If there is any possibility that we can apply these resources to people who are not only suffering from COVID, but also from drug addiction and we need to make that a priority as well. Like COVID, it impacts the entire community and family when you lose a family member from drug abuse.
Ms. Ventura stated I echo Mrs. Berkowicz's comments. I also hope your mom recovers very quickly.
Mrs. Ogalla stated thank you, Ms. Olenek, for informing everybody regarding the situation of the mandates from the CMS. I know that was a concern of many people. I know that you will be moving forward with a plan to get people to comply with this or get their exemption letters. At some point in the future, could you explain how the exemption letter process approval will be reviewed? I think people will appreciate that. I think this is really about civil liberties. I know people get very angry at me about that, but that is okay, because that is how I feel. I don't think that one person should be mandating these things. If they want to do that and to be fair, it should go through the entire legislative process and that way it is a reasonable and fair law that would not be in the court system right now. I appreciate that information and I know our employees appreciate it. Hopefully, that information will get out through the reporters who are attending our meeting and will help companies, businesses and organizations who are struggling with this same issue to understand that they are at a hold point at this time. Do you know if there is going to be a tracking system to find out how many people who are fully vaccinated, have received the booster and are still getting COVID? Do we know that? Will we know that? When you are getting three shots in one year, it should be a pretty good thing that you will not get COVID. I am sure you probably don't have the answer today, since boosters are very new. Is there a list of where the popup clinics will be? It would be great to get a jpeg of that, because I would like to post that on social media, especially if there is something out my way. People do occasionally ask and I am not always looking at the website. If I could stick it out on Facebook that would be really helpful. I know many people who have COVID right now and there may be people who make their decision that they want the vaccine now. Information like that would be helpful to me.
Ms. Olenek stated in relation to your question about people who have been vaccinated and still getting COVID or have had the booster and are still getting COVID, certainly, we are not tracking that. We don't have the staffing or the expertise of the system to track that. I don't even know if the State Health Department is tracking it. That is something that would probably be reported pretty haphazardly. We have made that request to the State, but I don't think anybody is tracking that.
Mrs. Ogalla stated that is something that is secondary to everything else that is going on, so I understand.
Ms. Ventura thanked Ms. Olenek and her staff for all their hard work and stated I know this continues to be a trying time and very frustrating for everybody involved. You are doing good work in helping people get vaccinated, getting the information out there and trying to get ahead of the next variant before it gets here.
4. Declaring Homelessness a Public Health Emergency
(Rachel Ventura)
This item was discussed as the first item under Old Business.
Ms. Ventura stated attached is a draft, so we are not voting on this today. This is for us to review. Please spend the next month with any changes you may want to see. There were some additional changes, I am going to read and then I will open it up to discussion. The plan is to have a final draft by next month. About a week before our January meeting, please e-mail all your changes and suggestions to Mr. Palmer. Of course, you have this in this meeting and we can discuss it, but if you need more time, then just please make sure you e-mail comments and we will discuss those at the next meeting, before we vote. There were some changes that came from Nicole with MAP, Dr. Burke and Ms. Sojka had some changes, but they were not included and I added one or two changes. The first change is in the very first paragraph we wanted to add at the end “whereas, Will County has serves an average “x” individuals and families each year”. So then we are looking at it from a national standpoint, and also a local standpoint. There was an add by MAP under the fourth paragraph, where it says “WHEREAS, being housing insecure and unsheltered” that addition is “being housing insecure and unsheltered exacerbates food insecurities and hunger due to social economic and food logistic barriers, hunger contributes to amplified diversity of health outcomes. Poor health was twice as likely to be observed among food insecurity populations and at least 80% homeless individuals reporting experiencing food insecurities”. The last change was the first BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED would say “BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, that Will County is committed to working towards a strategic plan to solve homelessness from an outcome based approach” and we would leave the other four as they are. I will open this up for discussion, those were some additional ones. Of course, we will send out these changes and the e-mail I just read so you can see them. Does anyone have any thoughts or questions about the current draft, as it stands?
Ms. Mueller stated I appreciate that you are adding the part about Will County. I think it is important for us to recognize that. I was going to ask if we could do that, and I am glad to hear it is already in the works. Otherwise, I think it looks good. I am glad we are doing this.
VII. OTHER OLD BUSINESS
VIII. NEW BUSINESS
IX. PUBLIC COMMENT
Mrs. Jakaitis announced there were no public comments.
X. ANNOUNCEMENTS/REPORTS BY CHAIR
XI. EXECUTIVE SESSION
XII. ADJOURNMENT
1. Motion to Adjourn at 1:03 P.M.
| RESULT: APPROVED [UNANIMOUS]
MOVER: Raquel M. Mitchell, Member SECONDER: Mica Freeman, Member AYES: Ventura, Mueller, Freeman, Kraulidis, Mitchell, Parker, Tyson |
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