Led by state Supreme Court justice, Gonzaga panel calls for support to public health

To help the most vulnerable in society, public health and criminal justice must be working as one, members of a Gonzaga University panel said Thursday.

Led by state Supreme Court justice Debra Stephens, the panelists urged greater collaboration between the two fields.

Spokane Public Defender Francis Adewale helped establish the Spokane Municipal Community Court, which aims to divert people who have committed low-level crimes to treatment and social services rather than a jail sentence. As these offenders cycle in and out of jail, they also cycle in and out of the hospital, he said Thursday afternoon.

“They get arrested and booked in jail, and then when they get out of jail, they get sick and handed to the ER,” he said.

Criminal justice and public health are “siloed” from one another trying to figure out the best way to help, he said.

“We never think outside the siloes. There needs to be an alliance between the justice delivery and the health care delivery. Then we can begin to work together,” Adewale said.

Stephens said people in this perpetual cycle are “serving the death penalty 30 days at a time,” and those in the judicial system need to do a better job of helping while applying the law.

“People I work with in the legal system don’t want to be seen as activists and as trying to push policy. They want to just do things in a neutral way, but the way we’ve always done things has never been neutral. The impact has never neutrally affected everyone across systems,” Stephens said.

The two public health officials on the panel expressed dismay over seeming disdain for public health they see in the Trump administration.

“There’s an elephant in the room since around January 20. We’ve seen changes to policy especially around addiction,” clinical psychologist and WSU Medical School professor Michael McDonnell said. “Every single minute of every day, we’ve seen changed that have made it unclear if there will still be needle exchanges, especially in states like Idaho or Montana.”

Just this week, the Department of Health and Human Services canceled at least $12 billion in federal grants to state governments, which included more than $1 billion of cuts to the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.

The cuts include more than $130 million to the Washington Department of Health. The majority of funds awarded to SRHD have already been suspended, but the agency has only been notified of one grant being suspended.

Spokane Municipal Court judge Mary Logan said she worries the United States is falling back into the “dark ages” where insurance is not accessible and medical treatment for those suffering the most is not available.

Assistant Secretary for Environmental Public Health at the Washington State Department of Health Lauren Jenks said public health is “fundamentally a social justice movement” that tries to address issues such as white supremacy and patriarchy.

“We have a stance, and it’s a stance for public health. That is our bias. We are not coming from a neutral perspective,” she said.

Jenks pointed to an ICE detention facility in Tacoma that has faced allegations of inhumane, unsanitary conditions. The Washington Department of Health has sought to inspect the facility to protect those detained there and stop the spread of disease that may go beyond its walls, she said. Efforts by the DOH to enter the facility have been rebuffed by federal officials.

“How do you change the system? I think we’re doing it, but it’s super slow,” she said.

“These are the people in our state that are the most vulnerable, and they’re in our state. They’re residents of Washington. And they won’t let me in? They won’t let the health department in to see what’s happening. That is scary to me.”