- [Narrator] Funding for this edition of State of Affairs with Steve Adubato has been provided by The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

TD Bank.

Johnson & Johnson.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

Everyone deserves a healthy smile.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Seton Hall University.

Showing the world what great minds can do since 1856.

The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

The Fidelco Group.

And by St. Joseph's Health.

World-class care, just around the corner.

Promotional support provided by ROI-NJ, informing and connecting businesses in New Jersey.

And by AM970 The Answer.

[INSPRATIONAL MUSIC] - Hi, I'm Steve Adubato.

Welcome to a very important program dealing with a whole range of public policy issues.

We kick off with Dr. Ashish Parikh, who is Chief Quality Officer at Summit Health, one of the many healthcare organizations that underwrite what we do.

Dr. Parikh, let me ask you, first of all, thank you for joining us.

We welcome you.

- Thank you for having me.

- But I wanna get into the whole question of vaccine resistance as we tape this program at the end of June, 2021.

How significant is the resistance that you see, A and B?

What progress are we making in breaking that down?

Because we're clearly not where we need to be.

- Yeah, so I think that the progress has been very good up 'til now, however, there is a significant amount of resistance.

And I think resistance varies depending on who you are.

And we really have to meet people where they wanna be in terms of convincing them to get the vaccine.

There's certain people who are afraid of the vaccine because they think there's still not enough data.

So we need to give them the data they want.

And it has to be what they wanna know.

Is it safe?

Is it safe for my race and ethnicity?

Is it safe for my child?

So that type of data.

There's other folks who need to make it more convenient.

I don't have the time to go out and get the vaccine at a site or at a pharmacy.

So we need to be able to go out to where they can get it without losing time from work or losing time from their families.

And there's other people who wonder about effectiveness.

I'm not worried about it, but if you're, if you'll tell me, it'll prevent me from spreading it to my child, to my grandmother, then maybe I'll take it.

So we have to find out what it is that's making people resistant to it and then help them understand a bit.

- One more thing on this and then we move to a whole range of other questions, including mental health related issues.

But if someone says quote, "It's my right, not to take the vaccine."

Yes it is.

But we had this discussion with State Assemblyman, Herb Conaway, who's a physician and also chairs the Assembly Health Committee.

And he said, "Yes, it's your right.

But there are consequences of that decision to not just yourself and your family, but others."

Correct?

- Absolutely.

I mean, so first thing we have to do is convince people that it's not only good for you, but it's an act of kindness.

By getting the vaccine, you're protecting yourself, your loved ones, and everyone else around you that you may be exposed to.

And while it may be a right not to get the vaccine, it's not right for your community.

It's not right for even people in your family or people at work that you may put at risk if you don't get the vaccine.

As well as, obviously, if you get sick, you're burdening the health care system with something that's potentially preventable.

- Doctor, as we do this program, our daughter is 10.

There are many others who have children not of age to be vaccinated, allowed to be vaccinated, able to be vaccinated.

It's gonna change, obviously.

Well, I don't know obviously.

It appears it's gonna change.

What, if any, concerns you have about children under the age of, what is the age right now, help me on this, doctor.

- 12.

- 12.

What, if any concerns do you have about under the age, children under the age of 12, and the vaccines?

- So right now, my concern is that these kids are not vaccinated.

So the more of us who are eligible get vaccines, the more we're gonna protect them by preventing the spread of the disease.

In terms of concerns of the vaccine for these children, we just have to wait and see what the data shows.

Thus far, all the states that have expanded the eligibility have shown that it's effective and safe, even down to 12.

And then there's large studies going on right now that are looking at ages five to 11 and even down to children as young as age six.

And we can extrapolate from a lot of our other vaccine data from what children get is that it shows that most vaccines are very safe and effective, even at a very, very small age.

But we have to wait for the data to determine if there's gonna be any concerns in the younger.

- COVID and mental health related issues.

A, what from your perspective, doctor, has been the impact, and B, what do we need to do to address these complex important issues?

- So the impact has been huge.

And then you've heard all kinds of words like tsunami and tip of the iceberg and all these things.

I think that over the last 15 months, we've all been traumatized to some extent, and those folks who maybe did not have the coping mechanisms or the support systems to get through it, we're seeing a lot of anxiety.

We're seeing a lot of depression.

And it's related to either your fears of the disease, your experience with the disease, or even your experience with a loved one who either got the disease, or even worse, you lost a loved one through the disease.

On top of that, you add in financial strain, social strain, trouble taking care of children who are at home and missing school.

It's taken a huge amount of, a huge toll on our society.

And then there's folks who've been on the front lines, who've been traumatized by seeing the folks who've been suffering.

- I was just about to ask you that, doctor, go ahead.

About the folks on the front lines, clinicians, professionals, healthcare leaders who are dealing directly with patients.

What has been the impact on them?

- It's been huge.

I can tell you at Summit we quickly set up a provider support line and staff support line because we saw the toll very early on when our critical care physicians were going in there and seeing their patients dying, despite offering them everything possible.

For our folks who had to come in and anxious about bringing the disease back home to themselves.

So we're, we've seen this continue.

And the key is gonna be to identify these folks.

A lot of times folks feel like it's a sign of weakness if they admit the fact that they've been traumatized by this.

So we have to be proactive in identifying them and then giving them the support they need and let them know they're not alone in this.

- Doctor, obviously the world of healthcare would change forever because of COVID, but I wanna ask you more specifically about telehealth.

How significant now, how significant do you believe it will be moving forward?

- I think telehealth is a great technology.

We've had it for close to a decade now, but the adoption rate had very slow.

I think the one positive thing that's come out of COVID is our ability to understand how to offer and how to use it and for the communities to actually reap the benefit of it.

I think what will happen is, we saw a huge uptick early on when people were afraid to come in.

We're now slowing down and I think on average around the country, you're seeing about 10 to 15% of visits that are remotely done.

I think it'll shake out depending on what specialty, what type of visit you have.

Some things like behavioral health may be done almost all remotely, while other things will still need for you to come in.

But it's a nice armamentarium to add to our types of visits and access.

- Before I let you go, Doctor Parikh, you've said, obviously, the vaccine is the smartest thing anyone could do for themselves as well as family members.

And it's an act of kindness, as you said, but moving forward, are there any other quote, unquote, preventive measures that you believe each one of us should be taking, vaccinated or not?

- Yeah, so I think there's things we learned from this.

So anytime you feel like you're sick, whether you're thinking of you might have COVID or a regular cold, I think it's good to make sure you don't expose others.

So wear a mask, right?

Or if you're gonna go visit someone who you think is sick, wear a mask.

Washing our hands before we eat or touch our faces will help prevent, again, not only the spread of COVID, but all sorts of other viruses and bacteria.

So I think we've learned from this to be smart, anytime you're sick, to just prevent the spread of the disease.

- Dr. Ashish Parikh, who is Chief Quality Officer at Summit Health.

I wanna thank you so much for helping us understand.

People may say, "Hey, haven't you done a lot on COVID and COVID awareness?"

Can't do enough.

Just gonna keep doing it with smart people like Dr. Parikh.

Thank you, doctor.

- I thank you.

Thank you for spreading good information.

- You got it.

We'll be right back right after this.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To watch more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We are honored to be joined by Audrey Winkler, Executive Director of JESPY House.

Good to see you, Audrey.

- Thank you for having me, good to see you.

- Tell everyone what JESPY House is.

- So we're a nonprofit organization in South Orange that serves adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities, and we help them advance in dependence so they can lead their best lives.

We have 260 clients ranging from ages to 18 and up.

- Talk to our audience about what kind of challenges the people you serve every day face.

- Well, particularly during COVID, we had a lot of challenges in terms of isolation, depression, anxiety, and fortunately our program is a whole life program.

And we call it a whole life program because we touch so many aspects of our clients' lives.

We have residential facilities here, shared houses and apartments, we help our clients find independent rentals in the community, and we provide clinical and behavioral services, which was really critical during COVID and of course is continuing.

We have a social wellness and expressive arts program, fitness programs, day programs, so we really touch every part of our client's life to help them live independently and advance independence for them.

- But Audrey, I mean, I've often said this on the air, I'm sorry if people are tired of me saying it, we're able to do what we do remotely, but I'm listening to you describe your programming.

How the heck were you able to do so much of that remotely or were you not able to do that?

- Well, I'm glad you asked and fortunately we made the turnaround very quickly.

We closed on-site programs middle of last March, within days- - March, 2020, we're taping at the end of June, 2021.

- Go ahead.

- 2020, right.

And we literally turned our programs into virtual programs within days.

Our staff did an amazing job.

We were able to teach many of our clients how to get onto a variety of different platforms.

They were not techno-savvy originally, but we worked with them by phone, by text, by fax, whatever way we could do it to teach them how to access virtual programs.

And Steve, the best part was that we ended up delivering over a hundred programs a week for our clients.

We did everything from work readiness and employment engagement training, pre-vote training, we did arts, we did, we played Boggle and Scrabble virtually, which actually helped our clients with their vocabulary and spelling in the end, in addition to being fun, of course.

- So, it's, listen, I don't like using the term silver lining when I don't really know what other people are facing, but it sounds to me as if there was some silver lining in all this, by helping the clients you serve gain new skills and tools technologically.

- Yeah, there really were a lot of silver linings.

It was of course very difficult, very challenging, of course for ourselves, our staff, but we really went over and above and helped our clients make it through this COVID year by offering some very interesting, engaging programs.

I mean we also did morning chats and we had a cat cam and we did pet therapy virtually, so we did a lot of different things, you know, for our clients.

- You know Audrey, our friends at the Health Care Foundation, and they're the ones who told us about the work you're doing and they support a whole range of not-for-profits.

but I'm curious about something.

You told our producers that in many ways JESPY House is a community within a community, the community of South Orange.

A, what does that mean?

B, what has JESPY House done for the community of South Orange, particularly from an economic point of view?

- Well, it's very interesting.

So we are a community in ourselves.

We have about a hundred employees, 260 clients.

We've been in South Orange for well over 40 years.

So we are our own community, a dozen of our, a dozen couples have met and married here at JESPY, so we really are within our own community, but more so we believe very strongly in community inclusion and community inclusion is what our daily living skills counselors and case managers do every day.

When we teach money management and banking, we go to the bank and we work with them.

When we teach grocery shopping and how to make the best healthy selections, we go to the supermarket, so community inclusion's important.

Our clients come here often, they don't, they haven't really learned how to cross the street safely by themselves.

A few years later, they're walking all over town, they're in Starbucks, they went to a restaurant, the theaters, all of that.

So it's really been a wonderful collaborative to be in the community.

Our clients also contribute over three and a half million dollars to the economy of the village of South Orange.

Because most of them don't drive, so they do their shopping here, their, you know, restaurants here, they spend their money here and we have wonderful relationships with over 30 landlords because our clients live, many of our clients live independently in South Orange, so there's quite a bit of economic advantage.

- Before I let you go, Audrey help me on this?

Affordable housing, housing is so expensive in New Jersey.

- I'm so glad you asked about this.

So we're about to embark on a partnership with the village for a small amount of- - The village of South Orange.

- The village of South Orange for a small, affordable housing project.

It's not nearly enough and our clients as you know, as they reach retirement age, their income goes down and you're right that in this area, rents are all going up, so there's no longer any fair market value rent in South Orange.

It is a big issue.

We're taking a look at it now, our board is looking strategically at how to resolve this, but it is something that's coming down the road for us and we have to address it.

- Audrey listen, this the first time you've joined us, I'll make sure it is not the last.

Audrey Winkler is the Executive Director of JESPY House.

By the way, the name JESPY House comes from?

- The acronym is Jewish Special Youth, 42 years ago that was the acronym and that's our name.

- JESPY House, Audrey, thank you so much.

- Thank you for having me.

- Wish you all the best to you and your team.

We'll be right back right after this.

(grand music) - [Announcer] To watch more State of Affairs with Steve Adubato, find us online and follow us on social media.

- We are honored to be joined by Fatimah Hayes, who's a history teacher at Pennsauken High School.

Fatimah, you just told me before we get on the air you've been teaching for 20 years.

Is that really right?

- I have been teaching...

In September, I will start my 20th year.

My first year of teaching was 2001.

I'll never forget because like the first week of school was 9/11 attacks.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- Wow.

And we're doing this program at the end of June.

The school year just ended.

You'll be seeing this later.

You start teaching right at the time the country is facing a crisis in 9/11, you come through this pandemic, which is not done, even though people think it's on the backend.

What would you say the biggest lesson you've learned about two things, one, teaching, two, yourself?

- Oh, I guess about teaching is I've learned, and I guess through both of those, like, bookends, I've just seen the resilience of students, families, my colleagues, administrators, union leadership, because this was like year like no other.

And it's so funny of remembering that first year coming in at our country was like, it was devastating, right?

And I'll always remember where I was, what I was doing.

And now as I go through a pandemic, and as you said, we're not nowhere near done, in my opinion.

And to see the resilience of my students is amazing.

The other thing I've learned about myself is primarily flexibility.

I have had to do things on the fly this year and as uncomfortable as it has been, my students have shown me and my families that I serve have shown me so much grace and patience that like I couldn't ask for a better group of students this year, and parents have been supportive of me.

- You know, it's interesting you talk about patience but there's an initiative with the New Jersey Education Association that does not require patience but a sense of urgency, and that is the NJEA Members of Color Initiative.

What is it?

Because clearly we're way behind in a whole range of areas when it comes to race and education.

So what is this Members of Color Initiative and why is it so important in terms of not just race relations but making real progress around racial justice and issues of equality?

- Yeah.

So excuse me, the member of color initiative is pretty much the brainchild and probably a collaborative brain child of Mr. Eric Jones, who was a staff member at NJEA, who decided that we're going to create a platform and bring Members of Color, Black indigenous people of color of our organization and NJEA together to basically create a safe space.

And I believe we're about a year into its inception.

And it came about at a time when our country was in unrest, the social justice, racial justice issues that we were seeing continuously having and played out in the George Floyd murder.

And we needed a space to kind of just talk about it, what's happening, and although there was a sense of urgency, I will say that even in this process, there has to be patience.

- Really?

- Yeah.

Because- - Patience around what?

- Well, because we know that racism, systemic racism in our country was not built in a day, so dismantling it will not occur in a day.

And that in order for us to like, we have to think of a long race, right?

It's a marathon, it's not a sprint.

And so we have to organize in order to dismantle it piece by piece.

If we do it too quickly, we know that oftentimes those...

It can easily just go away.

It could be a fad, you know, but we need patience and loving, a loving patience, and accountability in the work that we do around racial and social justice.

- The other thing we need is candor and honesty.

And I'm gonna ask our team to...

They're always a step ahead of me.

Put up our Confronting Racism, chyron at the bottom of the screen, it's an ongoing series that we started about a little over a year and a half ago.

We need honest conversations about race, confronting racism.

Why is it so hard for so many?

- Well, right now in our country, what we've seen is really...

There was a time when I would say it was ahistorical, and a good sister, friend of mine said, "It has become anti-historical."

What we see and what we do in this country, where we see what happened on January 6th.

And people tell us what we saw with our own eyes and what we heard with our own ears did not happen, right?

And so it's so difficult because it confronts who and what we are.

And that's typically the... Like, it's easy to help someone else like, "Oh, they have the problem."

Right?

But how do we confront it and say and look at ourselves and be reflective in the things and privileges that we all have and how do we fix it, right?

But it has to be a self-reflective process before we can even try to dismantle institutional systems.

- So instead of saying, "You need to do what you should do."

You're saying, "Look in the mirror first."?

- Absolutely.

And that's the most challenging, right?

Even in any relationship, right?

We think about, no one really wants to come to the counselor and say, "You know, I was wrong or I have a problem with, I'm struggling with."

And- - Sorry for interrupting.

Or "I need to understand where you are coming from."

Even if I'm not experienced, there's so many friends I have who have their own perspective on race and we have spirited and thoughtful discussions at times.

And sometimes I just don't wanna talk about it because I'll often say, you know, that some of us will never understand what it's like.

We have 16 and 18-year-old sons.

And I also have a 28-year-old son.

I have not had to worry at night.

I've worried about a lot of things when it comes to those boys, but not about being stopped by a cop.

- Right.

And I have a 26-year-old daughter, and I know she's not a black male, but you know what happens to black women as well.

It's just not as publicized.

So, you know, every time she calls, if I know she's on the road, my heart does a little pitter-patter.

- Still?

- Still.

Every single time.

She went to Ohio State and sometimes she would drive home and it's like an eight-hour drive, and I would be anxious the whole time.

- Let me ask you, it's hard enough having them in society overall, but in a classroom?

Talk about that.

I got about a minute and a half left.

- Okay.

In a classroom, it's so important because our students see it all, right?

The internet has made it, just everything goes viral.

And so how can we just ignore what's happening?

Because it does impact them.

So we have to have truthful conversations.

We just have to tell the truth and really in telling the truth and honoring their lived experiences, that's how we build relationships.

That's when real learning actually occurs.

It helps them to be critical thinkers.

And also like James Baldwin tells us to be critical lovers.

In order for me to be a critical lover of this country, of the NJEA, of the educational system in which I work, I have to think critically about the things, the processes and procedures and rules and regulations that go into that institution that sometimes, many times are oppressive to our students.

So I have to tell the truth about that and have them like find solutions and remedies.

Our students have the answers.

Our young people have the answers.

- Fatimah Hayes, celebrating her 20th year in the fall of 2021, teaching.

Thank you for your service.

Thank you for teaching our children in our public schools.

And we were shooting you and your family and your colleagues, public school educators, nothing but the best.

Thank you so much.

- Thank you.

- Thank you so much for watching and we'll see you next time.

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

Funding has been provided by The Healthcare Foundation of New Jersey.

TD Bank.

Johnson & Johnson.

Delta Dental of New Jersey.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Seton Hall University.

The Turrell Fund, supporting Reimagine Childcare.

The Fidelco Group.

And by St. Joseph's Health.

Promotional support provided by ROI-NJ, And by AM970 The Answer.

- New Jersey's early educators and childcare providers are more than twice as likely to live below the poverty line versus the general workforce.

Reimagine Childcare formed by a coalition in New Jersey is dedicated to improving accessibility, affordability and quality of childcare and re-imagining the way we support these essential providers.