Health Disparities

When I returned from my sunrise walk I watched the webinar that was assigned to us last night; I had also seen it earlier when I was accidentally sent an email about the 1st cohort. The webinar is COVID-19 Impact on Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander Communities. The speakers discussed the social determinants of health and how inequities cause poor health outcomes in a number of areas, includng COVID-19. They also discussed groups that are coming together to reduce the impact of COVID-19 on the Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander population that has been especially hard hit, even more so than other groups that are known to have lower health outcomes due to racism & discrimination.










The webinar is one of the videos on the Hawaiʻi Public Health Training Huiʻs videos. I saw several others that looked interesting and plan on watching them on my own.


Here's what my "desk" looks like when I am watching webinars and am in Zoom classes. The laptop is on the desk itself; I use the shelf for the keyborad as my writing surface.


The webinar tied in with class today, which was on "Health Disparities & Underserved Communities". We started out with 2 people from Cohort #1 talking about their experience in the training & what they are doing now in the 1st week after completing the training.

During the 2nd half of class, Vanessa talked to us about "Community Demographics." She showed us different sources of statistics to help us find information that could help with contact tracing. There is a lot of information out there.

Honolulu is the only place in the state that fits the USDA definition for "urban".

There are a lot of ways the data is organized!

CDP's are a special census term used here since Honolulu is the only incorporated area in the state.

This is 1 of the 2 breakout room brainstormings we did.

These maps show that there are very few areas where the dominant group is more than 50% of the population.

It was lightly drizzling when I got in the car to go do my sunrise walk. When I go up to the parking lot it was good walking weather! I saw several regulars today; I saw Fred twice, I walked with Ona & Rio for a little way. And I saw Calvin the Recycler. While I was doing my cool down stretches Ona & Rio walked by as well as Kavita; staff coming on shift included LPN Robin & Dad's main CNA Sharmaine! As I was leaving I saw Lynnette with Mary & Noe, Stef, and Lorraine.

Twenty-seven minutes before sunrise at home.

Twelve minutes before sunrise on Maunalani.

Eight minutes after sunrise on Sierra.

While on my walk this morning I saw the Keala-look-alike cats again. There is a mother cat and 2 half-grown kittens. The mother cat meows a lot like Keala and all of them have the tabby markings like Keala but no white feet. They did not run away from me as quickly as they did the first day. I also saw Shiro sitting in front of his house; his dog buddies were all lounging around behind the gate.

Sherry & I think the mom cat might be one of Keala's siblings.

Shiro & his dog buddies.

The ulu on the circle had flowers and fruit forming. I am going to try to take photos every so often to follow its development. I also saw a male Northern Cardinal.

Ulu.

Male Northern Cardinal.

This was my lunch today. I have decided tomorrow will be focused on making Best Keto Bread and other food items that I can quickly throw together for lunch on contact tracing class days since we are only getting about 15 minutes on Monday & Tuesday. On Thursday & Friday we get a much longer break, so I can take more time to make & eat lunch.


I also watched the Honolulu Star-Advertiser's Spotlight Hawaii interview with LG Green. He talked about what potential changes there might be due to the spike in positive cases. When Yunji asked him to respond to the many comments they were receiving from people saying, "Just open it up and deal with it," he had a great response. He said the economy will recover but, "I can't bring you back to life." He also said follow the logic; if you let people just die it, tourism would also suffer because no one would want to come here if they are going to get sick and die. He said, as long as he was LG, just allowing people to die just wasn't going to happen.


I got a call from Heidi this afternoon; a Brown Booby (Sula leucogaster) needs a ride to the airport tomorrow. I contacted Emma at the Zoo to see if she needed me to pick up carriers to take to Feather & Fur when I pick up the booby and drop off the carriers I brought back. She had a couple but was too busy to meet with me so we will do it next time.

I got an email this evening from the other instructor for the Community Contact Tracing Training; this is for the classes on Thursday & Friday.


There were 47 new COVID-19 cases reported today; with the data correction there are now a total of 1757 known cases here. There were no new deaths but a couple new hospitalizations; the LG said there is a 2 to 3 week lag between the testing numbers and when people begin to feel bad enough they need to be hospitalized. We should expect to see a rise in hospitalizations in mid-August. Just under 68% of the known cases has been released from isolation.






Hauʻoli lā Hānau e Mona & Mark!