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Community leaders press Health Commission to boost African American health funding and CBO support
Summary
Dozens of community members and union representatives urged the Health Commission to increase funding for African American health initiatives, raise indirect rates for small community-based organizations and fund anti-stigma and violence-prevention efforts.
A coalition of community organizations and labor representatives urged the San Francisco Health Commission to address persistent health disparities affecting African American residents and to increase support for community-based organizations.
David Cannon, San Francisco director for SEIU Local 1021, said the union had spent nine months consulting members and community groups to develop a petition listing demands on health disparities, housing, education and mass incarceration. Carletta Jackson Lane, executive director of Sojourner Truth Foster Family Service Agency, told commissioners that “African Americans in San Francisco suffer disproportionately” from asthma, diabetes, heart disease and HIV; she cited a lung cancer rate of 85.5 per 100,000 for black residents versus 49.6 per 100,000 for whites and an asthma rate of 21.5% vs. 15.3% for whites.
Perry Lang, executive director of the Black Coalition on AIDS and Rafiki Wellness, asked the commission to increase the African American Health Initiative budget (he said it had not been raised in nearly five years and was about $1.9 million) and to raise indirect rate allowances for African American CBOs to at least 20% to cover organizational infrastructure. Several other speakers from Bayview Hunters Point and the African American Community Health Equity Council echoed the request for more sustainable funding and criticized the mismatch between studied programs and resources delivered to neighborhood CBOs.
Director Garcia said DPH would work with the group, look at the budget process and point to existing programs (including DPH’s REACH program) that some organizations could qualify for. Commissioners noted Brown Act limits on off-agenda discussions but asked the director to follow up during upcoming budget deliberations.
