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

Holy Name Medical Center.

This place is different.

Caldwell University.

PNC, Grow Up Great.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Summit Health a provider of primary, specialty, and urgent care.

PSE&G, committed to providing safe, reliable energy now and in the future.

And by Newark Board of Education.

Promotional support provided by The New Jersey Business & Industry Association.

And by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

Part of the USA Today Network.

- This is One-On-One.

- I'm an equal American just like you are.

- The jobs of tomorrow are not the jobs of yesterday.

- Look at this.

You get this?

- Life without dance is boring.

- I don't care how good you are or how good you think you are, there is always something to learn.

- Do you enjoy talking politics?

- No.

- People call me 'cause they feel nobody's paying attention.

- Our culture, I don't think has ever been tested in the way it's being tested right now.

- That's a good question, high five.

(upbeat music) - Hi.

I'm Steve Adubato and welcome to another compelling important program about the issues of our time.

We kick off the program with Christine Ferro-Saxon, Executive Director of Family Service League and also of SAVE of Essex County.

Good to see you, Christine.

- Great, good to see you.

Thanks for having me.

- Our pleasure.

SAVE stands for?

- Sexual Assault and Violence Education program.

- Let's talk about it directly.

What is it?

And why does it matter as we move into the spring season of 2021 post-COVID, a year plus in?

- So we are the designated sexual violence program for Essex County.

Every county in New Jersey has a sexual violence program.

So there's 21 and Rutgers University.

So we provide an emergency hotline that is 24/7, we provide- - Hold on one second.

Can we bring up the hotline as you speak.

Could you say what it is?

- It's 1-877-733-2273.

- What happens when people call that hotline?

- So, we actually have the hotline in both Spanish and English.

So someone who is looking for information about sexual assault services in our county, is looking to get some emotional support from somebody right in the moment.

So they are available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Our advocates via these hotlines.

With that also, we also go to the hospital's emergency departments.

As well as to the police departments to help through the evidence collection process and all of the reporting, when somebody is sexually assaulted.

- You know, (sighing) COVID has impacted every aspect of our life.

As we're doing this program at the end of March, again, be seen later.

What would you say the greatest impact of COVID has been on those who are victims of violence and sexual assault?

- So one of the greatest impact has been that people are afraid to get help.

They don't want to go to the hospitals.

They don't want to go to the police departments out of fear of contracting COVID.

Also people are quarantined at home with their abusers.

There's been high levels of domestic violence occurring and the sexual assaults that occur within the context of the domestic violence relationship.

So people are at home with their abusers and they cannot really access the help they need.

So that's been a challenge, to provide these services during the pandemic, to convince people that these services are available.

- You know, when we talk about counseling and your organization provides counseling, right?

- Yes.

- What would you say, particularly with victims of violence, sexual assault, people dealing with real serious mental health issues, from your perspective, the difference between virtual counseling and in-person counseling?

- So, there is a big difference.

So, since June we've been providing in-person counseling services.

We felt- - June of 2020.

- June of 2020.

We felt very, very strongly about allowing people to come back to the office to be able to meet directly with a counselor in a private confidential space, because a lot of our clients also don't have access to reliable internet.

They don't have privacy and people just don't prioritize their mental health.

Especially now during the pandemic.

They're worrying about childcare issues.

They're worrying about financial stressors.

So clients that come to our organization if they've been sexually assaulted.

They do not pay for services.

Our counseling services which we provide that is, not just for sexual violence.

We see all types of people presenting with various issues.

We don't turn anyone away because they can't pay for treatment.

So we really, really wanted to make sure that people could get to us and have access to a counselor in a private confidential space.

- You know, interesting question about mental health, COVID and mental health, and there was some coverage around this and we need to do more and to understand it more because the health, the clinical the medical problems are so severe, particularly for those so so-called long haulers.

What would be the message you want to send right now, Christine, to those watching, who are either struggling themselves, disproportionately struggling with depression, anxiety, whatever it is they're dealing with themselves or a family member or a friend who cares deeply about someone who is struggling.

More than they would normally struggle because of COVID this far in a year plus.

What would be your message directly?

- I think my message would be that you're not alone.

I think people often feel as if it's just them having these experiences or that they could tough it out themselves or that they should just have to hold onto this pain alone.

But that is not the case.

We are here to help.

We are here.

Our counselors are trained.

We provide counseling in 12 different languages.

So we are able to provide counseling services to people who need it.

We also emphasize the importance of including family members in treatment.

So it's important that you could bring your husband.

You could bring your children.

You could bring your grandmother.

Whoever is struggling with this, into our counseling rooms and really work on how the COVID pandemic has impacted the family.

- It's important that people follow up.

You saw the hotline.

This will be one of many organizations that we profile who are making a difference in the community.

Reach out.

The hotline, we'll put it up one more time as we speak right now.

And Christine Ferro-Saxon, who is Executive Director of Family Service League and also SAVE of Essex County.

I want to thank you so much for joining us.

- Great.

Thank you so much for having me.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

We'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're pleased to be joined by Allen Karp, Executive Vice President of Healthcare, Management and Transformation at Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey.

Allen, good to see you.

- Good to see you, Steve.

- And I want to make sure that everyone knows that Horizon Blue Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey is an underwriter of ours and NJ Spotlight News, big supporter of public broadcasting.

Allen, real quick.

Talk to us about COVID and mental health.

What is the message we need to get out to people?

- Yeah, Steve, that's a, that's a great question.

So, COVID has had a significant impact on, on mental health and in a number of ways, isolation, the lack of social interaction with, with people has led to depression, anxiety, and other mental health conditions.

And we, we have a program where we reach out to members, we try to get them into counseling.

We try to get them to talk to someone about what they're going through, because I think it's a critical part of dealing with this issue.

Just to give you a sense, Steve, the typically the, in the, in the United States, about 20% to 25% of citizens of the United States typically have some mental health condition at some point in their life.

During this period of COVID, that has doubled.

And again, a lot of it has to do with the, the things I mentioned earlier, if you think about the senior population and especially those who are in residential centers, either assisted living or even independent living, and they've been isolated from their families for, for a while, and that's been an issue.

So, big issue, my message would be that there is plenty of ways to get help out out there.

And, you know, I think we're hopefully seeing some light at the end of the tunnel.

So some of that might change, but please don't take that for granted and, and get the help you need.

- Lots of programming we've been doing, Allen, around vaccine awareness and the longer-term implications, excuse me, of the impact of COVID.

What's the message you want to deliver to folks about vaccine distribution but more importantly, acceptance/resistance?

- Yes, again, a very important topic.

My message would be please get the vaccine.

It is safe.

There has been a tremendous amount of work to get these vaccines to folks to help fight this terrible disease of COVID-19.

The distribution of the vaccines has gotten better as the vaccine pipeline fills up.

It, we'll be able to get those vaccines out to more people.

However, one of the things that we have been doing working with the Department of Health and working with our members is trying to get the message out through various mediums, including videos, including working with groups in the cities in particular where there's been some issues with with concern about the vaccine.

- Absolutely.

- You know, in some of the groups, the, the African-American Chamber of Commerce, faith-based, faith-based organizations, that makes a big difference in, in terms of getting people comfortable with the vaccine.

But my message, Steve, is you have the vaccine.

It doesn't matter which vaccine it is.

They're all safe.

They're, they're all efficacious and, and, and extremely effective.

You are the newly named co-chair of the board of the Newark Museum, an organization that is greatly respected not just across the state, but across the nation.

Why is the Newark Museum more important than ever?

- The Newark Museum is, is a tremendous institution, it's been around since 1909.

It is, it is part of the fabric of the cultural community in Newark.

It has tremendous leadership.

I am just really excited to be part of that.

A lot of people may not know this, but the Newark Museum is the 12th largest museum in the United States and very well-respected.

And I, I look forward to working with my co-chair, Eric Reed, and Linda Harrison, who, who is the CEO and has a tremendous team and the board to continue to help the Newark Museum steer, steer this institution into the future.

But it is, I would, I would recommend to anyone, we are currently virtual now, but even our virtual programs have been very successful.

Hopefully the Museum will open in the June timeframe and anyone who hasn't been there should visit.

It's a, it's a great place with a lot of great programs and tremendous art.

So I highly recommend it.

- And by the way, we'll be interviewing the CEO in the next couple of months.

- Yeah, she is, Steve, she's tremendous.

And, and we were, we were lucky to get her and she has great ideas.

- Allen Karp, I want to thank you very much for joining us, important information, all the best.

- Thank you very much.

Take care.

- You got it, stay with us.

We'll be right back right after this.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We are pleased to be joined by Vivian Cox Fraser, who is President and CEO of the Urban League of Essex County.

Vivian.

Good to see you.

- Great to see you too, Steve.

- Tell everyone what the Urban League is all about and why it's so important now more than ever.

- Yeah, the Urban League is a social services community development organization.

We provide services for families from infants all the way to seniors.

We have a comprehensive approach to serving families and we look at ourselves as the safety net and the springboard as well.

So, in the time of COVID it's really vital.

The services that we provide, particularly around our housing and employment services, many of the families that, you know, we help get employed are now unemployed and are housing insecure just because of the economic circumstances in which they live.

But you know it's so interesting, I have so many people coming on talking about the economy is getting stronger, and we are rooting for the economy and we're hoping things get back to whatever normal means.

However, the disproportionate impact on people of color of COVID and particularly in certain communities is something that doesn't get a lot of discussion, not even close.

Help people understand what a high percentage of those who have been dealing with the racial gap, the gap of inequity, structural racism for so many years, why it is so much worse now, Vivian.

- Yeah, I would say COVID just really revealed what was already there.

So many families, if you can imagine if you're working on minimum wage, like $12 an hour, you don't make enough to pay your rent, right?

So they live in close quarters with other members of their family, right?

So multiple generations, multiple working families together so they can afford the cost of living.

And then they are the essential workforce.

So they're the bus drivers, or they may be working in the warehouse, in the grocery store, at all of these wage jobs.

They weren't able to work from home during the pandemic.

They were out working.

And when you go out to work you bring that exposure back into your household.

And so our communities and families have really been hard hit by COVID.

And we found out very early on we had to shift the services that the League was providing to really focus on emergency relief services because our work really was about building family wealth.

And a lot of our work was built on financial capability and financial counseling for families and home ownership training, and building affordable houses for family.

But when you don't have a job and you don't have income, as many people lost their jobs if you were in the service industry, for example, maybe you worked at a restaurant, those restaurants are closed down.

Suddenly we had a lot of people who needed food.

So we started shifting our services to providing, you know, food delivery and food relief services as well as emergency financial assistance for families around evictions.

So even though there's an eviction moratorium, that doesn't stop a landlord from threatening you and trying to force you out of your apartment, and then the fear that people have.

So you're going to put your arrears just at the end, right?

So you can make an arrangement with the landlord.

I'm not going to pay you now, but that landlord is still expecting to be paid at some point.

So families have a lot of stress and financial stress around how are they going to get back on track when they were barely on track before - Vivian, let me ask you this.

One of the things we're trying to do is be engaged in vaccine awareness, public awareness, around vaccines.

Clearly there's resistance in different pockets of our state and nation.

Some of those pockets involve a high percentage of quote unquote "Republican Trump voters."

We'll deal with that as best we can and try to get information out there from healthcare professionals.

But at the same time in the African-American community, the Latino community, there is resistance as well.

Not as great as the other group that I just talked about, but what needs to be said and done to deal directly with some of that vaccine resistance?

- Yeah, well, we certainly feel like education is important, so that people have, you know, the correct information about the vaccine and the risks.

I have a preschool program and I found that my preschool teachers, they had a lot of hesitancy about getting the vaccine, even my own staff.

And when I inquired as to why, why won't you get the vaccine, they said, well, you know, they have underlying health conditions, they're not sure how the vaccine impacts them.

And they had a lot of a really logical reasons.

One of my male staff members said, well, I'm worried about my, I'm getting married.

I'm worried about how's it gonna affect my ability to have children, right?

So a lot of questions that couldn't be answered with education.

And I'd like to say, I just want to recognize my preschool staff because they did go get the vaccine, right.

So, but it's not necessarily easy to get the vaccine.

So I think there's a lot of, even though I would say Essex County and Newark, you know, they're doing a great job in getting information out but people need to have computer access to register, even navigating the county system is not easy if you don't get in the right time, right?

So if you're in there, you don't get there.

So I think people don't really realize that if you have high speed internet at home, you feel like, Hey, just get on the internet and you can get there.

But if you have, you don't have the most reliable internet and you're trying to get on, maybe on your phone, trying to access the vaccine.

I think there's also some technology barriers in there as well.

- Yeah, the digital divide.

Give me 30 seconds on this, if you could.

The Red Gala, it's a virtual fundraising event.

Racial equity and diversity.

Right?

Real quick.

What is that?

And why is it so important?

- Well, that's the Urban League's annual fundraiser and we're hosting it virtually this year.

As a human service organization, we, a lot, we rely a lot on donations from the community, as well as, this fundraiser is one way to raise unrestricted funds for the organization.

And we have great honorees that we're recognizing, and we really would love to have the community participate and support our event and they can do that.

- Vivian, we'll make sure your website is up while you're talking about it as well in post-production.

And final thing you wanted to say, go ahead?

- Oh no.

They can come to the website and donate.

- You can do that.

Hey, Vivian Cox Fraser, President and CEO of Urban League of Essex County.

Thank you so much, Vivian, for joining us.

We appreciate it.

- Okay.

Thank you, Steve.

- You got it.

We'll be right back.

- [Narrator] To watch more One on One with Steve Adubato find us online and follow us on Social media.

- We're now joined by Jill Ryan, who is one of the four leadership committee members of the South Orange Maplewood Safe Return to School organization.

Jill, did I get that right?

- That's right.

SOMA for the Safe Return to School.

- Well, South Orange Maplewood, one school district, one of many, I happen to be in Montclair, our daughter and we have a son and daughter in the public schools.

Again, as we speak, 23rd of March, things changing all the time.

We have a date when there's supposed to be a new plan next month; do you?

- Our district is still following the phased plan that they created in August and Phase Four is due to start on April 19th.

We have a very small number of of students in school right now.

And that's K through 2.

They came back last week after a two week stint in January.

And they were joined on Monday by sixth graders and ninth graders who also started for two weeks in January.

And then the union pulled out, refused to teach and everyone went virtual and then they decided to come back, and - But Jill, hold on one second.

In the interest of time, there's a lot of details, I know.

But, but the governor has said, Governor Murphy has said he wants schools to reopen.

The CDC has come out with guidelines as we speak right now, six feet to three feet, depending upon a whole variety of other protective measures.

What is stopping the schools from opening in South Orange and Maplewood?

- I think they're really looking to the state to change the "road back" document.

They see the CDC, they're sort of following the letter of the law from the CDC.

And we keep saying they're guidelines.

They're not rules, but New Jersey districts do have to follow state guidance from the NJ DoE.

- The Department of Education, what are they saying right now?

- They still say six feet.

They're they're still using six feet language.

Yeah, so.

- And this may be dated, I'’m sorry for Interupting.

This may be dated a month from now, three weeks from now when this is seen.

But right now it's six feet on the state level, even though the guidelines for the CDC say three, three feet.

What do you believe by the way?

The biggest difference?

Because again, when I watch our daughter and son, son's school, I, I wonder what's going on.

And I know it's very difficult for teachers as well.

And to disclose, the New Jersey Education Association is in fact an underwriter of what we do.

But, and every union, every community has its own union.

That being said, while it's tough for teachers, it's really tough for students.

What do you believe the impact has been for students for being in remote learning this long?

Even if you have a great teacher.

- Right.

Right.

No.

I think absolutely teachers are doing the best they can.

And our issue is with the platform.

Some learners just can't take information this way.

It's not, it's not normal.

I think every student is struggling in some way, whether it's academically, socially, emotionally, I have two kids in special education, two kids that are not neuro-typical, and they absolutely cannot relate to the screen and cannot learn.

Most students with IEPs in Maplewood and South Orange have not stepped foot in a classroom in a year.

And they were.

We're seeing the consequences of that.

Their wait times at the ER of three plus days for the psych ER.

Kids are really struggling.

They've, they've, they have no community, their community is school and we've taken that away.

So while, while everyone is struggling during this time, I think kids are the most, and they don't have a voice.

So that's, we aim to give them a voice and to help protect their rights.

- So, do you believe the courts will ultimately decide this community by community?

- I think ultimately the governor can, can make a change that would, that would sort of end this and bring some normalcy back.

- With respect, he's the governor, he's not the emperor.

So how could he do that alone?

- He can lift the executive order that he put in place in August.

Right, you know, he, he left this in the hands of superintendents.

- Yes he did.

- Our superintendent wasn't prepared to bring every student back in at least in even hybrid model in September, and different districts have different kinds of struggles but I'm, I'm concerned by the level of, I just, I think it's indefensible to be honest with with regard to the governor not taking a greater position with regard to this, you know he says in the fall, his hope is that his expectation is that that students are back but that's all, that's all we're hearing.

We're not, we're not seeing how to do that.

You know, the "road back" document has not been revised.

- So I want to be clear.

And by the way, we'll have leaders from the teachers' union.

They can speak for themselves, the superintendents, principals, etc.

But it's interesting because some people argue that there should be local control over these decisions.

You were saying, you want the governor to just say, forget about the executive order, decide for yourself.

The CDC plays a role in this.

I am not, it's not my job to take a position, but this, do you acknowledge Jill that this is complicated?

- Oh, sure.

We acknowledge that this is complicated, but the science has evolved with regard to how we understand COVID.

And we know that school transmission is very small.

It's so small.

We know that schools are safe.

We know that teachers are safe in schools and we know the kids are safe in schools.

And we know that the CDC guidelines, guidance with regard to schools, the new guidance said that a community, that the community positivity, positivity rate is irrelevant.

You know, they don't use those, that language.

But with regard to elementary schools, they say, regardless of your, the positivity rate, that that schools can be back and should be back for in-person learning.

So I think with that, you can learn quite a bit, and see some action.

- Jill, I'm sorry for cutting you off, time is short, but I also want to remind people to watch NJ Spotlight News.

The great team there, John Mooney is the best when it comes to educational issues, who contributes to that program.

Follow that program on a daily basis to find out what's happening.

Jill, I promise you we will not, our series will not walk away from this issue.

And thank you for joining us, wish you and especially your kids and all the kids in South Orange and Maplewood all the best as well as the teachers.

Thank you so much, Jill.

- Thanks for having me.

- I'm Steve Adubato.

Thank you so much for watching.

We'll see you next time.

- [Narrator] One-On-One with Steve Adubato has been a production of the Caucus Educational Corporation.

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

Holy Name Medical Center.

Caldwell University.

PNC, Grow Up Great.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

New Jersey Sharing Network.

Summit Health.

PSE&G.

And by Newark Board of Education.

Promotional support provided by The New Jersey Business & Industry Association.

And by Northjersey.com and Local IQ.

Part of the USA Today Network.

- Data shows that many patients have avoided seeking critical health care in the wake of COVID-19 for fear of contracting the virus.

Delaying medical care can have serious consequences, so you should never second guess or ignore your symptoms.

At Holy Name Medical Center we have measures in place to prevent infectious disease from spreading, we're clean, we're open and we're safe for all your health care needs.