Solidarity with BERG — Point of Action #14: Commit to Community Engagement and Participation
To the BERG: Our union sees, recognizes and values the incredible leadership and perseverance of our Black colleagues at OHSU. We stand in solidarity with the BERG. AFSCME Local 328 has been reflecting as a union, and we recognize our ability to do much better.
As stated in our December 2020 letter to the OHSU Black Employee Resource Group, AFSCME Local 328 has committed to stand and bear witness to the BERG’s letter sent to OHSU leadership and the board of directors on August 31, 2020, which called out concerns around OHSU’s racist practices, particularly those impacting Black employees. This month we address the final point of the BERG’s 14 Points of Action, which is:
OHSU must be more genuinely active in the surrounding communities, especially the Black community. Parades, receptions, dinners, award events, Say Hey and clean-up or volunteer day is not enough to cement the OHSU commitment in the Black community of students, patients, employees, vendors and their families. These are not frequent enough and only scratch the surface of forging a partnership within a community. Create an OHSU community committee of citizens, employees, managers, researchers, students and faculty, with the specific purpose of being a sounding board for issues at OHSU now and moving forward as they relate to the Black community. The committee must have Black representatives from ALL parts of society and stature represented in order to be most effective. Black communities use services at OHSU and in order to provide the community with the same level of service, interactions and a good patient experience, OHSU processes and policies should reflect that. Many peer hospitals and teaching universities in large cities have committees as described. It’s time for OHSU to have a community committee as well.
In November 2020, OHSU released its response to the BERG's 14 Points of Action, including the below response to the BERG's 14th and final point:
“We agree that a community committee representative of all traditionally marginalized communities is needed. Before the pandemic, President Jacobs was planning to establish a Community Advisory Council. The pandemic and other crises we’ve faced this year have impacted the timing, but we are currently working to establish this committee as soon as possible.”
In late 2020, OHSU stated it was working to create a community advisory council as soon as possible. It’s now March 2022 and no CAC exists. That said, we have some questions about this proposed council:
What is the status of the creation of this council?
What does OHSU envision the CAC’s purpose to be, and does that align with the BERG’s community committee described above?
Has OHSU partnered with the BERG to ensure these two visions are aligned?
Which community members would be engaged in this committee? How would they be compensated for their efforts?
How will OHSU ensure that communities, particularly Black communities, are meaningfully engaged and that this relationship with OHSU isn’t extractive or transactional?
What would the impact or authority of this committee be?
How does OHSU intend to engage communities it serves that are not in the Portland metro area?
We are curious about the vision that OHSU has for this proposed council. OHSU already has an employee advisory council and the Covington oversight committee. The EAC is made up of employees from across OHSU’s disciplines; information is shared with this group and the group shares their thoughts and concerns with administration. The Covington committee is made up of employees spanning the breadth of OHSU, with a seat for each stakeholder group. This group is charged with creating change at OHSU by means of working with a separate Covington implementation committee and the OHSU board of directors.
We want to ensure that any council that speaks for Black employees and employees of other racial minorities is unique and distinct to the needs of this population. Neither the EAC nor the Covington oversight committee consists solely of racial minorities. Therefore, we do feel it is important for OHSU to move forward with its planned CAC and that the group is made up of Black employees and other employees who identify as racial minorities, thus keeping race at the forefront of the council’s overall objectives.
When considering how OHSU could better support the health of and more meaningfully engage with the communities it serves, we can look at six dimensions of health: social, physical, occupational, emotional, spiritual and intellectual.
Social Health: OHSU has significant political influence, yet it doesn’t typically support or engage with social health in our communities. For example, many health-care entities, and even governmental agencies like the DMV, regularly encourage voter registration. Is this something OHSU could support? If not, why not?
Physical Health: While OHSU did hold community COVID testing and vaccination clinics out in the community, it could do a much better job of supporting physical health in the community on a regular basis. Rather than requiring patients to travel to Marquam Hill or the South Waterfront for health care, OHSU could better support communities by growing its satellite locations and even bringing regular mobile clinics out into the community. Physical health also includes challenges around mental health.
Occupational Health: This refers to having jobs that help us be healthy, not to being healthy on the job. When our occupational health is intact, we can do more than merely survive. We can save for a rainy day instead of living paycheck to paycheck, afford reliable transportation instead of having to take public transportation, delight in living close to our jobs or our children’s schools instead of spending hours commuting each day. We can afford to live and have fun and not just eke by. It is important that we recognize that living through a pandemic has interrupted our ability to do much more than just survive, and the pandemic has been a greater obstacle for some. We should note that one-time bonuses bring temporary relief, not long-term stability that supports occupational health.
Emotional Health: Even before the pandemic, the world and our society had yet to hold the conversation about how our emotional health — our feelings and “heart” — is impacted by stressors related to our social, physical, occupational and intellectual health. The pandemic has shone a light on how the pressures of daily living in this day and age affects our emotional health. How is OHSU prepared to deal with the long-term effects of the pandemic on this dimension of health?
Spiritual Health: Spirituality (not religion) is defined differently by everyone, but spiritual health is as important as the other five domains of health. Although OHSU does not have a religious affiliation like other area hospitals do, it could consider partnering with churches, temples or mosques to provide health screenings for the larger community it serves.
Intellectual Health: Strains on our intellectual health can be driven by occupational, socioeconomic and environmental woes. Intellectual health can be improved by continuing education, expanding our skills and challenging our minds. Intellectual health also includes challenges around mental health.
One would hope that OHSU, as a world-class leader in health care, would be courageous enough to tackle all six dimensions of health when considering its employees, and then transcend that work with the patients that it serves — embarking on a quest to begin to see individuals as whole persons who are versatile, complex and multi-faceted human beings.
AFSCME Local 328 continues to hold the entire OHSU community accountable (including but not limited to members of our bargaining unit, OHSU leadership, students and researchers) to do their part — individually and collectively — in remaking OHSU into an anti-racist institution. In order for this to happen, we must all be accountable and demonstrate transparency. As such, we stand with the BERG and their call for OHSU to create a community committee and to engage and participate more actively in the Black community.