04.07.20 COVID-19 Briefing Live Stream Transcript

The County of Santa Clara
April 7, 2020
Live Stream - Live with the County of Santa Clara
10am PT

Evelyn Ho: Good morning, I'm Evelyn Ho, the Lead Public Information Officer in The County of Santa Clara's, Emergency Operations Center in a response to COVID-19. We wanted this morning to provide you an update on activities of the Emergency Operations Center and our current status in the county and then focus a particular discussion on one of the areas that we are looking at. As of this morning—as of yesterday, we reported twelve hundred and twenty-four cases of COVID-19 in Santa Clara County and forty-two deaths. Our updated case dashboard can be found daily by 2:00 p.m on our website SCCPHD.org/coronavirus. There you will also find updates on our current hospitalization and hospitalization capacity as well as lab testing available in our community. While cases continue to increase on through the county, we are seeing soft signs early signs that the rate at which our cases are increasing may be slowing.

Thank you for your continued compliance with our shelter-in-place order. We need to continue to follow those orders and increase our distance, increase [edit: decrease] the contacts we have with one another, the number of contacts, the time of contacts that we have with one another to continue this trend that we are beginning to see. But for today, we wanted to focus our discussion on a area of Public Health practice called the social determinants of health. When I am not working in the Emergency Operations Center, I'm a Senior Community Health Planner in the Public Health Department in the Office of the Director. And today I have with me Nicole Coxe who is a Senior Healthcare Program Manager also in the Public Health Department, who is also one of our Public Information Officers. So Nicole, I wanted to ask you about social determinants of health. What are they? How do we think about them in public health in general from the individual to kind of societal determinants of health?

Nicole Coxe: Thank you Evelyn. Happy to be here to talk about this really important public health issue. The way that we think about determinants of health in the Public Health Department are those factors that are in the community at the policy, societal level, environmental level that really impact individuals in the community's ability to live healthy. These include things like access to housing, affordable fresh fruits and vegetables, healthcare access, history of trauma and discrimination, other things in the community such as transportation options that exist. So these factors that we know may help or hinder a person's ability to to do the the healthy behaviors that were often encouraging and in public health.

Ho: How do those health determinants show up in other health outcomes that we regularly work on for chronic disease, for example?

Coxe: Yeah, so my my typical job at the Public Health Department, when I'm not serving here in the county's Emergency Operations Center, is as the Manager for the Tobacco Free Communities Program working on chronic disease prevention. And so we know that there are major differences that are impacted by these factors in chronic disease outcomes for instance. So, a lot of our work is focused on prevention of things like heart disease, asthma, lung cancer, and other respiratory issues. And so often we are seeing that in in communities where there are factors that hinder people's ability to be healthy that they are experiencing poor health outcomes. So, higher rates of these chronic diseases, less ability to really change their behavior get the care they need, or living in neighborhoods where there are more alcohol or tobacco outlets, less healthy food. And those we know are really important factors that we in the Public Health Department are working in partnership with communities and cities to address and change those disproportionate factors.

Ho: So how do we normally address some of those social determinants? You mentioned working in partnership what might that look like?

Coxe: Yeah so in my in my normal job in Public Health we partner a lot with our community residents as well as our city officials. We know that if we can have policies that are long-lasting in the community that can really create sustainable change, for example, incentives for corner stores to provide more fresh fruits and vegetables, things like the Double Up Food Bucks Program, where people can get two-for-one options for fresh healthy foods, things like secondhand smoke protections for people creating smoke-free places in the community, changing those conditions in the in the neighborhoods where they are experiencing some of those outcomes. And and we do that in partnership and working with our city officials, working with community leaders, working with our healthcare partners, and residents to enact those changes and make sure they're having the intended impact that we would like to see.

Ho: Great!

Coxe: Evelyn I was hoping you could also talk about what considerations of social determinants of health do we need to factor with COVID-19?

Ho: Yes, one of the things that we recognize is that the overall county order to shelter-in-place, except for doing essential activities, poses different abilities for different individuals to participate in that. So for example, you and I are essential workers. We have to come to work every day. We're not able to shelter in place in our homes. Other people are also essential workers, working in different sectors that are critical to our continuing functioning within our county. So our grocery store workers, our health care workers who are on the front lines, hourly workers, our delivery workers, as we have broadly been more and more reliant on delivery services to reduce contacts. That those workers are essential parts of our continuing operation and the economy that's happening. And so as those workers and those individuals are going out and doing those essential work, their ability to ensure social distancing is going to be very different.

We also know that history of poverty, structural racism, educational access are very different throughout our community language access as well. And we want to ensure as the Public Health Department, as the County, and within our Emergency Operations Center in response to COVID that we are ensuring the most greatest amount of protection for all in our community. And so we are really considering how does shelter in place look like for families and individuals? Where it may be difficult to have a space to isolate when someone becomes sick. So we are working in creating plans to respond to those types of needs.

How do we ensure that workers who are continuing to show up at essential work are protected as employees as well? So as part of our new shelter-in-place order, it included the social distancing protocols that were required for all businesses. That's meant to not just protect the customers and consumers who may be coming in but to be protecting employees as well. So we are continuing to further those discussions to ensure that all of our community has access and the ability to have the most protection for themselves and for one another as possible. That's great.

Coxe: So, I know you already mentioned some next steps but is there anything else that you would want to highlight?

Ho: Yeah, I think to what you said about how we do partnership as a core approach to addressing social determinants of health. Because social determinants are multi factorial, they were involve business leaders, community leaders, social service leaders

they affect a lot of areas beyond just the health outcomes that we think about. We have to do it in coordination and with co leadership with the community. So we work closely, we are currently working closely, with many community leaders to identify ways to get our information and our messages out to all communities in our County so they have access to the same information that we provide.  That we can customize guidance for different populations as well and we're letting our community leaders help design that with us so we can be responsive to current community needs.

Yeah, thank you so much. So, thank you so much for tuning in today. We will continue this conversation. And the county of Santa Clara will continue its work to advance equity in this challenging time within the community.

Thank you.