[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC STING] - We're now joined by Dr. Kaitlan Baston, who is the commissioner of the New Jersey Department of Health.

Commissioner, thank you for joining us.

- Oh, thanks so much for having me.

- You got it.

Public education about, an awareness about critical health issues, more important than ever before.

We're doing this in late January, 2025.

Let's jump into a couple things.

I just mentioned vaccines real quick.

What do people need to know?

Last Friday, I got my COVID and my flu shot.

It may have been too late in the season.

Who knows?

What's true?

What's confusing disinformation?

Please.

- Great question.

I'm so glad vaccines came up.

Primarily just because I don't think we could talk enough about them in the public.

And it's never too late, Steve, I'm really glad you got your flu and your COVID shot.

Just in general, these things are so valuable for families, because we think about, you know, as a mom, right?

I wanna stay healthy.

I do anything I could to keep my kids healthy and keep 'em out of a hospital.

And we take for granted.

I think the fact that vaccines, especially the routine ones, help keep kids from getting really sick.

We used to live in a country where kids could die from illnesses that are now vaccine preventable.

Kids could get polio, measles, and you know, it's really, when I think about it, a bipartisan issue.

And I say that because still over 90% of families in New Jersey get their kids their routine vaccines.

And I think today it's just so important.

As new ones come out and we're getting more information, what people need to know is, Hey, these are safe.

And they can keep my kids outta the hospital.

They can keep families outta the hospital.

They can keep us from missing days of work.

This is really a no-brainer.

And we wanna answer all those questions for folks from the Department of Health.

- And rest assured that as the new federal administration, the Trump administration moves into place, what is being said out of that administration, particularly from health officials, we will monitor, try to make sense of, and have experts who will break it down because it matters to you.

It's not politics, it's people's health.

So Commissioner, lemme try this.

A couple areas that I know you want to talk about.

Can we do reproductive rights first?

And this birth control... Accessing birth control without a prescription in Jersey.

What the heck is that and why is it so important, Commissioner?

- Reproductive rights in general is so critical, and to the majority of people in this country, they wanna protect those reproductive rights.

And as a woman, right, it's so important to me, the fact that when you wanna have a family, you should be able to plan for that.

And you should be able to be in charge of your own body.

And you should make all those decisions with yourself and your healthcare provider.

And the standing order for contraception, which is what that is, which is really, I wrote a prescription that anybody can access in the state of New Jersey, and it sits at pharmacies.

And so you have medical professionals, you know, you have pharmacists there who can walk people through, who come into that pharmacy and want birth control.

They can walk them through how to get that safely, what's the right choice for them and what's available.

And it's right there at the pharmacy.

And what that means is you don't have to go to a doctor's visit or see a doctor or another healthcare provider to get birth control, which is a safe and routine medicine if you know how to take it and who it's safe for.

And it also unclogs your primary care office, right?

You wanna see a doctor when you really need one.

I don't wanna wait as long to get into primary care and this kind of unclogs that system.

So it's great for people, it's easy access, low barrier, and it really unclogs our primary care system.

- PS.

We'll talk to the Commissioner in a future segment on why this disproportionately impacts the Black and brown communities in particular, Where access is even more of a problem.

Can we do this?

You've talked extensively about the opioid crisis and what do you see the Department of Health's role being as it relates to fighting that fight?

A and B, how are we doing?

- Absolutely.

As you know, I'm an addiction doctor, so you know, I have a specialty in this area and it's so critical that we keep talking about it.

We are making great strides.

And I will say that just because it's so important for the public, you've probably heard that.

First and foremost, the CDC puts out amazing information on this, as do we in New Jersey.

It is the number one cause of death for young people still.

In our country.

That's age one to 44, number one cause of death for young people.

The top three causes of death are actually overdose, suicide, and homicide.

Nationally, for people age one to 44.

You know, you've heard we have a mental health crisis in our country, right?

But those statistics really drive it home.

And so it is so critical.

That's why it's so critical to me and why I ended up studying addiction medicine after primary care.

I was doing a lot of women's health and I ended up wanting to do a fellowship in addiction medicine because it also really impacts families and people when they're pregnant too.

It's the number one cause of pregnancy associated death also.

So when we talk about wanting to drive down maternal mortality, we have to treat addiction in order to do that.

We are doing a ton at the Department of Health right now, just to give you a couple things.

Number one, we have to get harm reduction out there because that helps people, keeps people from dying, keeps people from getting infections.

And we have gone full steam ahead with this.

There were only seven harm reduction centers in the state of New Jersey when I came on.

Now we have over 55 approved, and we have one approved in every single county.

We also are getting medication to people because medication is what actually treats these diseases and keeps people from being sick and keeps them from dying.

So, could talk about it all day, of course, but there's a ton that we're doing.

Big picture, we're starting to turn the tide.

We see overdose deaths flattening out and even coming down.

Historically, that was not true for the Black and brown populations in our state.

But we finally have done a ton of focus on those disparities.

And you know, we're still crunching the numbers, but it looks like we're turning the tide now for all populations, which is a huge win.

- Michelle, lemme ask you a big picture question.

I saw a, I would call it a PSA, A public service announcement that you did recently.

It was in the middle of a sports event that I was watching on the air.

How important do you believe it is that public officials, public health officials, are out there creating greater public education and awareness and trying to create more trust, greater trust in the public health?

I hate calling it infrastructure because you're human beings, but why are you out there doing that, and what does it have to do with this public trust issue or lack thereof?

- Listen, I'm a primary care doctor.

I'm a mom, right?

I'm a person.

And the reason I work in this system and for public health is because I learned early on as a primary care doctor that I couldn't work in the system without working on the system.

There's a lot that we need to do to make it work better for people.

People get frustrated because our health system doesn't always work, right?

It's normal human nature to be frustrated when there's ambiguity or we don't see clear answers or we don't have clear information.

And I think during the pandemic, while it was a new disease and we were all learning together, it was very normal that the public had fear and a lot of confusion.

And we did actually, I think, an incredible job of getting on top of that science, learning it, understanding it, and keeping people alive as best we could.

And today, more than ever, it's important just as a routine, right?

As a doctor, as a mom, as the commissioner of health, that I'm out there telling families, "Hey, this is how we can empower you with information so that you can take the best care of yourself."

There's a lot of misinformation.

The internet is now the wild west, right?

You can find anything on there.

And so it's really important that we know who to look to.

You know, Mr. Rogers used to say like, "Look to your neighbors, look to your police officers, look to your teachers, look to your public health officials."

- He didn't say "Look on your phone, on the internet."

- (laughing) He did not say, "Look on social media."

Right?

We have to be that.

Government has, historically, attracted the best and the brightest.

Because they're people that really wanna make a difference for our society.

We show up every day as public servants because we care about our neighbors, right?

I went into medicine because growing up in rural Appalachia in southeast Ohio, I saw poverty every day.

And I saw how the opposite of poverty isn't wealth, right?

That it was health.

That it's people having access to food and clothes, and a house.

And people being healthy physically and mentally so that they can provide for their families.

That's the bread and butter of the United States, right?

That's what we need and that's what I strive for every day.

And I want people to know that that's what we're here doing.

- Commissioner, I cannot thank you enough for joining us.

It will not be our last conversation.

- So excited to hear that.

Always wanna get more information out there.

Good information into the hands of people, which is where it's really needed.

So thanks for the opportunity.

- Thank you Commissioner.

See you next time folks.

- [Narrator] State of Affairs with Steve Adubato is a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

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