- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of Think Tank with Steve Adubato has been provided by New Jersey Sharing Network.

Johnson & Johnson.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Working for a more a healthier, more equitable New Jersey.

Holy Name.

PNC Foundation.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

Everyone deserves a healthy smile.

The Fidelco Group.

And by The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

Keeping communities informed and connected.

And by ROI-NJ.

Informing and connecting businesses in New Jersey.

[MOTIVATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, everyone.

Steve Adubato.

More importantly, to talk about a whole range of critical issues is Chris Daggett, board chair and interim Executive Director of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.

Chris, good to see you again.

- Good to see you too, Steve.

Thanks.

- You got it.

We're gonna put up the website of the consortium.

Tell everyone what it is, because it's critically important, now more than ever.

- Indeed it is.

The New Jersey Civic Information Consortium is an entity, a nonprofit entity created by the state of New Jersey to support local news outlets across the state with a focus on marginalized communities and news deserts.

- Along those lines, there are six higher ed institutions you're affiliated with, correct?

- We are.

- And three of them.

Kean University, NJIT, and Rowan University are higher ed partners of ours.

First of all, what's the role of the higher ed community in the consortium?

A, and B, why are they critically important to the success of this work?

- They were part of the original legislation to include universities because they're training grounds for aspiring journalists, and they also are engaged in research that may be helpful.

And in the case of Rutgers, we've worked closely with the Eagleton Institute to conduct a statewide poll, which is about to be released.

- And so Montclair State University is a critically important part of this as well, right?

- Yes, Montclair State is important when, a number of years ago, from 2010 to 2018, I was the head of the Geraldine R. Dodge Foundation, and one of our first grants in local news was to create the Center for Cooperative Media at Montclair State, and that has become the focal point over the last number of years for local news in New Jersey with some 250 to 300 members, which are effectively every news organization in the state.

What is the connection in your view, and to be clear, Chris Daggett has a background in government, ran for elective office, served in the cabinet of governors in the past, understands public policy better than most.

What is the connection between a healthy, economically strong local media and the health of our representative democracy, Chris?

- It's a very simple equation in my mind, Steve, and a very good question.

If people aren't informed, they're not engaged usually, or their engagement is limited and then democracy suffers.

Local news is sort of the beginning of civic and community dialogue about issues of the day as well as what's going on in communities.

And without that information or very limited information, people just aren't as active and democracy suffers.

- So devil's advocate.

People say, "Well, I get my information "from a whole range of sources.

"Media organizations on the broadcast side often "who say things and report on things that make me know "that I'm right about what I think and I lean toward those."

Not I, I'm saying "devil's advocate" do that.

Or, "I go to a whole bunch of internet sites.

"I don't know who they are, but I picked it up in the news."

Not being critical of any of those information platforms, but what is the problem there if that's where folks are getting virtually all of their information pretty much telling them they're right about how they see the world?

- My guess is they're looking at the world and not the local community.

And that news that they pick up is usually oriented to state and national and international efforts and information as opposed to what's going on in the community and the cultural and recreational and educational richness of those communities.

- You've said in the past that this is potentially a losing battle.

The question is, will local news, and we are, in fact, when you say local, there's state, there's regional, there's local, and we see ourselves as partners with public broadcasting, but we focus on New Jersey.

Do you mean, by local news, my hometown of Montclair?

Is it that what you mean or how are you defining local news?

- Yes, your local news.

Hometown, Montclair, Linwood, Bridgeton, Trenton, Jersey City.

- But here's the question.

You've said that it's potentially a losing battle.

Why did you say that and what does it mean?

- So the losing battle only is we need to develop a financial model that supports local news, and it's been a challenge for people all over the country in this regard.

And we need to somehow develop a financial model to replace the advertising model that, for decades, supported news.

People bought ads, and those ads were really the driving force.

It wasn't subscriptions and sales of daily newspapers or weekly newspapers.

It was advertising that supported news and underpinned the financial strength of the news.

So without that financial model, we're trying new ideas.

And at the moment, I think, unfortunately or fortunately depending on your view, I think without public support of local news in this country, we're gonna find that these newspapers continue to decline and, in many cases, close.

We have some 200 counties in the United States with no or only one local news source.

- So Chris, I wanna be clear, are you advocating for more public dollars, taxpayer dollars, to support local news?

- Yes, absolutely.

And that's what's happened in New Jersey.

We're the only state in the nation that has created a nonprofit entity, wholly independent of government, to provide grants to online, local news organizations to try to replace or build on what's left of the local news organizations around the state.

- Chris, what is the Press Forward Initiative, which has raised a lot of money, and how is that connected to the consortium?

- So Press Forward is a national effort led by the MacArthur and Knight Foundations and a number of other foundations that have pledged $500 million over the next five years in support of local news.

There are two funds associated with it.

One's called a pooled fund, where they, at the Miami Foundation, they have about 10 to 15% of it, or 50 to 75 million, in a pool that will then give grants to news organizations around the country, and the rest of the money is what they call an aligned fund, where foundations across the country have pledged to either start or give more to local news, but they're gonna stay in their own community.

So if I have a Wichita Foundation, I'm staying in Wichita.

I'm not gonna give money to New Jersey or California.

And the Press Forward Initiative has a number of local chapters, and in February, Pacific Information Consortium in collaboration with the Community Foundation of New Jersey was named Press Forward New Jersey.

So that makes us eligible for some grants nationally, but also, it'll enable us to leverage that money in working with foundations in New Jersey to try to help or get them to support us as well.

- And some of the Press Forward initiatives is not only a national effort for foundations to raise money across the country.

The goal is to raise a billion dollars to support local journalism.

They have raised $500 million to date.

20% of that money is, and as Chris said, a pooled fund that will be decided on how to allocate to local newsrooms across the country, et cetera.

And also, team, let's put up the Press Forward website so people can find that as well.

Chris, where do you put public media in this local news equation?

Those of us either in public broadcasting or connected to public broadcasting, and not just public broadcasting, public media.

- Our work so far has been pretty much limited to online local news sites, but nothing precludes us from giving money to broadcast or other outlets that are trying to reach local news or to try to enhance their local news activities.

We haven't had applications from them.

We have a set of guidelines that we put out each year as to what we're looking for to support, and in some ways, we're indirectly supporting it in that NJ Spotlight, as you know, is part of WNET, and NJ Spotlight, we've given two key grants to.

One to provide a mental health reporter for the state of New Jersey to respond to the mental health crisis, particularly among youth, and then secondly, with the Star-Ledger's release of the last Washington DC based correspondent covering New Jersey, we gave money to NJ Spotlight to hire a new Washington DC based correspondent.

- Yeah, and also check out our colleagues every night at NJ Spotlight News.

Important programming that you will not find in a lot of other places, particularly in New York, Philadelphia.

Before I let you go, Chris, lemme ask you this.

To what degree do you believe that the average person, with all kinds of challenges in their lives, you know, family issues, economic issues, health issues, to what degree do you think they, A, are thinking about how the strength of our representative democracy and the connection between local media and that, and B, "Hey, listen, that's just not really "for me to be thinking about "'cause I have these other day-to-day issues."

And what would you say to those folks, not to scare them, but to give them a reason to understand that they're a part of this because it affects every one of us.

- So the first part of your question is I don't think many people are thinking of it in that way, but what we found is, and one of the sites we're working on is in Salem County.

They have, other than one tiny local news site, Salem County has no local news, and we've been working for the past year- - No local news?

- To identify and then develop a local news site.

- They have no local news?

- They have no local news other than one tiny newspaper covering three small communities, and it has no website.

I mean, it's a throwback to a local news newspaper.

But interestingly, as we've gone down there and met and worked with religious leaders and nonprofit leaders and government officials, they are hungry for local news.

They want it really badly because, as it turns out, a lot of them just wanna know what's going on in the community, and they don't have an easy way to do that.

So that's where people miss.

They wonder what's going on in the community this weekend or what's happening at the local zoning board or planning board meeting without having to go and attend the meeting.

And if nobody's reporting on that, a lot of things can happen, not just the loss of information, but bad decision-making may occur by local officials, not because there's any corruption, but because they're not being pressed as hard as they might be to make the right decisions on all the issues that face them on a weekly or monthly basis.

- Critically important issues, whether we realize it or not.

Local news, the importance of local information.

Chris Daggett is board chair and interim Executive Director of the New Jersey Civic Information Consortium.

Chris, thank you so much.

We appreciate the work you and your colleagues are doing.

- Thanks, Steve.

Good to see you again.

- Same here.

Stay with us.

We'll be right back.

To see more Think Tank with Steve Adubato programs and to listen to Think Tank with Steve Adubato the Podcast, visit us online at steveadubato.org.

If you would like to express an opinion, email us at info@caucusnj.org.

Find us on Facebook at Facebook.com/steveadubatophd and follow us on Twitter @steveadubato.

- We're now joined by our longtime friend, Michellene Davis, who's President and CEO of National Medical Fellowships.

And also Ms. Davis is a trustee of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

I'll get that out.

Michellene, good to see you.

- Great to see you, my friend.

- We're gonna put up the website for National Medical Fellowships, what is it and why is it so significant and related to the discussion we're about to have?

- Oh my goodness, National Medical Fellowships has been around since 1946, so for nearly 80 years it has been advancing health equity at the intersection of the health wealth gap.

We have been providing scholarships, and support, and community and service learning training to Black and Brown students who have been interested in medicine in order to ensure that we are diversifying the clinical space.

- Well said.

We're also gonna put up the website for our friends over at the New Jersey Sharing Network, the organization committed to organ and tissue donation in the state of New Jersey.

Michellene, we'll talk about a variety of health related issues, but as it relates to organ donation, there's a disproportionate, very serious problem in the African-American community.

The need is what it is, you'll describe it, and the availability of organs to those who are waiting and need them is a real problem.

Talk about it?

- Yeah.

So first of all, thank you so much for paying attention to this incredibly important topic.

You know, despite record numbers of transplants in recent years, Steve, thousands still die waiting, because there just aren't enough donated organs.

And then some don't even get a fair chance, right?

So what am I saying when I say that?

Well, you know, Black Americans are over three times more likely than our white counterparts to experience kidney failure.

But oftentimes they face delays in even being put on the transplant list, and are far less likely than their white counterparts to get an organ from a living donor as well, which as you know, is the best kind of donation, right?

The ABC news recently reported this out that over 14,000 Black kidney transplant candidates were recently moved up the waiting list.

Why?

Because race was eliminated from the candidate criteria.

Why is that important, my friend?

Well, it's important because of the fact that there was an algorithm that has been utilized, which includes a variety of things, right?

Everything from gender, weight, etcetera, age, but also the qualification of including race in that was really based on old assumptions, which were quite frankly, completely incorrect, that literally indicated that kidney function was different in African diasporan people, right?

And so eliminating that segment, they were literally able to ensure that nearly 15,000 people were ushered upwards on the wait list.

Incredibly important.

- Folks, to understand the complexity of this and how significant it is, I'm gonna go a little further into this.

The issue of donor diversity, that there's a tremendous need, Michellene, for more diversity in the donor pool.

But there's also some degree of reluctance and mistrust of the medical/healthcare system in the African-American community for a whole range of reasons.

Could you do this for us, I was going back and reading a little bit about the Tuskegee syphilis experiment back in Alabama back in the day.

That is one example of a significant reason why there's mistrust in the African-American community of the medical community, healthcare community.

The Tuskegee experiment, briefly, what is it and why does this matter so much?

- So my friend, it is only one of the many, 'cause trust me, I could give you a bunch.

So I traditionally do not refer to it as the Tuskegee experiment, I refer to it as a government experiment in Tuskegee.

And I say that because I want.

- African-American men who had syphilis in Alabama.

Please go ahead, I'm sorry.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So two things.

One, the experiment was one where they pretended to treat syphilis when actually they were just providing them placebos.

Because they wanted to see how syphilis would, literally, completely decimate the human body, and literally had individuals believing that they were receiving care just simply go through that so that they could track and monitor it, right?

So that is just one episode, Steve, to be completely candid.

But it's so important, because it's really fundamental to understand that it was a US government sanctioned experiment on individuals who literally had no ability to consent, were never informed, right?

And were literally utilized as guinea pigs involuntarily.

- All Black men.

- All Black males.

And you know, I say that in particular, because we could talk about J. Marion Sims, who, right, the "godfather of gynecological science", but really, he literally practiced it on the literal backs of African women who were enslaved in America, who received horrible experimentation and forced surgical procedures without anesthesia.

We could talk about Vertus Hardiman, which radiation treatment.

So we could go on and on.

And that, my friend, is the reason why there is so much mistrust.

Not just because these things happen, but because these things, so many of them were government sanctioned.

- So what message do you have for your brothers and sisters, your colleagues in the African-American community as it relates to the need for donor diversity?

Because the need in the African-American community is as great as it is when it comes to so many people waiting for an organ.

- Yeah, so two things.

- Even with all that mistrust legitimately in place.

- Yeah, absolutely.

So two things.

One, Steve, and you know me, we are all my brothers and sisters.

And two, it would be literally the fact that, listen, I would say to our African-American community, the truth is that all of this is true.

That literally up until the 1970s, we saw forced sterilization of indigenous women and African-American women, all government sanctioned, right?

I wanna make certain that we say that, and it's because it's important to acknowledge it.

And then to understand that this is about saving ourselves.

This is about saving one another.

This is about coming into community to understand that the need is dire, and that when we decide not to participate, not to be a part of this, then unfortunately we are exacerbating a need that we did not create, right?

But that we have the power to impact now and today.

So that is what I would say to them.

The fact that your community needs you, that we are still a family, despite whatever attempts to divide us have accomplished.

And the fact that overall, Black patients still make up 28% of the waiting list of all organs, but account for just about 16% of deceased donors, right?

So guys, we gotta do something, right?

There's a saying in the African-American community, for us, by us.

We need to do this for us, by us too.

You were the first person to introduce me to the concept of social determinants of health, okay?

Briefly, what are they and why do they still matter in 2024, now more than ever?

- Oh, my friend, you have such good questions.

The social determinants of health are literally all of those factors that impact and affect your daily existence outside of a clinical setting.

So they are literally, where you live, how you work, right?

Are you in a safe neighborhood?

Do you have access to clean, affordable, organic food, right?

So it is everything that makes up where you work, live, play, and worship.

It is literally how you exist in society.

Why are they important?

They are important, my friend, because they have a greater impact and effect on your healthcare outcomes then just the 15 minutes that you sit on your physician's table and have an examination.

Literally, the social determinants, and the only reason why I still even use that term is because anything that's been socially created can be socially deconstructed.

Traditionally, I call them the political determinants of health, because there have been.

- Political determinants of health, go ahead.

- And long before my dear friend, Daniel Dawes, wrote his book by that name, but go get it.

Rush out to go get it.

But what I will tell you is the fact that so many of these things have been literally constructed as a result of systems and laws, everything from zoning laws, right?

As in the creation of Levittown in Pennsylvania, which you can read all about in "Color of Law".

- We're talking about redlining.

- We're talking about redlining.

- where banks and/or the government engaged in the practice of making sure that only certain folks would live or could live in certain communities and other folks could and would not.

Go ahead.

- That is exactly right.

And then more, that the communities that the other folks had to live in who could not live in those areas that you're talking about, that those communities were literally built on land that was deemed inhabitable for white Americans, right?

And so as a result of that, that's why you see things like cancer clusters and higher rates of asthma in certain environments.

Why?

The environmental pollutants that were either already in the ground and/or that we're zoned to be around that particular community permitted these things to then have a horrible effect on the healthcare outcomes of those community members.

- We're talking about environmental justice here and a whole range of issues connected to it.

Please check out our website, SteveAdubato.org, come up for an interview we did with Dr. Nicky Sheats down at Kean University, we just actually taped that today, talking about environmental justice issues.

Michellene, before I let you go, lemme try this.

You and I have had countless offline conversations about a lot of things, but one of them is about race relations.

It's unfair to bring this up toward the end of the interview, but I'm gonna ask you this, as we are into 2024, important election coming up, every election is important, why, and are you, still optimistic and hopeful that we will improve upon our race relations and our ability to talk candidly, honestly, and listen to each other when it comes to race?

Loaded question, I know.

- Good question, my friend.

And my answer to you is unequivocally, unwaveringly, absolutely positively, I remain hopeful.

And I say that because I will not let this world steal my hope.

Listen, Steve, we have been taught not to speak about religion, politics, and race.

And so what we have learned as a society is how not to talk about these things in a manner with individuals who are different from us or have divergent views.

As a result, we find ourselves in a environment that is hotly tension filled right now.

However, if we begin to alter that thought, that methodology, and we begin to understand that you do not have to look like me or come from where I come from in order for me to respect you and understand that your lived experience is important too, then we can agree to disagree and still like one another.

Then we can agree that there's something to be learned from each and every individual with whom we encounter, whether we believe it or not, in our first encounter.

And so the truth of the matter is that there is always hope around how we can grow and continue to evolve together.

And I will say this, that what I am seeing right now, if we do not get it right, the young people sure are going to try.

So I remain hopeful.

- Well said.

And also check out the interview we did with Dr. Cornel West, we just taped it a couple weeks ago.

He talked about being a "prisoner of hope".

He's a prisoner of hope.

I see another prisoner of hope and I've known another prisoner of hope for a long time.

Michellene Davis is President, CEO of National Medical Fellowships.

Thank you, my friend, as always.

- Thank you.

- You got it.

I'm Steve Adubato, that's Michellene Davis.

We will see you next time.

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

Celebrating 30 years in public broadcasting.

Funding has been provided by New Jersey Sharing Network.

Johnson & Johnson.

Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Holy Name.

PNC Foundation.

The New Jersey Education Association.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

The Fidelco Group.

And by The Turrell Fund, a foundation serving children.

Promotional support provided by NJ.Com.

And by ROI-NJ.

- I am alive today thanks to my kidney donor.

I am traveling and more active than ever before.

- I'm alive today thanks to my heart donor.

I'm full of energy and back singing in my church choir.

- I'm alive today thanks to my lung donor.

I'm breathing easy and I'm enjoying life’s precious moments.

- They are about 4,000 people in New Jersey waiting for a life-saving transplant.

- Donation needs diversity!

- For more information or to become an organ and tissue donor, visit NJSharingNetwork.org.