I was pleased to be invited to be a panelist at the upcoming Pierce County Health Equity Summit on March 28th at University of Washington Tacoma. The framework for the discussion will be the documentary "Unnatural Causes," which is a cooperative work of the National Association of County & City Health Officials (NACCHO). It is billed as a health equity campaign, titled "A Dialogue to Action a national effort to stimulate debate and bring about a change to eliminate health inequities."
For our part I will talk about the Conservation District's efforts to provide high quality local food to low income seniors and disabled residents. This program, which I've posted about before, has the District working as a partnership with the Pierce County Aging & Long Term Care Division and a coalition of local row crop farmers.
I'm pleased to see that my panel workgroup will be led by Dr. Dorothy Anderson of the Tacoma Urban League. Dr. Anderson and I are working together on several programs to educate and uplift inner city youth and introduce them to opportunities in natural resource careers. I have a great deal of respect for Dr. Anderson and what she's trying to accomplish at the League, and I'm happy to say that the League and the District are good working partners.
The main speakers include Senator Rosa Franklin of Tacoma and (hopefully) Governor Gregoire herself.
I'll be over at the Health Department today getting a pre-screening of the documentary, and after watching the trailer on the Unnatural Causes website, I can say that I'm intrigued in the topic. Public conversations like this one can often bring to light gaps and solutions that no one of us would be able to identify on our own.
You can find the registration form for the summit on the TPCHD website. The Pierce Conservation District participates in many cooperative projects with the Health Department, not just the traditional agriculture impacting water quality issues, but health, disease control, and nutrition issues as well.
Hope to see you there!
