MANSFIELD — Richland Public Health has agreed to participate in a community effort designating systemic racism as a public health crisis, board chairman David Remy said Tuesday evening.
Speaking during a Mansfield City Council public affairs committee meeting, Remy said the agency supports a amended resolution aimed at ending racial inequalities in Richland County.
The thrust of the effort would come through the formation of a community task force to study issues and recommend solutions to local elected officials and policy makers.
“RPH is more than happy to collaborate with other partners in addressing the issues of health inequity,” Remy said. “We can’t necessarily be the hub of the operation.
“Right now, Richland Public Health is focused on COVID-19 and it’s overwhelming. (But) we will participate in every way possible,” Remy said.
His comments came after RPH Commissioner Sarah Humphrey met on Tuesday with Jean Taddie, the 6th Ward council representative who is sponsoring the legislation.
At Humphrey’s request, the resolution was revised to remove a reference to the Public Health Accreditation Board as a governing body for RPH. The local health department is actually governed by the State of Ohio.
“PHAB is a nonprofit organization that is focused on quality improvement among public health bodies, and the benchmarking of public health efforts within these organizations against national standards. PHAB is neither a governing body nor sets policy on a local, state, or national level,” Humphrey told Taddie in an email.
The meeting concluded with the committee agreeing to forward the amended resolution for the entire city council, all of whom attended the session Tuesday evening, to consider on July 21.
“We can’t thrive until everyone thrives,” Taddie said.
During the three-hour “virtual” meeting, Taddie spent about 75 minutes reading aloud emails from area residents the city had received regarding the issue, almost all of whom supported its passage by council.
The session also included remarks by Brigitte Coles and Deanna West-Torrence, representing a local group of nine women who began work on this effort weeks before Minneapolis police killed a Black man named George Floyd on May 25.
That killing triggered a national movement for social justice. Coles and West-Torrence reiterated the group’s effort has nothing to do with any current or future efforts at defunding police departments.
Sparked by the disproportionate toll the COVID-19 pandemic has taken in the Black community across the nation, the effort to address racial inequality in Richland County began even before then through the work of the North End Community Improvement Collaborative, founded by West-Torrence in 2007.
Both women said the issue is about changing and fixing “baked in” systemic racial issues, not implicating current individuals.
“This resolution is not about politics. It’s not partisan. It’s not about defunding police,” said Coles, who in 2015 helped to found the local group, We ACT, which has worked to improve relations between community residents and local law enforcement agencies.
“It’s simply about recognizing that every person has human dignity,” Coles said. “We are only as strong as our partnerships make each other.
“This is an exciting time … to bring everyone to the table to work on this amazing opportunity,” Coles said.
West-Torrence, who remains the NECIC executive director, said the agency’s report in January, The Richland County State of the African-American Report, detailed the inequalities.
Richland County State of the African-American Community Report
“This is not an emotional argument,” said West-Torrence, a former member of city council. “It’s a factual argument.
“The conditions you see in that report are largely the result of systemic racism and policies that were put in place a long time ago,” West-Torrence said. “This is about systems, not people. If you look at that data, you will see racism is a public health crisis.”
She said the goal of the task force — which would be broken into subcommittees to examine different areas such as education, housing employment, criminal justice and more — would be to bring data and analysis to light so that elected officials and other leaders make needed changes.
“This is a people-powered initiative,” she said, pointing out the women in the effort have “pounded the pavement” talking to local people and organizations about joining in the effort.
Among other Richland County indicators found in the NECIC report were:
— Black households are more than twice as likely as White households to receive food stamps.
— Black households are almost three times as White households to fall below federal poverty levels.
— White median annual income is $16,000 higher than it is for Blacks.
— Unemployment rates for Black men and women far exceed jobless rates for Whites.
— More than two-thirds of local Black men were “out of the labor force.”
Race in Richland County Fact Sheet
West-Torrence said one goal will be to ensure greater participation in community health surveys done by Richland Public Health.
The report done by NECIC found only 9 percent of African Americans responded to health surveys sent out for the 2016 Richland County Community Health assessment.
“As a result of this and other factors, local health data by race is sparse,” the report said.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the Black community in Ohio has accounted for 27 percent of the positive cases and 19 percent of the deaths, though Blacks make up only 13 percent of the state’s population.
The local women, including Coles, West-Torrence, Dr. Beth Castle, Dr. Donna Hight, Crystal Davis-Weese, Amy Hiner, Renda Cline, Margaret Lin and Tiffany Mitchell, have said improving the outlook for Black and Brown people in Richland County will improve the entire county.
An initial version of the resolution was introduced before city council on June 16, but local lawmakers opted to delay any action until its next meeting on July 21.
At that June meeting, Remy said the RPH board discussed the resolution in its initial form and had decided not to become involved.
At that time, Remy said the RPH board is a stand-alone entity to “assure autonomy” from other governmental entities.
He said that the agency is designed to be a non-political entity and, while it recognizes racism is an issue in the community, would continue to focus its efforts on providing public health services to all county residents.
