While all eyes are on the Democratic National Convention and the official coming out party for Joe Biden and Kamala Harris, let’s not forget about the looming deadline for the 2020 U.S. Census. It will determine how the maps are drawn for redistricting for the House of Representatives and influence the political make-up of Congress in 2022. It could possibly be the most important census ever.

Since the first census in 1790, led by then Secretary of State Thomas Jefferson, the decennial census count has been a backbone of our democracy. In addition to accurately helping to divide 435 congressional seats among the states, census results are also used to fairly distribute more than $1.5 trillion in federal funding annually.

This federal funding helps makes up state general fund revenues, including funding for public health programs.

The census is required to count every person residing in the U.S. — citizens, non-citizen legal residents and unauthorized residents. Our democratic process depends on a fair and accurate census count.

The 2020 Census is particularly challenged by the global coronavirus pandemic, threats to undocumented immigrants and their families, political influence in the counting process, as well as security problems with the first largely online census.

Experts fear serious under counts would invite lawsuits that could cripple the reallocation of Congressional seats and redistricting process, as well as drain public trust in this core function of government. Any loss in faith in the census – for any reason — would bring lasting damage.

We must be vigilant to make sure that we obtain as fair and accurate a census count as possible.

The last census was believed to be most accurate census yet. But while it was accurate, was it fair? The 2010 census was only off by .1%, but hiding in that small overall error were much larger errors miscounting groups of people. Non-Hispanic whites were over counted by almost 1% nationally, while Blacks were under counted by about 2%. Hispanic people were under counted by 1.5% and other groups were under counted even more.

One of the biggest challenges to the current census has been frequent delays to comply with virus protocols. While the COVID-19 pandemic does not seem to hamper online responses, it has caused delays in interviews by phone, and by-mail census efforts — because social distance requirements have limited the number of staff in both. And virus protocols and the concerns about virus exposure among those being surveyed may significantly hamper the in-person survey process.

Two years ago the administration pushed to get a citizenship question added to the census. A coalition of 17 states, Washington, D.C., and six cities filed a lawsuit to block it. The U.S. Supreme Court ultimately disallowed the addition of the question without further information, so it was not included.

After losing that fight, the administration directed the Census Bureau to gather and provide citizenship data. The effort to not only add this question, but to aggressively go after undocumented immigrants has sewn fear in many undocumented residents and their families. This will make it even harder to count minorities that have already been traditionally under counted.

While the Census Bureau has previously been rigidly nonpartisan, it recently announced that is it creating two new top-level positions—both of which are political appointees. This push by the administration is the latest effort raising concerns among civil liberties advocates that is subjugating the census results.

The 2020 census is the first to be conducted largely online, raising new data security challenges. In fact, the Government Accountability Office identified such risks in a 2019 report and demanded the Census Bureau fix “fundamental cloud security deficiencies.” In February of this year, a GAO report called out that while the Bureau had made progress, they still needed to address serious cyber security weaknesses and concerns.

We must act now. The counting deadline has been moved up to the end of September. Let’s not allow that to detract from importance.

We must take swift actions to remedy potential problems with the census and ensuing results. 

First, lawmakers should demand the removal of political appointees from the nonpartisan Census Bureau. Such appointments only threaten not only the accuracy and fairness of the census, but undermine public trust in the results and in our government as a whole.

The Census Bureau should undertake advertising campaigns in multiple languages to assure affected populations that no citizenship question will appear on the 2020 Census and that information they provide to the census cannot be used against them.

The government should broadcast its commitment to maintain census confidentiality and put in place stronger safeguards against misuse.

The census is under threat and with it our fair representation in Congress and access to more than $1.5 trillion in federal funding. Compromising the fairness and accuracy of the census or allowing the Bureau to become politicized threatens to undermine our democratic process and institutions, and thereby the trust of and connection with the U.S. public.

We must do whatever we can to ensure the 2020 Census is fair and accurate. The vitality of our country depends upon it.

Author:
Paul Levikow
Media Advocacy Specialist, IPS

Paul Levikow is a Media Advocacy Specialist for the East County and South Bay regions in San Diego.  Mr. Levikow previously worked for several years as a print and broadcast journalist as well as a communications director and public affairs officer for county government. 

As seen on GovLoop.

Policymakers must consider racial equity implications during the enforcement phase as well as the development phase of a policy. This requires an understanding of how different populations will specifically be affected when it is enforced. For instance, will its enforcement result in further harm to Black, Latinx/Hispanic, Native American, Asian and Pacific Islander people or other minority groups?

Many policies are directed toward populations that may not have equal access to social determinants of health. These are the conditions that define a person’s quality of life, from the type of physical environment they live in to the education they receive and the socioeconomic factors that contribute to their overall health. Minority groups especially may find themselves unjustly penalized because they do not have the same opportunities for a higher quality life.

For instance, this has important significance for minority groups since more non-white people are homeless per capita than white people. Laws that prohibit loitering or sleeping in a public space may not have much impact on some. But if policies do not address the underlying issues such as the housing crisis, unemployment, mental health and substance abuse that may lead to homelessness in the first place, we miss out on an opportunity to intervene in improving the well-being of those living on the streets.

In the case of homelessness, enforcing a no-loitering policy should also come with a remedy for mitigating the reason someone is unsheltered.

When considering racial equity in the enforcement of a policy, it helps for decision-makers to consider the following questions:

1) Are resources in place to equitably enforce the policy?

Funding for staff and infrastructure must be equitably accessible to all populations. Here, it is necessary to distinguish between “equality” and “equity.” Equality is when everybody receives the same amount of resources. Equity is when everybody receives the resources specific to their circumstances to achieve the same opportunity.

In this situation, staffing and infrastructure must be determined based on the individual community’s needs that the policy serves, recognizing that each community has different levels of resources.

2) Are sanctions or punishments levied equitably (not equally!) across populations?

If an individual who is low-income, for instance, is given the choice between paying a fine or going to jail, their decision may come down to putting food on the table for their family or missing work while detained. It is easier for higher-income individuals to pay the fine, whereas lower-income individuals may wrestle with the two options, neither of which promote mental well-being. How will the policy further undermine the well-being of vulnerable populations?

3) Is the community aware of the policy and how it will be enforced?

Community awareness of a policy ensures that there is a clear understanding of its objectives and impacts. It establishes expectations and the accountability of enforcers for equitable enforcement. It also helps achieve buy-in and support from the community.

4) Who will be harmed if the policy is not enforced equitably?

Failure to enforce regulations equitably across all populations means that some communities will remain disadvantaged.

For example, environmental laws put a cap on the amount of pollutants that can be released into the air. However, often due to a lack of enforcement of these laws, people who live close to factories and industrial areas experience higher rates of respiratory problems and other negative health outcomes. Not surprisingly, low income minority groups are often the ones that live close to polluters. High income white people, on the other hand, live farther away and therefore have fewer health problems.

5) Is the policy flexible enough to allow for changes if data and evaluation show that enforcement is ineffective?

Data is key in determining if enforcement is working or if it produces inequitable conditions. Policies may include evaluation metrics that trigger a shift or halt to implementation and enforcement.

Rather than scrapping an ineffective policy altogether, small tweaks may produce a much more desirable (and economically efficient) outcome based on changing conditions. Metrics should take into account population-specific outcomes.

Equitable enforcement of policies results in healthier communities. When policies are equitably enforced, minority groups are given the same opportunities as white people to achieve optimal health, creating more fairness in the distribution of resources.

Author:
Meredith Gibson
Media Director, IPS

Meredith Gibson is the Media Director for the Binge and Underage Drinking Initiative, Countywide Media Advocacy Project, and Partnerships for Success. She generates news articles to promote awareness of public health issues, collaborates on opinion editorials (op-eds) with community leaders, and pitches ideas and spokespersons to news outlets, amassing media coverage at the local and national levels.

The debate over whether to allow students to return to school is ever present. However, not much has been said about how children are coping with the traumatic effects of this pandemic and what we, as a society, are doing to help them deal with it.

According to the World Health Organization, COVID-19 is causing trauma in ways in which we are not fully aware. Increased levels of anxiety, depression, and alcohol and drug misuse are a common theme across the country. Families who live in lower income neighborhoods have been hit the hardest and are especially feeling fear, stress, and uncertainty about their future. This type of trauma is causing toxic stress in adults nationwide and in our local communities and it is being transferred to our children every day.

Children today are essentially feeling the toxic stress of a different type of war and a new adversary that perhaps is even more detrimental than the virus itself. Since governors across the country forced schools to shut down and issued stay-at-home orders, children were confined to their homes. While it seems they would be safer, for many children, especially those living in poverty, this could not be further from the truth.
During times of crisis, stress levels in families tend to rise, making children more susceptible to Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) such as child abuse and domestic violence.

What specifically are ACEs? According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), ACEs are potentially traumatic events that occur in childhood before the age of 18. Among these are experiences of violence, abuse, or neglect. ACEs can cause other problems and disruptions in life such as learning disabilities and alcohol and drug misuse, which can bring chronic disease or serious health complications later in life, including early death.

The CDC reports that ACEs are common. About 61% of adults surveyed across 25 states reported that they had experienced at least one type of ACEs, and nearly 1 in 6 reported they had experienced four or more ACEs. Although it is too early to know the exact numbers, it is safe to say that these numbers will only go up because of the pandemic.

One of the most profound findings of the research on ACEs is that preventing them has the potential to save millions of lives. For example, up to 1.9 million cases of heart disease and 21 million cases of depression could have potentially been avoided by preventing ACEs, according to the CDC.

Although it is disheartening to hear about the number of ACEs reported each year, especially with the potential for increased numbers during COVID-19, the good news is that ACEs can be prevented or countered. More experts are beginning to agree that countering those adverse childhood experiences with positive ones, known as protective factors, is proving to be effective.

In other words, perhaps there is no stronger cure for an adverse childhood experience than a positive childhood experience provided by a caretaker or caring, nurturing adult. More than ever, families, schools, faith-based groups, and community-based organizations need to be aware of this trauma-informed approach. Community advocates need to ensure policies are passed that have impact at community and societal levels, as well as individual and relationship levels.

Author:
Brenda Simmons
CEO/President, IPS

Brenda Simmons began her career at IPS in 2003 as a community organizer in San Diego County. She was promoted multiple times before she was elevated to CEO/President in April 2019. She has a broad range of experience working in very conservative rural and frontier communities in Montana, ultra-progressive communities including Los Angeles and West Hollywood, and everything in between. Brenda has been involved in projects ranging in focus from substance abuse prevention to community revitalization to child-sex trafficking. As CEO, Brenda oversees more than a dozen IPS projects in Southern California.

The storyline has been consistent throughout the pandemic: economic and public health interests are fundamentally at odds. The reality is quite different. Business and public health have always been intrinsically connected, with shared mutual interests.

One such interest is having a healthy workforce. Employees that maintain good health are more cooperative and productive. They improve companies’ public personas. Alternatively, if employees are unhealthy, they are more likely to call in sick, costing U.S. businesses $225 billion annually. This has long been a real concern in the U.S., where many workers experience preventable health problems.

Consider the following statistics: about 17% of adults smoke, costing businesses an annual average of more than $5000 per employee in smoking breaks and health costs. About 70% of Americans over 20 years old are overweight or obese, costing businesses well over $4000 per year in additional health care costs. And 25% of Americans 18 years and older had at least one heavy drinking day in the last year, costing businesses an estimated $179 billion annually in lost workplace productivity.

These numbers reveal a significant opportunity. By developing an intentional and strategic focus on health factors for employees, such as stress, excess alcohol consumption, and smoking, businesses could be reducing their expenses and increasing their profits.

A business-health collaboration is not unusual for successful companies. In 2016, Target chose to look outward. As a centerpiece of its Corporate Social Responsibility strategy, the company invested $40 million in 50 nonprofit organizations across the U.S. to increase the physical activity and healthy eating habits of children and their families. This type of investment hinges on the premise that healthier American communities are fundamental to the future of all profitable companies.

Such business-health collaborative efforts can happen on a smaller scale. The University of Washington, together with the American Cancer Society and eight employers in the Pacific Northwest, launched a promotional program that encouraged employees to utilize the preventative aspects of their health insurance, such as cancer screening and flu vaccines. The program increased targeted preventive behaviors among employees from 38 to 61 percent.

There are also a growing number of businesses that directly support health and well-being through their products or services. Tech companies excel at this. They create applications that more effectively support exercise, nutritional products and services, and healthy homes and neighborhoods. These social-entrepreneurial businesses could be natural partners for public health organizations, as they are already focusing on improving peoples’ health.

More and more so, business leaders are seeing the importance of health and wellbeing in everything from driving up profits to attracting and retaining talent. Conversely, healthy communities lead to stronger workforces and economies. In other words, business and public health are natural allies. Even a pandemic doesn’t change that.

Author:
Eric Collins
Vice President of Programs, IPS

Eric Collins has thrived working in the communications, nonprofit and government sectors for three decades. He rejoined IPS in 2020 as the Vice President of Programs. In earlier roles with the organization, he directed the activities of the Alcohol Policy Panel of San Diego County and served as a project manager on county and federal grants focused on public health and safety, community revitalization, and substance abuse prevention.

Since the beginning of 2020, we have become acutely aware of how systemic racism has impacted people of color in America. With far greater percentages of Blacks and Latinx succumbing to COVID-19, the disparities in health and health care among these populations have been laid bare. And with elevated rates of infant mortality, heart disease, and other chronic illnesses among communities of color, some health experts and lawmakers call racism a public health emergency.

This extends to housing. People of color have been forced to live in concentrated poverty areas far more often than their White counterparts. According to a study by the Brookings Institute, poor Blacks were almost five times as likely as poor Whites to live in an extremely poor neighborhood. Poor Latinx were three times as likely.

With fewer social services and limited access to health care, lower-performing schools, and fewer job-seeking networks, most residents of poor neighborhoods get trapped in a cycle of chronic poverty that is often perpetuated through generations.

Aggravated by these conditions, higher rates of crime are also common to such neighborhoods. Police working in extremely poor neighborhoods often live in a completely different area and have little connection with the people they serve. They also have little understanding of implicit bias and the historical racist practices that their agency still upholds. Therefore, in responding to a bad situation, police officers seek only to suppress and return conditions to “normal.” But in a community struggling for the basic necessities of life, America’s normal for people of color is unacceptable.

We need to remember that the frustration and hopelessness expressed by communities of color are not just about police brutality or even chronic poverty. Their origin lies in the systemic racism that has continued to keep Black and other people of color separate – physically and otherwise – from the rest of society and excluded from its benefits.

More than anything else, it was a series of public policies, conceived in an era known as “separate but equal,” that allowed racism to become institutionalized throughout American neighborhoods. It began early in the 20th century when Black Americans migrated from the rural south to cities in the north. Desperate to maintain the status quo, policymakers created zoning codes that specified where Blacks could not live, aggressively funneling them away from white neighborhoods.

Later came the process of redlining, introduced by the Federal Housing Administration in 1934. The agency was created to advance homeownership through loan guarantees, but it explicitly refused to back loans to Black people or even other people who lived near Black people. Although the Fair Housing Act of 1968 was passed to stop redlining, this behavior still continued through restrictive covenants, discriminatory steering by real estate agents, and restricted access to private capital. All of this has circumvented any investment where Black people and other communities of color live, making their homes and communities a product of racism.

When a specific group of people has been separated by geographical boundaries, as Black people have now for hundreds of years, racial stereotypes grow, eventually becoming entrenched in the culture. Today, Black stereotypes are commonly linked to violence and criminality. We are witness to such beliefs almost daily through movies and cop shows.

However, through social media, we also witness people calling for equity in America. This includes equal access to quality health care and social services, good education, a right to fair representation in law enforcement, and especially a place where home is just as safe for a Black family as it might be for others.

It’s time to rewrite the rules to support affordable housing being built in wealthy neighborhoods. A 2015 Supreme Court ruling made this possible by affirming that the Fair Housing Act could be used to actively promote racial integration. Ensuring that people of color have access to better health care, education, and job opportunities is perhaps the one thing that could make America whole again.

Author:
Brenda Simmons
CEO/President, IPS

Brenda Simmons began her career at IPS in 2003 as a community organizer in San Diego County. She was promoted multiple times before she was elevated to CEO/President in April 2019. She has a broad range of experience working in very conservative rural and frontier communities in Montana, ultra-progressive communities including Los Angeles and West Hollywood, and everything in between. Brenda has been involved in projects ranging in focus from substance abuse prevention to community revitalization to child-sex trafficking. As CEO, Brenda oversees more than a dozen IPS projects in Southern California.