President Jan opened the meeting with a classical beginning song, Mozart in the Morning Performance, performed by Linda Rough, Rick Russell and Vicky Oxley with Dr. Kia Sams on the piano. Charley Dickey was inspired by the resilience of Africa's resource-limited public health systems after witnessing real adversity on a Rotary International trip. He shared various adversities he had experienced, how he gained strength from them and why success begins when you try once more.
David Bobanick and Cindy Sharek provided an update of the Seattle Rotary Service Foundation campaign that in its third month with about half our members having made a commitment. He described various levels of ‘matching’ amounts, encouraging Rotarians to donate online from the S4 website. He also encouraged Rotarians to support the work done by Rotary International.
President Jan introduced the day’s featured speaker as a visionary leader who brings more than 30 years of experience in public health to his new job. Dennis Worsham took the helm as Washington State Secretary of Health in July with a focus on all sides to create better public health in Washington.
“During my first 100 days federal orders from the executive branch of the federal government were like a gut bunch,” he began. “The federal government dismantling the public health system piece-by-piece from disease prevention research, and science-based data setting policies to the attack of vaccines and leaving the World Health Organization are among many other things will impact the people in our state.”
The impact of the federal orders will be significant with 60,000 Washingtonians losing healthcare subsidies and collapsing of key areas such as threats to the food stamp program or SNAP and low-income family support.
Threats and disinformation from the other Washington about public health and science makes it hard to know what is true and what is not, and what we can do as a system to address those things.
Cuts to research and development in public health and other areas have impact such as cuts of $300M in grants, and Medicaid cuts that will impact 250K Washingtonians and threaten whether five or six rural hospitals can survive without Medicaid patients.
He noted that key leadership positions, including CDC Director and senior FDA roles, remain unfilled at the highest levels of the federal healthcare system. This means there is no one to ensure that policies sent to states are based on scientific guidance. He said western states have collaborated to create science-based health policies, separate from the federal government.
Life expectancy is strongly influenced by socioeconomic factors. Although the U.S. pours more money into the health care system than any developed country, the outcome of longevity is higher elsewhere,” he said. “Life expectancy in south King vs. north King County is a ten-to-12-year life expectancy difference -- your zip code has as much to do with health as any other element. Various safety mechanisms from the FDA, CDC and others are moving from science to ideology.” President Jan concluded the meeting with a quote from Gandi, “It is health that is real wealth and not pieces of gold.”
-Great report, Pete!
