Falaknaz Paiwandi came to the Oakland Food Pantry in search of fresh vegetables and halal meat. 

The 56-year-old father of four fled Afghanistan with his family after the Taliban seized power there in 2021. They left their home in Parwan — a rural province north of Kabul — for a New Jersey military base, where they joined thousands of Afghan refugees awaiting new lives in American cities. 

They settled in Pittsburgh a few months later, but are finding it hard to afford food here. Paiwandi, a veteran of U.S.-backed Afghan armed forces, can’t work because he was injured in a car accident. His 23-year-old son, a laundromat worker, is the family’s sole earner. His wages are nowhere near enough to feed his parents and siblings. 

“It’s too expensive and we’re not able to buy food for ourselves,” said Paiwandi, speaking in Dari through an interpreter. “That’s why we’re having a plan to get food from the food pantry.”  

He selected apples, carrots, walnuts and mangoes, among other produce items. But he couldn’t have his pick of protein: There was no halal beef or chicken that day, so he took the salmon that pantry staff offered him.  

About 30 Afghan families visit the pantry each month, according to Community Human Services [CHS], the nonprofit that runs it and offers other supportive services. Their needs highlight gaps in Pittsburgh’s charitable food system, which is struggling to keep pace with high demand and changing demographics in the region. Staff at food banks and pantries say more people with limited English proficiency are seeking food assistance. And few pantries offer halal meat — a crucial macronutrient for Paiwandi and other followers of Islamic dietary law. 

CHS is trying to fill those gaps. It uses interpreters to communicate with people facing language barriers. It stocks the kind of fresh produce and grains that are staple foods in many countries. And it offers halal meat as much as its budget allows. 

Staff said their efforts drew more refugees and immigrants to the pantry. High food prices and the end of pandemic-era food benefits are driving demand, too. Nearly 2,800 people used the pantry in the last fiscal year — a 77% increase from fiscal year 2022 that brought more traffic to the neighborhood and generated backlash from residents. 

“We’re trying to be really good neighbors while also serving the community,” said Chief Executive Alicia Romano. “It’s been a really tough balance.” 

Growing needs and rising tensions 

To get the food they need for the week, a pantry participant must first maneuver through the tight streets of South Oakland. If they’re new to Pittsburgh and unfamiliar with traffic laws here, they might park in a fire lane or permit-parking spot for residents.  

It’s happened often enough to create conflict with neighbors, some of whom called police to report participants who illegally parked near the pantry, or blocked traffic on Lawn Street while loading food into their cars. Pantry Program Manager Mattie Johnson once had to defuse tension when a group of neighbors confronted participants outside the pantry to complain about the disruption near their homes.   

Police who arrived to enforce traffic laws were unprepared for the language diversity at the pantry. Johnson said an officer “made this one big announcement” in English, which many participants couldn’t understand. When staff used interpreters to make sure everyone got the message, “it kind of clicked to her, you know, what was going on here.” 

More refugees have resettled in Allegheny County in recent years, according to data provided by the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services. It partnered with resettlement agencies to bring 746 people here in 2023 and 822 in 2022 — up from 174 in 2021. The historic high is due to people fleeing conflict and instability in countries such as Ukraine, Afghanistan, Venezuela and the Democratic Republic of the Congo, said Dana Gold, chief operating officer of Jewish Family and Community Services [JFCS], one of four resettlement agencies in the region. 

Research shows they’re at risk for food insecurity after they arrive — especially if they face language barriers, which can lead to fewer job opportunities and difficulty enrolling in food assistance programs. 

It’s why food pantries should develop “linguistic and cultural competency” to serve them, said Ha Ngan (Milkie) Vu, an assistant professor of preventive medicine at Northwestern University who studies food insecurity in refugee and immigrant populations. That means stocking “culturally appropriate foods” and hiring staff with the language skills to communicate with participants. 

The CHS team stepped up on a recent afternoon as people from Ukraine, Afghanistan and other countries walked through the pantry doors. 

An Arabic-speaking volunteer helped new participants with the intake process. Interpreters from Larimer-based Global Wordsmiths — who speak rarer languages and dialects like Dari and Pashto — were a phone call away. An assortment of fresh produce, dried legumes and canned goods was stocked on the shelves. And non-English-speaking participants could point to signs on the wall — of a lamb, pig, cow, turkey and fish — to choose cuts of meat.  

There were problems to solve, too. Staff placed signs and cones around no-parking zones, and have expanded pantry hours to keep the flow of traffic moving. 

Romano attended a November meeting of the Oakcliffe Community Organization, which represents residents of the South Oakland enclave, to announce the changes to neighbors who complained.  

Johnson said neighbors who called police to “intentionally ticket” vulnerable participants aren’t helping. She described the plight of a low-income woman who stayed away from the pantry for weeks after she was fined $50 for a parking violation.  

“It’s affecting the people that are already here to receive help, and who need it the most — especially her,” she said. “And I felt so bad because there was nothing we could do.” 

Elena Zaitsoff, vice president of the Oakcliffe group, declined to comment on behalf of residents. She said CHS leadership is welcome to keep attending meetings to update the community. 

Johnson hung a large sign near the pantry entrance that reads “Welcome” in 17 languages. After clashes with neighbors and a recent xenophobic comment from one participant to another, she wanted refugees and immigrants to know “that they can come here [and] we're going to try to accommodate their needs … as much as possible.”    

One of her biggest hurdles? Sourcing halal meat, which is expensive and hard to find in the charitable food system. 

Working toward a charitable food system for all 

Halal is the Arabic word for “permitted.” 

It applies to anything that’s allowed under Islamic law, but it’s most often used to describe food, said Asma Ahad, the director of halal market development at IFANCA, an Illinois-based halal certification organization. 

An animal must be slaughtered by a Muslim using the proper method, which is considered more humane, according to IFANCA guidelines. Pork isn’t allowed, so Muslims typically eat halal beef, lamb or chicken. Suppliers avoid cross-contamination with non-halal foods.  

“We see more halal-specific diets than anything,” said Johnson. 

But the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank, which supplies local pantries, hasn’t consistently offered halal meat. Johnson pulled up its online ordering form on a December afternoon. It allowed her to select kosher foods — eaten by followers of Jewish dietary law — but not halal ones. 

“I feel like our halal families are coming in every week and we have to constantly give them fish, fish, fish,” she said. “... I don’t feel like it’s fair” that Muslims who come to the pantry can’t choose from a wide array of meats.  

“I don’t think it was intentional,” she added.

It “definitely” wasn’t, said Erin Kelly, director of partner and distribution programs at the food bank. “Our inventory is constantly changing.” 

A food bank spokesperson wrote in an emailed statement that partner food pantries have “low demand” for halal beef and chicken because it’s more expensive. “Thus, we tend to not keep as big of a supply” in our warehouse. But it keeps some halal meat offsite for partners who need it and encouraged pantry staff to reach out when they can’t order the items online.

“We will work with CHS and other partners that serve similar populations to ensure they have the resources to serve their community,” said the spokesperson. 

Johnson asked the food bank for halal products in November. It responded to her request the day after PublicSource asked it questions about its halal inventory. She said the food bank offered to add halal chicken to its next delivery to the pantry.

A majority of food-insecure Muslims require or prefer halal foods, according to a poll by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding, a Michigan-based think tank that studies American Muslims. Ahad said food banks and pantries are “slowly” realizing they need to do more, “but there’s still not an understanding of … why doing it right and doing it on a regular basis is critical.” The problem needs to be recognized at the federal level “so it can trickle down,” she added. 

Advocates want to expand the list of halal and kosher foods available through The Emergency Food Assistance Program, a federal program which buys healthy foods and partners with states to distribute them via food banks and pantries. They’re pushing for more equity in food stamps, too.    

In the meantime, a handful of pantries in the region will keep trying to plug the holes in the system. Some are struggling to keep up with demand. 

The Islamic Center of Pittsburgh runs a delivery-based pantry that offers halal meat sourced from local butcher Salem’s Market and Grill. The sign-up system filled up in a day this month — a record since it started posting the forms online a few years ago.

“I was shocked to see this,” said Pantry Manager Issam Abushaban. “That goes to show you how many people are in need and how desperate the situation is.” 

He’s seen more families from Syria and Afghanistan at the mosque lately. “We tend to be a comfort zone for people who need help when they come from other places,” he added.  

The Squirrel Hill Food Pantry, run by JFCS, is one of the few pantries in the county that’s open five days a week. It’s built up a network of suppliers — local and in New York — to keep shelves stocked with kosher and halal foods. Refugees often receive their first supplemental foods from the pantry, which sources culturally appropriate produce for them such as tomatillos, plantains and mangoes. Staff said they tend not to use canned goods.   

“We’ve been doing this a long time,” said Gold, the JFCS executive. 

But there’s still more to learn: “We were buying the wrong kind of lentils” for Afghan families, she said.  

CHS secured a $51,000 grant from McAuley Ministries last month to buy halal meat and other foods. It’s awaiting the funds, searching for a local supplier and keeping a dedicated halal freezer ready.  

Paiwandi, the father of four from Afghanistan, will be glad to have some options. 

“We just want to have food which is halal for Muslims,” he said. “Chicken, cow and fish meat.” 

If you need food assistance, dial 211 or find resources here.  

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @venuris.

This story was fact-checked by Delaney Adams. 

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

The post Oakland Food Pantry faces ‘a really tough balance’ between emerging needs, tight supplies, neighborhood norms appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Mario’s family was kicked off Medicaid this year. 

Beechview Points of Pride
PublicSource maps and chronicles the strengths of diverse communities

When he reported a new income source, he learned that his family — including his two children — no longer qualified for health insurance through UPMC for You, a Medicaid managed care plan. 

And buying marketplace coverage is out of the question: Most plans would cost him up to $300 per family member. That works out to more than $1,200 per month — a cost he can’t afford on top of his mortgage and other expenses. 

“It’s too much money, you know?” he said, shaking his head.  

PublicSource is withholding Mario’s last name because he comes from a mixed-immigration status household. His daughters, 13 and 5, were born in the U.S. They’ve been without health insurance for most of the year. 

Despite their lack of health coverage, Chelsea, his eldest daughter, was sitting on a doctor’s exam table. Mario had brought her to a mobile clinic in Beechview for a free COVID booster and exam for her school health record. 

The best part of their experience? The doctor attending to Chelsea, Dr. Diego Chaves-Gnecco, is a Spanish speaker. Mario — who knows English, but prefers to speak his native Spanish — was able to directly communicate with a provider about his daughter’s health. 

“It’s just better because he speaks in my own language,” he said. “I feel comfortable,” he added, gesturing to his daughter. “I think she feels comfortable as well.” 

Asking questions and advocating for yourself or your loved one is an essential part of receiving healthcare. Some take it for granted, but it’s a process that many people with limited English proficiency, including many immigrants, struggle with. 

Experts say it’s hard for non-English speakers to navigate the byzantine American healthcare system — especially if they’re used to universal coverage in another country. And if they’re undocumented, they won’t qualify for public health insurance in Pennsylvania without proof of a serious health condition. The state excludes at least 10,000 undocumented children from its Children’s Health Insurance Program, according to an estimate by child advocates. 

In Beechview, doctors from Salud Para Niños — a bilingual pediatric clinic at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh — have teamed up with staffers from local nonprofit Casa San José to provide primary care to uninsured kids. Many travel from all over Western Pennsylvania to access the free, bilingual and bicultural pediatric care they bring to the South Hills neighborhood that’s become a hub for Spanish-speaking people in the region.

An ‘invisible’ community  

Every Tuesday, a mobile medical van pulls up outside Casa San José on Broadway Avenue. It was parked across the street from the nonprofit’s office on a rainy morning in November. 

Described by staff as “the care mobile,” the van is operated by Children’s Hospital, but was paid for by the Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation and the Ronald McDonald House Charities. It has a tiny nurse’s station, two cheerfully painted exam rooms, and a patient waiting area in the style of a four-seat arrangement on a passenger train. 

There was enough room to accommodate the team of four — Chaves-Gnecco, a nurse and two drivers — working that day. They attended to several families with children, who arrived for their appointments between 9 a.m. and noon. 

There was Alba, who moved to Beechview in February from Santa Marta, a city on Colombia’s Caribbean coast. She brought her 11-year-old son, Edward, who has asthma, for a check-up and free inhaler supplied by the clinic. Joselyn arrived next with her son, Justin, 8, who needed childhood immunizations. Chelsea was the last patient on the schedule.

PublicSource is withholding their last names to protect patient privacy.

Chaves-Gnecco is the driving force behind the operation. He’s a pediatrician from Bogotá, Colombia who came to Pittsburgh for specialty training in the late 1990s. He planned to leave after a year, but changed his mind and did a pediatric residency at Children’s Hospital, choosing a track that would help him understand the social and environmental factors that drive health outcomes. It was training that would prepare him to serve communities of color like his own, which he described as “invisible” in the region. 

There are more than 13,000 Latinos in the City of Pittsburgh and more than 31,000 Latinos in Allegheny County, but “you’re still hearing that there are no Latinos” here, said Chaves-Gnecco. That’s partly because the county lacks traditional barrios — a term for American neighborhoods with concentrations of Spanish-speaking immigrants, he said. The group makes up just 2.5% of the county’s population, compared to Los Angeles County’s 49%, according to census data. 

But it’s an important and fast-growing population, he added. Latinos in the county grew by more than 80% between 2010 and 2020 — far more than the 2% total population growth, according to a county report. Latinos here also tend to be younger: Just 7% are 65 or older, compared to 19% of all people in the county.   

Chaves-Gnecco founded Salud Para Niños — “Health for the Children” — to meet the healthcare needs of those young people. It opened more than 20 years ago as a bilingual clinic at Children’s Hospital in Pittsburgh’s Oakland neighborhood. He was helping a lot of kids, but wasn’t reaching the undocumented ones, some of whom, he said, “will never qualify” for subsidized health insurance under current Pennsylvania law. 

“And that’s kind of sad because that’s not the case for other states,” he said, pointing out that California, Washington and others have expanded coverage to include undocumented people. 

Immigrants and people who face language barriers are more likely to be uninsured and less likely to seek primary care, said Drishti Pillai, the director of immigrant health policy at KFF, a San Francisco-based health policy research organization. Without access to preventative services, they might develop a health condition that goes untreated for a long time, which could lead to a trip to the emergency room.  

“By then the situation could likely have gotten much worse, much more expensive to treat, and it theoretically could incur more costs to the healthcare system,” she added.

To keep that from happening to uninsured kids, Chaves-Gnecco and his team took the care mobile to Beechview in early 2020,  just as the world was shutting down to prevent the spread of COVID-19. That year, Salud Para Niños cared for more uninsured kids than ever. Now the program does about 360 uninsured patient visits per year. 

‘Linguistically affirming care’ for families 

“Oh, no!” yelled Justin, the third-grader, when he spotted the nurse carrying a tray of syringes toward him. 

Rose Wise laughed over Justin’s antics in the exam room. A longtime pediatric nurse at Children’s Hospital, she loves her shifts on the care mobile because “it eliminates the barriers to healthcare,” including cost, transportation and language barriers. 

Justin and his mother, Joselyn, are uninsured. She had been taking him to a low-cost clinic in Squirrel Hill, but heard from staffers at Casa San Jose that a Spanish-speaking doctor was treating kids right where she lived in Beechview.

That day was Justin’s first appointment with Chaves-Gnecco, who gave him a physical and caught him up on his vaccinations. He told Joselyn in Spanish that her son was healthy and in good shape to play sports at school. She plans to bring Justin back to the care mobile. 

“Thanks to this type of clinic, we have the possibility to access a doctor,” she said, speaking through Chaves-Gnecco’s translations. “This clinic is very valuable for the community. It’s very important.” 

Joselyn and Justin’s experience is what pediatrician and assistant professor Dr. Maya Ragavan calls “linguistically affirming care.” It creates a safe, supportive environment in which patients and their families can express their identities. Affirming care started as a framework for treating LGBTQ+ patients, but it can be applied to immigrants, people of color and other marginalized groups.  

Ragavan speaks Spanish and occasionally treats patients on the care mobile. She’s also a health equity expert whose research shows that affirming care can help improve health outcomes for immigrants. Too often, families don’t get that kind of care, she said, adding that it’s bad practice to expect family members to interpret for their loved ones. That leaves the burden on the family to advocate for a certified interpreter. 

Chelsea, Mario’s daughter, said she had to translate for her parents in other healthcare settings. 

“That’s really hard and really unfair,” said Ragavan. “… It’s the healthcare system that does that [to immigrant families].”

Chaves-Gnecco, on the other hand, built a system that ensures families receive affirming care “from start to finish,” she said, from a Spanish-speaking scheduler to fully translated health manuals. 

“I love the way that he can communicate with my parents,” Chelsea said. “Anything that I shouldn’t [have to] know to explain, he explains it for them.” 

Non-Spanish-speakers are also welcome at the care mobile, which is equipped with a tablet that provides virtual interpretation services for more than 100 languages, said Chaves-Gnecco. And the team is working with community partners like Casa San José to better accommodate Latinos whose first language is indigenous — a growing population here, according to a county report. 

A trusted community partner

Across the street from the van, Constanza Henry was helping people who were crowding into Casa San José’s tiny lobby. Some had only been in the U.S. for one week, she said. 

Henry is Casa San José’s community health and wellness coordinator. She works with providers to hold free clinics in or near the nonprofit’s office. Her efforts helped bring vaccines, mammograms and primary care to adults and children in Beechview.

Nearly a third of immigrant adults said a community health center is their usual source of healthcare in a recent survey. That jumps to about two-fifths among immigrants who are uninsured, undocumented or have limited English proficiency, said Pillai, the KFF researcher. 

Of all the doctors who donate their time to Casa San José’s programs, only the ones from Salud Para Niños can speak Spanish, said Henry. She often has to translate for patients and providers at the other clinics. It’s why Chaves-Gnecco is one of the most beloved doctors in the community, she added, and in such demand that he sometimes has to turn patients away. 

“It’s also very frustrating, not having all of the resources you would like to have,” said Henry, an immigrant herself from Mexico City. “Or just thinking that in our countries, if you go to the dentist, they won’t charge you so much and they will help you immediately.”  

Chaves-Gnecco said Colombia provides healthcare to immigrants, refugees and unhoused people. He dreams of universal coverage in the United States — of a system that doesn’t punish uninsured children.  

“It’s no secret to anybody that if you don’t have health insurance in this country, sometimes you might end up losing your car … [or] your home,” he said. “That is a really huge problem. And I feel that we should do better for our community in general, for all Americans … and provide health insurance for everybody.”

Back in the care mobile, the team wrapped up with Mario and Chelsea.  

Wise, the pediatric nurse, said Chelsea could have her pick from the clinic’s supply of blankets. She chose a cozy-looking fleece one in a butterfly pattern. It shielded her as she climbed down the clinic’s steps and stepped out into one of the coldest, wettest mornings this fall.   

The locations and hours of operation for Salud Para Niños can be found here in English y aquí en español. 

Correction: Tom Skemp’s name was misspelled in an earlier version of this story.

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @venuris.

This story was fact-checked by Ladimir Garcia. 

Translation by Zulma Michaca, a bilingual professional living in Riverside County, Calif., with family ties in Pittsburgh. She can be reached at z.michaca123@gmail.com.

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

The post In Beechview, a free bilingual clinic cares for children of immigrants appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

A la familia de Mario le quitaron Medicaid este año.

Beechview Puntos de Orgullo
FuentePública (PublicSource) mapea y relata las fortalezas de comunidades diversas.

Después de que él reportó una nueva fuente de ingresos, descubrió que su familia – incluyendo sus dos niñas – ya no calificaba para seguro médico a través de UPMC Para Ti (UPMC for You), un plan que administra servicios de Medicaid.

Y es impensable comprar cobertura médica del mercado: La mayoría de los planes le costarían hasta $300 por cada miembro de la familia. Eso sería más de $1,200 al mes – un gasto que no puede solventar encima de su hipoteca y sus otros gastos.

“Es demasiado dinero, ¿sabes?” él dijo, sacudiendo la cabeza.

FuentePública (PublicSource) está reteniendo el apellido de Mario porque él viene de un hogar con estatus migratorio mixto.  Sus hijas, de 13 y 5 años, nacieron en EE. UU. Ellas no han tenido seguro médico durante la mayor parte del año.

A pesar de no tener cobertura médica, su hija mayor, Chelsea, estaba sentada en una mesa de examinación médica. Mario la trajo a una clínica móvil en Beechview para un refuerzo gratis contra el COVID y un examen médico para su expediente escolar.

¿La mejor parte de la experiencia? El doctor que asiste a Chelsea, el Dr. Diego Chaves-Gnecco, habla español. Mario – habla inglés, pero prefiere hablar en su español nativo – pudo comunicarse directamente con un proveedor acerca de la salud de su hija.

“Simplemente es mejor porque habla en mi propio idioma,” él dijo. “Me siento cómodo,” agregó, gestionando a su hija. “Creo que ella también se siente cómoda.”

Hacer preguntas y abogar por ti mismo, o abogar por tus seres queridos, es una parte esencial de recibir atención médica. Algunos lo subestiman, pero es un proceso con el que batallan muchas personas con dominio limitado de inglés, incluyendo muchos inmigrantes.

Dicen los expertos que es difícil para que las personas que no hablan inglés naveguen el bizantino sistema americano de salud – especialmente si están acostumbrados a cobertura universal en otro país. Y si son indocumentados, no califican para seguro médico público en Pensilvania sin prueba de una condición médica seria. El estado excluye al menos a 10,000 niños indocumentados de su Programa de Seguro Médico Infantil (Children’s Health Insurance Program), de acuerdo con un estimado de defensores de menores.

En Beechview, los doctores de Salud Para Niños – una clínica bilingüe pediatra en el Hospital Infantil de Pittsburgh UPMC (UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh) –se unen con personal de la organización sin fines de lucro local Casa San José para brindar atención médica a niños sin seguro médico. Muchos viajan de todas partes del Oeste de Pensilvania (Western Pennsylvania) para acceder la atención médica pediátrica gratis, bilingüe, y bicultural que traen al vecindario de South Hills y que se ha hecho un centro para personas que hablan español en la región.

Una comunidad ‘invisible’

Cada jueves, un camión médico móvil llega a la Casa San José en la Avenida Broadway. Estaba estacionado al otro lado de la calle de la oficina de la organización sin fines de lucro una mañana lluviosa de noviembre.

Descrita por el personal como “el camión que cuida” (“the care mobile”), es dirigido por el Hospital Infantil (Children’s Hospital), pero fue pagado por la Fundación Pingüinos de Pittsburgh (Pittsburgh Penguins Foundation) y la Casa de Caridades Ronald

McDonald (Ronald McDonald House Charities). Tiene una pequeña estación de enfermeras, dos cuartos coloridos de examinación, y una sala de espera para pacientes con el estilo de un tren con asientos para 4 pasajeros.

Había suficiente espacio para acomodar al equipo de cuatro — Chaves-Gnecco, una enfermera, y dos conductores — que trabajaban ese día. Ellos atendieron a varias familias con niños que llegaron a sus citas entre las 9 a.m. y el mediodía.

Estuvo Alba, quien se mudó a Beechview en febrero desde Santa Marta, una ciudad en la costa caribeña de Colombia. Ella llevó a su hijo de 11 años, Edward, que tiene asma, para que le hicieran un examen médico y le dieran un inhalador gratis suministrado por la clínica. Joselyn llegó después con su hijo, Justin, de 8 años, que necesitaba vacunas infantiles. Chelsea fue la última paciente programada.

FuentePública (PublicSource) retiene sus apellidos para proteger la privacidad de pacientes. 

Chaves-Gnecco es la fuerza impulsora detrás de la operación. Él es un pediatra de Bogotá, Colombia, que vino a Pittsburgh a finales de los años 1990 para un entrenamiento especializado. Él tenía planeado irse después de un año, pero cambió de parecer e hizo una residencia pediátrica en el Hospital Infantil (Children’s Hospital). Este nuevo camino le ayudaría a entender los factores sociales y ambientales que afectan a la salud. El entrenamiento le preparó para atender a las comunidades minoritarias como la suya, que él describió cómo “invisibles” en la región.

Hay más de 13,000 Latinos en la Ciudad de Pittsburgh (City of Pittsburgh) y más de 31,000 Latinos en el Condado de Allegheny, pero “todavía se escucha decir que no hay Latinos” aquí, dijo Chaves-Gnecco. En parte, eso es porque no hay “barrios”– un término en inglés que designa vecindarios americanos con concentraciones de inmigrantes que hablan español, él dijo. Este grupo representa sólo el 2.5% de la población del condado, comparada al 49% del Condado de Los Ángeles, de acuerdo a datos del censo.

Pero es una población importante y que aumenta rápidamente, agregó. Los Latinos en el condado crecieron por más del 80% entre el 2010 y el 2020 – mucho más que el crecimiento de 2% del total de la población, de acuerdo con un informe del condado. Los Latinos aquí también suelen ser más jóvenes: sólo el 7% tienen 65 años o más, comparado con el 19% de toda la gente del condado.

Chaves-Gnecco fundó Salud Para Niños — “Health for the Children” — para atender las necesidades médicas de esos jóvenes. Empezó hace más de 20 años como una clínica bilingüe en el Hospital Infantil (Children’s Hospital) en el vecindario de Oakland en Pittsburgh. Estaba ayudando a muchos niños, pero no conseguía llegar a los niños indocumentados, algunos de los cuáles, según dijo, “nunca calificarán” a seguro médico subsidiado, bajo la ley actual de Pensilvania.

“Y eso es algo triste porque ese no es el caso en otros estados,” él dijo, destacando que California, Washington y otros han ampliado su cobertura para incluir a personas indocumentadas.

Los inmigrantes y las personas con barreras lingüísticas tienen una probabilidad más baja de tener seguro y buscar atención médica, dijo Drishti Pillai, la directora de pólizas de salud para inmigrantes en KFF, una organización basada en San Francisco que investiga pólizas de salud. Sin acceso al servicio preventivo, pueden desarrollar una condición médica y estar mucho tiempo sin recibir tratamiento, lo que puede convertirse en un viaje a la sala de emergencia.

“Para entonces, la situación puede haber empeorado, se hace mucho más cara de atender, y en teoría podría implicar más gastos para el sistema médico,” agregó.

Para prevenir que eso les pase a niños sin seguro médico, Chaves-Gnecco y su equipo llevaron el camión que cuida (“the care mobile”) a Beechview a principios del 2020, justo cuando el mundo se cerraba para prevenir el contagio del COVID-19. Ese año, Salud Para Niños atendió a más niños sin seguro médico que nunca. Ahora el programa provee alrededor de 360 visitas al año a pacientes sin seguro médico.

‘Atención lingüísticamente afirmativa’ para las familias   

“¡Ay no!” gritó Justin, de tercer grado, cuando vio que la enfermera venía hacia él con una bandeja de jeringas.

Rose Wise se reía del numerito de Justin en el cuarto de examinación. Una enfermera pediatra por mucho tiempo en el Hospital Infantil (Children’s Hospital), a ella le encantan sus turnos en el camión que cuida (“the care mobile”) porque “elimina las barreras a la atención médica,” incluyendo el costo, la transportación, y las barreras lingüísticas.

Justin y su madre, Joselyn, no tienen seguro médico. Ella lo había llevado a una clínica de bajo-costo en Squirrel Hill, pero supo a través del personal de Casa San José que un médico que habla español atiende a niños en Beechview, justo donde ella vivía.

Ese día era la primera cita de Justin con Chaves-Gnecco, quien le hizo un examen físico y puso sus vacunas al día. Le dijo a Joselyn en español que su hijo estaba sano y en buena condición para jugar deportes en la escuela. Ella planea traer a Justin al camión que cuida (“the care mobile”) en el futuro.

“Gracias a este tipo de clínica, tenemos la posibilidad de tener acceso a un doctor,” ella dijo, hablando de las traducciones de Chaves-Gnecco. “Esta clínica es muy valiosa para la comunidad. Es muy importante.”La experiencia de Joselyn y Justin es lo que la pediatra y profesora adjunta Dr. Maya Ragavan llama “atención lingüísticamente afirmativa.” Crea un ambiente seguro y favorable donde los pacientes y sus familias pueden expresar sus identidades. Atención afirmativa empezó como un marco de atención para pacientes LGBTQ+, pero se puede aplicar a los inmigrantes, a las personas de color y a otros grupos marginalizados.

Ragavan habla español y ocasionalmente atiende a pacientes en el camión que cuida (“the care mobile”). También es una experta de la equidad de salud cuyas investigaciones demuestran que la atención afirmativa puede ayudar a mejorar los resultados de salud para los inmigrantes. Con mucha frecuencia las familias no reciben ese tipo de atención, dijo, agregando que es una mala práctica esperar que miembros de familia traduzcan para sus seres queridos. Eso deja la carga a la familia de abogar por un intérprete certificado.

Chelsea, la hija de Mario, dijo que ella tuvo que traducir para sus padres en otros establecimientos de atención médica.     

“Eso es muy difícil y muy injusto,” dijo Ragavan. “…Es el sistema de atención médica el que le hace eso [a las familias inmigrantes].”

Por otra parte, Chaves-Gnecco construyó un sistema que asegura que las familias reciban la atención afirmativa “de comienzo a fin,” dijo ella, desde programar las citas en español, hasta proveer manuales de salud completamente traducidos.

“Me encanta cómo él se puede comunicar con mis padres,” dijo Chelsea. “Cualquier cosa que yo no sepa explicar, él se lo explica.”

Aquellos que no son hispanohablantes también son bienvenidos al camión que cuida (“the care mobile”), ya que está equipado con una tableta que provee servicio de interpretación virtual en más de 100 lenguajes, dijo Chaves-Gnecco. Y el equipo está trabajando con socios comunitarios como Casa San José para adaptarse mejor a los Latinos cuyo idioma primario es una lengua indígena – una población creciendo aquí, de acuerdo con un reporte del condado.

Un socio comunitario de confianza

Al otro lado de la calle donde estaba el camión, Constanza Henry ayudaba a la gente que se amontonaba en el pequeño vestíbulo de Casa San José. Algunos solo llevaban en EE. UU. una semana, dijo.

Henry es la coordinadora de salud comunitaria y bienestar en Casa San José. Ella trabaja con proveedores para ofrecer clínicas gratuitas dentro o cerca de la oficina de la organización sin fines de lucro. Su esfuerzo ayudó a traer vacunas, mamografías y atención primaria para adultos y niños en Beechview.

En una encuesta reciente casi un tercio de los adultos inmigrantes dijeron que un centro médico comunitario es su fuente habitual de servicio médico . Eso sube a casi dos-quintos de inmigrantes sin seguro médico, indocumentados o con dominio limitado de inglés, dijo Pillai, la investigadora de KFF.  

De todos los doctores que donan su tiempo a los programas de Casa San José, solo los de Salud Para Niños pueden hablar español, dijo Henry. Ella frecuentemente tiene que traducir para pacientes y proveedores en otras clínicas. Esta es la razón por la que Chaves-Gnecco es uno de los doctores más queridos en la comunidad, ella agregó, y con tanta demanda que a veces tiene que rechazar pacientes.  

“También es muy frustrante, el no tener todos los recursos que quisieras tener,” dijo Henry, ella misma inmigrante de la Ciudad de México. “O solo pensando que, en nuestros países, si vas al dentista, no te van a cobrar tanto y te ayudarán inmediatamente.”

Chaves-Gnecco dijo que Colombia provee servicios de salud a los inmigrantes, refugiados y personas sin hogar. El sueña con cobertura universal en Estados Unidos – con un sistema que no castigue a los niños sin seguro médico.

“No es un secreto para nadie que si no tienes seguro médico en este país, a veces terminas perdiendo tu carro … [o] tu hogar,” dijo. “Es un gran problema. Y pienso que debemos hacer lo mejor para nuestra comunidad, para todos los americanos … y proveer seguro médico a todos.”

De vuelta al camión que cuida (“the care mobile”), el equipo terminaba con Mario y Chelsea.

Wise, la enfermera pediatra, le dijo a Chelsea que podía llevarse una de las cobijas de la clínica. Ella escogió una que se veía cómoda y parecía ser de lana con un diseño de una mariposa. Se cubría con ella mientras bajaba los escalones de la clínica y dio un paso hacía una de las mañanas más frías y mojadas del otoño.

Las ubicaciones y las horas de operación de Salud Para Niños están disponibles aquí en inglés y aquí en español.

Venuri Siriwardane es una reportera en FuentePública (PublicSource) de la salud y la salud mental. Puede ser contactada en venuri@publicsource.org o en X, la plataforma anteriormente conocida como Twitter, @venuris.

Los hechos de esta historia fueron revisados por Ladimir Garcia. 

Traducción de Zulma Michaca, profesional bilingüe experta viviendo en el Condado de Riverside, Calif., con familia en Pittsburgh. Para contactarla: z.michaca123@gmail.com.

Este reportaje ha sido posible por la Beca de Investigación Staunton Farm Reportando Salud Mental (Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship) y la Fundación Judía de Servicios Médicos (Jewish Healthcare Foundation).

The post En Beechview, una clínica bilingüe gratis atiende a hijos de inmigrantes appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Update (12/1/23): Coming off a cold snap, Allegheny County officials said they will open an emergency shelter if the temperature this season drops below 26 degrees. The shelter has been identified as the City of Pittsburgh’s Ammon Recreation Center in the Bedford Dwellings section of the Hill District.

The county’s Department of Human Services [ACDHS] announced on Nov. 30 that it has worked with the City of Pittsburgh and enacted a “Code Blue Action Plan” when temperatures drop below 26 between 4 p.m. and 8 a.m. The announcement came a day after the county’s Homeless Advisory Board recommended to ACDHS Director Erin Dalton and Chief Operating and Administrative Officer Lisa Frank that a threshold of 32 degrees be set and asked that they find more beds for the area’s overtaxed shelter system. 

Dalton previously declined to define the severe weather conditions that would spur the county to open an emergency facility. 

This is the first winter season in decades that the county declined to open the longtime Emergency Winter Shelter at the Smithfield United Church of Christ, Downtown.

This week, temperatures dropped to 19 degrees on Wednesday, according to NWS, and 21 degrees on Tuesday. Meanwhile, most shelters in the area reported at-capacity, according to the county’s Administrator of Homeless Services Andy Halfhill. But with no code blue in place, no extra measures were taken. 

ACDHS now recommends people in need of shelter during code blue events first go to Second Avenue Commons, where 40 beds are provided in an overflow area. When those spaces fill the county will transport people to the Ammon Rec Center.

Reported 11/15/23:

Winter shelter beds open tonight, but severe weather plan details still scant

The winter overflow shelter at Second Avenue Commons opens this evening, providing 40 beds to unhoused adults, according to the Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS]. 

The temporary overflow space will operate daily from 7 p.m. to 7 a.m. until March 15, 2024. Admission is first-come, first-serve and each guest will receive a mat, blanket, hot dinner and breakfast, and a locker to store their belongings, according to Pittsburgh Mercy, which operates the shelter. 

The county had closed the overflow shelter at Second Avenue Commons in September, but is bringing it back as part of a “severe weather action plan.”

ACDHS Director Erin Dalton told reporters the county was “really working hard on the shelter capacity” and that it would work with street outreach teams and law enforcement to “make sure people who are really staying outside know where to go for assistance.”

The county is partnering with the City of Pittsburgh to secure an additional emergency overflow facility in a location it would not disclose. It will open the facility if there is a utility problem at an existing shelter — such as a burst pipe or lack of heating — or if the countywide shelter system reaches capacity during extreme weather. 

Olga George, Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey’s press secretary, declined to comment because the city is still “working out some details” in the severe weather plan. 

In the event of an emergency, the Pittsburgh Downtown Partnership will shuttle unhoused people who arrive at Second Avenue Commons to the emergency facility. 

“We will get Port Authority buses to help run people to that place” if necessary, Dalton told PublicSource after a press conference this morning. “We will make sure people get there.” 

The county wants unhoused people to show up at Second Avenue Commons first so that it can fill overflow beds in the system before transporting people to the emergency space, according to ACDHS spokesperson Mark Bertolet. 

Dalton said the county will directly operate the emergency facility, but won’t hire additional full-time staff to do so. She said the county isn’t planning for emergency situations to be “so common as to need a full-time staff.” 

Dalton also could not define the severe weather conditions that would spur the county to open the emergency facility. She said ACDHS will “take our cues” from city and county emergency services, which set up a command center during extreme weather events. 

“It’s tricky, right?” she said of setting a threshold at which the emergency facility would open. “What if the low was 33, but there [was] two feet of snow on the ground?” 

In a press release issued last week, the county touted a 65% increase in year-round shelter capacity from two years ago, putting the county-wide bed count at 370. Bertolet said in an email that the increase reflects the addition of year-round beds at Second Avenue Commons in Uptown, CommUNITY Place in Homewood, FamilyLinks Downtown Outreach Center and Shelter [DOCS], and McKeesport Low Barrier Shelter. “Two years ago, McKeesport was winter-only, DOCS had fewer beds, and Second Ave and CommUNITY didn’t exist,” he added.

Bertolet confirmed that the county would not be reopening the emergency overflow shelter in the basement of Smithfield United Church of Christ in downtown Pittsburgh, which regularly hosted more than 100 people nightly. This marks the first winter in 25 years that the church will not open as a winter emergency shelter. 

The decision not to reopen Smithfield comes at a time when a variety of factors are contributing to housing instability in the county — including a lack of affordable housing, domestic violence, mental illness and substance use and addiction. During the week of Nov. 15, the number of people in emergency shelter programs in Allegheny County was up 84%, and the number of people experiencing unsheltered homelessness was up 89%, versus the same week two years ago, according to a county dashboard. It now shows 723 people in emergency shelters and 197 known to be unsheltered.

“There’s just nowhere to live,” said Annie Cairns, senior marketing and communications manager at Light of Life Rescue Mission, describing the affordable housing shortage in Pittsburgh. The North Shore-based nonprofit provides about 20 overflow beds, which are at capacity on most nights. 

It’s not always addiction or mental illness that brings people to Light of Life’s Voeghtly Street Shelter, she said, adding that other forces such as evictions, domestic violence and the rising cost of food are driving homelessness in the region. 

“We recently had an 88-year-old veteran come through our doors, and this is a person that holds four master’s degrees,” she said. “So, it’s very scary.”

Dalton said the county “will never have enough shelter” space unless it works to provide transitional housing and permanent affordable housing for people who are currently in the shelter system. She said ACDHS recently put out a request for proposals to create a supportive housing program for families and individuals experiencing homelessness.   

The county has not received additional federal or state funding to address the problem, Dalton said. That’s why it’s “balancing its investments” among temporary shelter and more permanent affordable housing options. 

“What should the pie chart look like?” she asked about that process, inviting the public to weigh in. 

Shelter locations and contact information can be found at connect.alleghenycounty.us.

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @venuris.

Stephanie Strasburg is a photojournalist with PublicSource who can be reached at stephanie@publicsource.org, on Instagram @stephaniestrasburg or on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, @stephstrasburg.

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

The post Updated: County, city will activate Ammon Rec backup shelter if temps drop to 26 appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Update (11/13/23): Allegheny County Executive-elect Sara Innamorato today called news of lawsuits against Adelphoi — the private, nonprofit contractor hired to run the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center — “deeply concerning,” calling transparency in youth detention “a main priority for our administration.”

“This sets off alarm bells,” Innamorato said when asked about PublicSource’s reporting on Adelphoi and the recent complaints filed against it in federal courts.

“I want to understand more of what’s going on and what we’re looking at,” Innamorato said, “and ultimately that’s why above all else, as we open up a detention facility, we have to make sure that there is public oversight like the Jail Oversight Board, that there’s community voice there, that we are investing in a way as a county so there is enough capacity there for highly trained staff, that there’s resource providers that have access — there’s just a lot of sunshine on that facility.”

Prior to Shuman’s 2021 closure, the county operated a Juvenile Detention Board of Advisors.

“The unfortunate reality is our history of administering Shuman isn’t a great record either,” Innamorato noted.

She stopped short of suggesting a reversal of the county’s contract with Adelphoi.

“We are going to look at the terms and see what we are bound to and what best serves the needs of the young people who are caught up in this system at the moment,” she said, adding that there are now “kids in the county jail and we want to make sure that we can get those kids out of that facility and into one that is specialized and geared toward the young people who are there.”

Allegheny County’s pick to run Shuman hit with negligence lawsuits

Reported 11/9/23: When Allegheny County announced in September that it would reopen its youth detention center, it praised the private contractor hired to operate it. 

“Adelphoi has a proven track record as a leading and highly respected agency” in caring for “delinquent and dependent children,” said President Judge Kim Berkeley Clark, of the Court of Common Pleas, in a press release. “This is a crucial step toward creating a safer and more supportive environment for juveniles in the county.”

That record includes accusations of failing to protect children from abuse, according to two civil lawsuits filed just days after Adelphoi Western Region signed a $73 million contract to hold arrested youth at the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center.   

One is a class-action complaint filed in federal court in Philadelphia, accusing Adelphoi USA — one of seven affiliated nonprofits based in Latrobe — of a broad pattern of “negligent staffing” and failing “to enact safety measures and other policies to protect the children.” As a result, according to the complaint, “vulnerable youth … were exposed to predators and abusers.”

The other complaint, filed in federal court in Harrisburg, seeks civil damages for the survivor of former Adelphoi Services employee Tabitha Dunn, who pleaded guilty to corruption of minors and endangering the welfare of children in relation to her work with a minor to whom she was assigned as an in-home worker. 

The attorneys who filed the suits told PublicSource their clients experienced severe trauma while in Adelphoi’s care and allege that some of the entities are responsible for failing to protect them from harm. 

It’s important that “the institutions harboring these abusers” are held accountable, said Renee Franchi, an attorney representing the young male in the case against Adelphoi Services.  

David Wesley Cornish, a Philadelphia attorney, filed the class-action suit on behalf of eight plaintiffs who allege they were abused by staff at Adelphoi facilities throughout the state. 

“It’s not just one or two people … that are saying this,” said Cornish. He said his clients “had never met each other,” but made similar accusations of mistreatment by Adelphoi staffers. 

The lawsuits — and another filed last year against Adelphoi Village in Westmoreland County court — raise questions about the plan for Shuman and speak to broader concerns about youth incarceration, which some advocates say exposes children to physical and mental harm and the risk of abuse.

Adelphoi said it can’t comment on pending civil complaints, but takes “extensive steps” to protect the children in its care, including training and supervising its staff and reporting incidents to Pennsylvania State Police and ChildLine, the state’s call center for reporting child abuse.  

“We remain committed to providing a safe and nurturing environment for every child under our care,” said Karyn Pratt, Adelphoi’s vice president of marketing and strategy development, in an email. 

Clark announced in September that Shuman — which closed in 2021 after the state revoked its license — will reopen under Adelphoi management. County and court officials signed a contract with Adelphoi that month. The center could begin holding youth again as soon as this winter if renovations to the facility are completed on schedule. 

Amie Downs, a spokesperson for the county, referred all questions about Adelphoi to the county’s court system. Joseph Asturi, a spokesperson for the county’s Court of Common Pleas, declined to answer questions, including how civil complaints might inform the court’s monitoring of Adelphoi’s work. 

How Adelphoi landed a $73 million contract to operate Shuman

Shuman first opened in 1974 in a brick building near the Allegheny riverfront in Lincoln-Lemington-Belmar. The county managed it for decades until the Pennsylvania Department of Human Services revoked its license for multiple violations. 

Walter Harris was 14 years old when he was first held there in the mid-1980s. He was growing up in Section 8 housing in the Hill District, and stole clothes and nice things he couldn’t afford. He was caught in a Sears store after closing time and charged with theft and trespassing. 

The idea of being locked up scared him, but he calmed down after arriving at Shuman and bonding with other kids. He was sent there about a dozen more times until he turned 18 in 1988. “After that, you’re prepared,” he said, describing youth detention as an onramp to his time in state and federal prisons as an adult. 

Harris’s experience gets to the core of a debate about how to help youth who’ve been arrested — and whether detention is the right approach. 

After Shuman closed, law enforcement leaders complained they had no place to put youth they deemed too dangerous to be released. Pittsburgh Mayor Ed Gainey even partly blamed spikes in gun violence — without citing evidence — on Shuman’s closure. “We should have never closed Shuman without a plan,” he told reporters after a triple homicide on the North Side. 

Advocates, on the other hand, pushed for approaches outside the carceral system, which disproportionately locks up Black people.  

“I don’t think there is any benefit or value in incarcerating children,” said Muhammad Ali Nasir, who goes by his emcee name, MAN-E, and is the advocacy, policy and civic engagement coordinator at 1Hood Media. The county should invest in non-carceral approaches, such as working to end poverty and investing in schools instead of reopening Shuman, he said. 

Under pressure from judges, law enforcement and other public officials, the county searched for a private operator to take over the site. It had “a strong preference” for one that would run a youth detention center, according to a request for proposals released last year.       

Enter Adelphoi, one of the largest youth service providers in the Pittsburgh region. It submitted a proposal to reopen and provide detention services at Shuman. The county accepted the bid and drew up a contract to pay Adelphoi $73 million over five years — an annual cost that’s 40% higher than what it paid to run the facility itself.     

Under the contract, Shuman will hold youth aged 10 to 20 who are from or found in the county. They may have been charged with serious offenses, deemed aggressive or at risk of leaving an unsecured facility, adjudicated delinquent or some combination of those. 

Read more about Adelphoi’s pledges to Allegheny County

County Council sued to block the plan, asserting its authority to approve or deny the use of county property. And advocates criticized the high price tag — which they said could instead go toward non-carceral programs — and lack of public oversight over the decision to reopen Shuman.     

“I don’t think that taxpayers have had enough input [and] I don’t think the kids who have gone through the juvenile legal system have had any input,” said Tanisha Long, Allegheny County community organizer for the Abolitionist Law Center. “This decision was made in the dark by the courts and [County Executive] Rich Fitzgerald.”

The county’s announcement stirred “mixed emotions” in Harris, now 52 and a member of the Elsinore Bennu Think Tank for Restorative Justice. He tries to help the youth of today by volunteering for ALC Court Watch, a team that observes court proceedings, including decertification hearings. And he’ll soon launch the Pittsburgh location of Fathers on the Move, a mentorship program for youth involved in the criminal justice system.   

“My mission is to make youth incarceration so rare that I have to find a new career,” he said. 

Though he believes Shuman should be reopened, he can’t be sure a private contractor who’s “out to make money” shares his mission.

“Who are they?” he asked about Adelphoi. “And what is their track record?” 

Who is Adelphoi and what is its track record? 

The Adelphoi nonprofits operate in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New York and Delaware. They’ve served youth in the Pittsburgh region for more than 50 years. 

Based in Latrobe, Adelphoi provides foster care, education, in-home services and youth detention to nearly all counties in the state. Across its seven entities, Adelphoi made over $68 million in total revenue in fiscal 2022, with its largest arm, Adelphoi Village, a group home business, pulling in about $44 million. Combined, the Adelphoi entities employ around 600, according to Pratt. More than 1,000 youth receive its services every day. 

Adelphoi declined a PublicSource request to tour one of its detention centers and did not make an executive available for an interview. Pratt, the group’s marketing executive, answered detailed questions via email.  

She said Adelphoi isn’t new to the county. It serves about 60 youth per year here, including those who need shelter or are in the foster care system. After Shuman closed, the county placed youth it wanted to detain in Adelphoi facilities in nearby counties, including group homes in Westmoreland County, she added. 

Pratt called the lack of available beds a “detention crisis” in the region. She drew a straight line between the closure of Shuman and an uptick in youth fleeing Adelphoi’s group homes. She said non-secure group homes provide “an inappropriate level of care” for some youth, which is why a detention center is badly needed.    

At least one longtime advocate for incarcerated people agrees. 

Richard Garland is desperate to keep kids out of adult prisons, which he said is where some will end up if they don’t receive services while they’re in the more rehabilitative juvenile justice system. There were 25 children in the Allegheny County Jail on Nov. 8. 

Garland, the executive director of Reimagine Reentry, which provides services to formerly incarcerated people, said Adelphoi is a “tried and tested” provider of therapy and other supportive services. He described having good experiences with them that date back to the 1990s, when he first started his violence prevention work.     

But he was alarmed by the allegations in the civil complaints, which PublicSource shared with him during a recent interview. “That sends up a real big red flag for me,” he said. 

Adelphoi’s care for ‘vulnerable’ children questioned

Franchi’s client — anonymized as A.M.M. in the civil complaint — was a child in the Bradford County foster care system when he encountered Dunn, an Adelphoi in-home worker at the time. The complaint alleges she groomed him via phone messages and during trips to his foster home. She was soon barred from contacting him by a Protection From Abuse order. 

“Adelphoi knew or should have known that Dunn had inappropriate contact” with the minor, according to the complaint, and the firm “did not take steps to intervene or protect” him.

The complaint says she eventually kidnapped him, withheld food and water from him, and repeatedly sexually and physically abused him. When Dunn let him drive, it alleges, he sped on a highway to try to get pulled over by police, leading to Dunn’s arrest.

Dunn’s attorney didn’t respond to a request for comment.

The suit seeks damages from Bradford County, a county caseworker and Adelphoi Services for being “indifferent to the risk of sexual victimization to children in county custody.”

Pratt said Adelphoi reported the abuse to state police and ChildLine, and was “wholly supportive of the legal process and consequences” imposed in the criminal case.  

The separate class-action lawsuit alleges a longstanding pattern of “negligent staffing” and cases of abuse dating to 1998. The class of the suit includes current or former residents of any Adelphoi juvenile facility who “were subjected to either physical, mental, and/or sexual abuse by any [Adelphoi] staff members … and/or either had their educational opportunities deprived,” according to the complaint.

It accuses Adelphoi USA, the parent organization, of failing to properly screen, train and supervise its employees, some of whom sexually and physically abused the plaintiffs. “Many of the children who were abused at Adelphoi USA were vulnerable, intellectually disabled, and already fleeing from abuse,” according to the complaint. The nonprofit’s staff “took advantage of children who had already been victims of sexual abuse and were at Adelphoi USA to seek healing.”

The complaint alleges Adelphoi USA also misrepresented the abuse as part of plaintiffs’ treatment. The abuse often took place during “therapeutic sessions,” which made the plaintiffs believe it was “normal” and “medically necessary,” the complaint says.

The complaint argues that attempts to deceive plaintiffs toll the statute of limitations to file claims for physical and sexual abuse.     

It was “almost impossible” for children to stop the abuse or get help because Adelphoi USA limited their phone usage and cut off their contact with the outside world, according to the complaint.  

Some amount of violence and abuse “is almost inevitable when you lock people up,” said Sara Goodkind, a professor at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Social Work. She added that some facilities are better-managed than others. 

“We’ve heard really concerning things about Adelphoi,” said Jessica Feierman, senior managing director of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia. But “those kinds of stories” aren’t unique to them and happen in public and private facilities across the state and country.  

How will Adelphoi operate Shuman?

Shuman has a long history of failing to protect young people from harm, according to a report, co-authored by Goodkind, that explored ways to end youth incarceration in the county after Shuman closed. 

The researchers interviewed young people — ranging in age from 14 to 27 — who were held at Shuman. They described moldy food, inadequate medical care and unsanitary conditions there. Many said staffers were abusive and predatory, though a few were helpful and supportive. One described Shuman as a place that “grooms kids for crime, not healing.” 

PublicSource asked Adelphoi if it believes it can do better. 

Pratt said Adelphoi “maintains the highest standards of care” across all its programs, including detention. Its management of Shuman will be trauma-informed, she said, though she didn’t specify what that will look like. 

Adelphoi will bring in UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh to provide nursing care and manage medication, which is a condition of its contract with the county. Medication errors were among the violations that led to the revocation of Shuman’s license.

The lawsuits raise questions about how Adelphoi will screen candidates for jobs at Shuman.   

Pratt said Adelphoi has already begun interviewing candidates for 25 open positions at Shuman. They’ll be screened via child abuse and criminal history checks, and their fingerprints will be run through the FBI database.  

She didn’t answer a question about how much Adelphoi will pay workers at all levels at Shuman, though she said wages would be competitive in the local market.

Goodkind said the least qualified and trained workers in a detention center tend to work undesirable shifts and often aren’t paid “more than you might get … for working at Target.” While all staff are capable of abuse, the risks are elevated with low-paid, undertrained “line staff,” she said.    

Adelphoi faced a labor shortage during the COVID-19 pandemic that forced it to scale back services and ask staff to work overtime, according to its most recent annual report.  

A civil complaint filed last year in the Westmoreland County Court of Common Pleas by plaintiff Timothy Rice alleges that insufficient staffing contributed to Adelphoi’s failure to protect him from a stabbing attack by three other residents when he was placed at Adelphoi Village in Latrobe.

“At the time of the stabbing, it is believed there was only one member on staff in the facility which is against standard policy,” said the complaint. 

The complaint alleges that proper Adelphoi policy requires at least two staff members to be on duty at all times to ensure the safety of residents. It also alleges that failures, including understaffing, allowed Rice’s attackers to possess a weapon despite one of them having a known violent past, and slowed the response to the attack. 

Rice’s attorney, Daniel Soom, declined to comment. 

Pratt said Adelphoi’s staffing issues have eased; it has seen a 65% decrease in open positions over the past four months. 

The county is paying Adelphoi a flat fee of $7,800 per day for 12 beds, with the goal of expanding to 60 beds for $39,000 per day. Pratt said that should reassure community members who are concerned about incentives for “maximizing the number of youth in the program.” 

Incentives to fill beds have backfired before in Pennsylvania: Luzerne County judges sent children to for-profit jails in exchange for kickbacks in the notorious “Kids for Cash” scandal, which didn’t involve Adelphoi. 

While a flat fee is good, it could still incentivize judges and other stakeholders to send more kids to Shuman, said Jeffrey Shook, a professor at Pitt’s School of Social Work. 

They could say, “We’re paying for it, we’ve got to move kids into this system,” he said, warning that “the deeper kids get into a system, the more likely they are to stay in a system and go into the adult system.”

Goodkind said it’s important to understand that detention facilities typically house young people for short periods of time before they’re adjudicated or found delinquent. That means many will be held at Shuman before it’s been determined that they’re guilty of an offense. 

She added it’s a common misconception in the community, and even among some political candidates, that detention centers provide long-term rehabilitative services. The average stay at Shuman was around 12 days when it closed, according to the county.  

Pratt said Adelphoi’s goal is to “minimize as much as possible” the amount of time youth spend in detention. That way, they’ll be placed into treatment plans that “most align with their unique needs.”  

But Long isn’t buying it.  

No matter how private detention contractors market themselves, she believes they will always “default” to a carceral approach. If they really wanted to help kids, they would do it “without the requirement of incarceration.”  

Harris said he recidivated after his time at Shuman because he was sent back to his traumatic home life with no support. He’d like to see a program for incarcerated youth “whose goal is to put themselves out of business.” If the county tried hard enough, it could work toward that goal, he said.  

“But a corporation can’t have it because they’re trying to make money.” 

Correction: The complaint filed by A.M.M. names as defendants Adelphoi Services Inc., Bradford County and a county caseworker. An editing error in an earlier version of this story indicated another defendant.

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org.

Tanya Babbar is an editorial intern at PublicSource and a junior at the University of Pittsburgh. She can be reached at tanya@publicsource.org. 

Charlie Wolfson contributed.

This story was fact-checked by Jack Troy.

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

Adelphoi’s pledges

Key points in the nonprofit firm’s role with, and promise to, Allegheny County, expressed in its contract and in responses to questions from PublicSource:  

• Adelphoi said it has an “impeccable” licensing history with the Pennsylvania Department of Education and Department of Human Services. It’s accredited by The Joint Commission, the nation’s oldest and largest independent healthcare accreditor.  
• About 79% of youth placed at Adelphoi facilities completed its programs in 2022 and 80% remained out of care one year after they were discharged.
• Adelphoi said it will provide youth held at Shuman with education, medical and dental care, mental health services, recreational opportunities and spirituality services. 
• Adelphoi’s contract with the county allows it to use “physical techniques” to manage crises at Shuman. Staff are trained to use “alternatives to restraint” first, but will use “passive restraint” in situations that pose “imminent danger to oneself or others,” according to Karyn Pratt, Adelphoi’s vice president of marketing and strategy development. All restraints are recorded via camera systems and reported to the placing agency.   
• Adelphoi will influence how courts and probation officers make decisions about youth in the criminal justice system. It will provide those stakeholders with a “high-level view of all clinical and assessment information” about a child. It will also provide that information to the treatment provider that a court or probation office selects for that child. 
• Elizabeth Miller is Adelphoi’s medical director and is responsible for clinical practice and overall care at Adelphoi facilities. She is a professor of pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh’s School of Medicine, and is chief of the Division of Adolescent and Young Adult Medicine at UPMC Children’s Hospital of Pittsburgh.

The post Updated: Innamorato hears ‘alarm bells’ in lawsuits against Adelphoi, picked to run Shuman appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Stephen J. Zappala Jr. will continue his quarter-century tenure as Allegheny County’s top prosecutor after surviving a well-financed challenge in a race that forced the lifelong Democrat to run as a Republican.

Zappala reversed the results of the Democratic primary, won by Matt Dugan, a former public defender. The incumbent stayed politically alive by receiving the Republican nomination, then won slightly more than 51% of General Election votes despite the county’s 2-to-1 Democratic registration edge.

“First and foremost, I want to thank the voters of Allegheny County,” Zappala told supporters at his campaign’s watch party. “I think it was more a referendum of us as a community.”

“We were up against a billionaire,” he continued, in reference to George Soros, the liberal philanthropist who largely funded his campaign rival. “We had to be competitive, not just financially

Zappala said voters are “aware of some of the problems we have and some of the things that need to be done,” calling the vote “a referendum on us as a community.”

In his seventh term as district attorney, he said he’d like to explore the development of a municipal authority for the South Side and the South Side Flats. He described the area as a regional asset and said that, “rather than argue about undermanning the Pittsburgh police and not helping them do their job, we’re going to look at it a little bit differently, in a little bit more broader manner.”

In regards to the Shuman Juvenile Detention Center, Zappala said the facility’s name and “the concept of a penitentiary in and of itself — that should disappear.” He has said that greater emphasis should be placed on providing juvenile offenders with education and support, and he referenced that in his speech. 

“We bring health care, education, and as a last resort, then we talk about detaining younger people, even though serious consideration has to be given because they are serious crimes that people are being accused of,” Zappala said. 

He also discussed the issue of homelessness, saying that under Pittsburgh mayors Bob O’Connor and Luke Ravenstahl, there were about 250 people characterized as being homeless, and most city police officers knew them. Zappala said that Pittsburgh was unprepared for its designation as a sanctuary city under Mayor Bill Peduto, which he said caused the population of unhoused people to grow to more than 1,000. 

Unhoused people, he said, are “being exploited by the nickel and dime drug dealer. So there’s a new market Downtown,” he said. “So there’s a lot we have to do tonight. We’re not going to fix everything, but we’re going to start tomorrow morning.”

Zappala thanked his finance team early in his speech. He said his campaign was “up against a billionaire,” referencing Soros’ roughly $1.8 million in support for Dugan’s campaign. “We had to be competitive, not just financially,” Zappala said. 

He said he faced “the national type of organization, the national type of commercials, the national media people that they bring to bear,” faulting Soros for “doing this all over the country,” and blaming such campaigns for liberal public safety policies and decline in cities like San Francisco. “I don’t know what the economic status of our county would be a year and a half from now if we continue to move in the same direction, but, which, by the way, we will not.

Not all welcome the news of Zappala’s political survival.

Corinn Lyon, 77, of Sheraden, said crime in the county also motivated her to vote — but it prompted her to vote against the DA candidate who positioned himself as tough on crime. 

The retired US Airways worker and registered independent voted for Dugan because we need “new blood” in the district attorney’s office. 

“[Zappala’s] been in there too long and I just don’t think he’s done enough,” she said.

That thinking, though, did not prevail at the polls.

Zappala became DA in 1998 after the judges of the county’s Common Pleas court elected him to fill a vacancy, and voters granted him a full term in the 1999 election. Then it was smooth political sailing for Zappala, who didn’t face a serious challenge until 2019, when he turned aside independent challenger Lisa Middleman with 57% of the vote.

Dugan — defeated tonight after besting Zappala in the Democratic Primary — earned the backing of local progressives who wanted to see Zappala’s career over, and perhaps more importantly, he earned the backing of Soros, who has funded numerous DA candidates throughout the country. The philanthropist bolstered Dugan with $700,000 worth of TV ads during the primary season and more than $1 million ahead of the General Election. Zappala raised considerable sums himself, including more than $600,000 ahead of his November rematch with Dugan, but it didn’t stack up with Soros’ support for Dugan.

“I would absolutely do it again,” Dugan told supporters at his campaign’s election watch party in Carnegie. 

He said his campaign fought for people in the criminal justice system “who are underserved, whose needs are under-met.”

“I stand here, proud of the campaign that we ran, proud of the message that we brought unapologetically across the county demanding reform in our system,” he said during his concession speech.

Zappala accepted the Republican nomination after Dugan defeated him in the Democratic primary, thanks to several thousand Republican write-in votes. He also accepted the endorsement of the Forward Party, the centrist-focused national political group fronted by former presidential candidate Andrew Yang.

The two candidates clashed in a heated campaign season this fall. Dugan assailed Zappala for being too tough on nonviolent offenders and Black defendants. Zappala said Dugan would likely be too lenient toward criminals as DA, and said he would be too beholden to Soros. 

Zappala is new to the GOP side of the ballot, and referred to himself in a debate as a “law and order Democrat,” but he has pulled support from traditional Republican donors and politicians. And while the ink is still drying on his party switch, he is the first Republican elected to countywide office (other than a county council at-large seat which is virtually guaranteed to the party) since 1999, when Jim Roddey was elected county executive.

Zappala campaign spokesperson Ben Wren said that voters in the county are deciding how far they’re willing to be pushed to the left. He said that Democrats are getting increasingly liberal and added that there is division in the county between what he referred to as city Democrats and Mon Valley Democrats.

Dugan, a Moon Township resident, worked in the public defender’s office from 2007 until this year, and served as chief public defender since 2020. 

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org. 

Emma Folts covers higher education at PublicSource, in partnership with Open Campus. She can be reached at emma@publicsource.org. 

Charlie Wolfson is PublicSource’s local government reporter and a Report for America corps member. He can be reached at charlie@publicsource.org.

The post Stephen Zappala wins DA race, pledges action on Downtown, South Side appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

Update (10/12/23): Allegheny County announced on Thursday, Oct. 12 that it received its supply of COVID-19, influenza and respiratory syncytial virus [RSV] vaccines. Community members can receive all vaccines at the county’s Immunization Clinic by appointment or on a walk-in basis. Call 412-578-8062 to schedule an appointment.

Reported 9/27/23:

The path to vaccine equity? Address 3 fears, study suggests.

Kristina Terrell took months to make up her mind before she received a COVID-19 vaccine.  

Terrell, who is immunocompromised, said she needed the time to consult her doctor: Would her health condition keep her from mounting a robust immune response to the vaccine? What side effects might she experience? And how were drugmakers able to bring the vaccines to market so quickly? 

Terrell is Black. Her doctor, who is white, welcomed her questions and patiently answered them. 

“She’ll let me talk through something 100 times until she’s blue in the face answering them,” said the 38-year-old from Garfield, who supports a large family that includes her mother and children. “There’s no barrier in her relationship with me and I’ve always felt that she’s had my best interests [at heart], although she doesn’t look like me.” 

Her doctor’s advice helped her make a decision: She took 10 family members to a mobile vaccine clinic at a community block party last year. They all received a first dose of the Pfizer vaccine and completed their primary vaccine series about a month later. 

Terrell said she has friends and family members who refused to be vaccinated. Their hesitancy is part of a problem that advocates have been trying to solve for more than two years: lower uptake of COVID vaccines in Black communities across Allegheny County.  

Vaccine hesitancy was reported by more than half of participants — all of whom were Black — in a recent study by researchers at the University of Pittsburgh and the Black Equity Coalition [BEC]. They surveyed nearly 400 Black adults in the county from September 2021 to January 2022 to understand drivers of that hesitancy, which the World Health Organization defines as a delay or refusal to get vaccinated despite the availability of vaccines. 

The researchers believe unvaccinated participants (about 23%) knew they were at risk because most wore masks to avoid a COVID infection. But they remained unvaccinated due to fear of illness (40%), side effects (26%) and not knowing the long-term effects of the vaccine (33%). Addressing their concerns might boost COVID vaccine uptake in Black and other communities of color, the researchers said in the study.

“We see [those reasons] as actionable,” said Ashley Hill, an assistant professor of epidemiology at Pitt, a BEC member and the lead author of the study. 

Addressing concerns amid ‘horrible rollout’

Less than 20% of Americans got the previous bivalent booster, with lower uptake among Black and Latino people.

The Pitt and BEC study was published last month in the journal Health Equity — just as providers, advocates and public health officials were gearing up for the rollout of the new monovalent COVID booster, which targets the Omicron variant XBB.1.5 and provides protection against EG.5, the dominant variant in the United States.   

The rollout of the new booster is off to a rocky start. Some people were turned away by pharmacies and other providers, who didn’t have the supply to honor their scheduled appointments. Others had trouble getting their health insurance to cover the cost of the shot. Because the federal Public Health Emergency ended in May, the U.S. government isn’t buying vaccine doses and distributing them to providers like it did during previous rollouts, leaving it to the commercial market. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said uninsured Americans can still access free COVID vaccines through its Bridge Access Program. 

“This horrible rollout seeks to upend all the good work we’ve done these past three years,” said Miracle Jones, the director of advocacy and policy at 1Hood, which worked to combat health misinformation and disinformation through social media campaigns and other programming. 

“I can’t direct a community member to go to the Health Department to get a vaccine right now,” she added. 

The county ordered booster doses “within the first hour” after they were made available, said Neil Ruhland, a spokesperson for the Allegheny County Health Department. The doses had not arrived as of Tuesday and were not yet available at the county’s Immunization Clinic. The county will announce the availability of doses when it receives them, said county spokesperson Amie Downs.   

Despite the bumpy rollout, Hill said healthcare providers in the region can use the study’s findings to work toward better uptake of this latest booster in Black communities. Doctors, nurses, physician assistants and other providers should encourage patients of color to ask questions, listen to their concerns, validate their feelings and provide factual information.   

“I think there’s certainly lessons learned,” she said. “[We should] really do the things that we saw worked effectively and not do the things that we saw were harmful or did not work.” 

Meeting valid fears with communication 

Vaccine hesitancy among Black people is a complicated issue with many causes, including misinformation, medical racism and previous vaccine rollouts that didn’t center communities disproportionately affected by COVID. The kind of patient education Terrell’s doctor provided is just one way to boost vaccine uptake. Another way is to bring the vaccines to people who don’t have the means to leave their homes and navigate bureaucratic healthcare systems. 

Ruth Howze has been doing that work as BEC’s community engagement specialist since COVID vaccines became available in 2021. She organized mobile vaccine clinics — including the one Terrell went to — during previous rollouts and will do so again this fall with BEC’s partners. The clinics will target the most vulnerable community members, including elderly, unhoused and homebound people. 

“Inequity is not new with this new rollout,” said Howze, a veteran public health educator who got her start during the early years of the HIV/AIDS crisis. Doctor’s offices and even federally qualified health centers were “holding tight on their vaccinations” during previous rollouts and requiring people to come to them. It’s why BEC had to “get creative” to secure vaccine doses by partnering with small pharmacies who were willing to go into communities.        

When Hill and the other researchers had trouble recruiting participants for the study, they turned to Howze for help. She took the survey to hair salons, barber shops, laundromats and community events, where she faced questions about how the researchers would use the data.   

Howze said people asked “What do you need this information for?” and “What are you going to do with it?” She thought recruitment would be easy because of the relationships she had built in the community, but she underestimated people’s lack of trust in the medical establishment, which she said includes large institutions such as Pitt.

“And it was all pretty valid,” she added.   

Hill agreed that the participants’ concerns about how their data would be used were rooted in real issues. 

During focus groups separate from the study, Hill said some participants brought up the infamous Tuskegee Syphilis Study as a reason for their distrust of the government and medical professionals. (Thomas Parran Jr., the founding dean of Pitt’s Graduate School of Public Health, was a driving force in the Tuskegee study.) Others “talked quite openly” about their knowledge of doctors who experimented on slaves in the antebellum period for medical technology and innovation. 

Researchers at UCLA found that vaccine hesitancy among Black Americans may hinge more on their present-day, unsatisfactory experiences in the healthcare system.  

Talking to Black doctors may help build trust and inspire some folks to get vaccinated, said Hill, citing the success of 1Hood and the Gateway Medical Society’s “Ask a Black Doctor” series. It created virtual forums that linked community members with BIPOC doctors who answered their questions about vaccines and other health issues. The series ran for more than a year during the early part of the pandemic. 

Jones, who moderated some of the “Ask a Black Doctor” discussions, said she knows community members — including some on 1Hood’s own team — who got vaccinated because of the advice those doctors provided. But there were some holdouts, she said, which meant there was more work to be done. 

Non-Black providers and public health officials bear the most responsibility to do that work, she added. 

“They have all the responsibility, because they created all the problems, right?” she said. Those providers should examine their approach to healthcare and ask, “Is it rooted in white supremacy and is it harming folks?”

Terrell plans to get the new booster, but doesn’t know when one will be available to her due to the issues with the rollout — a process which resurfaces some of the very questions at the root of vaccine hesitancy in the Black community. 

“Who actually is getting the first order of supplies?” she said. “Who is that meant for, and what communities are they attempting to provide them for? That’s my concern more than anything else.”          

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org. 

This story was fact-checked by Jamie Wiggan. 

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

The post Updated: Allegheny County receives vaccine supplies appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

When a victim of gun violence is brought to UPMC Presbyterian in Oakland, a nurse in the trauma center might rush to their station and pick up a business card from Richard Garland. 

They might use a smartphone to scan the QR code on the card, which pulls up a form they can fill out and send to Garland’s team at Reimagine Reentry, where he serves as executive director. The form provides crucial information about the victim, including their name, age, where they were shot and whether they’ve consented to receiving services from the nonprofit, which is based in the Hill District. 

Within 24 hours, a violence prevention coach from Reimagine will visit their bedside and offer services such as therapy, job training and housing assistance. The goal, said Garland, is to intercept victims before they retaliate — a practice that could result in fewer gun-related homicides and help stop the cycle of violence in Allegheny County communities.      

Garland and just one other person on his team, Gina Brooks, did this work on their own for years. It would take them up to three days to reach a victim’s bedside, which meant fewer opportunities to help before they were discharged. But an infusion of cash from the county — more than $370,000 over the last year — has changed that. Garland was able to pay for the QR code system and hire three staffers for Reimagine’s hospital-based violence intervention program. Now his team is able to reach victims across four hospitals in less than a day. 

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“Being able to go to these hospitals at the drop of a hat has changed things significantly,” Garland said. 

“Just us being able to have this funding has enabled me to take things to another level.”

A QR code for Reimagine Reentry’s CommUnity Peace hospital-based violence intervention program, on Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023, in Gina Brooks’ Reimagine Reentry Hill District office. The cards are attached to nursing stations in the city’s trauma wards, and a simple scan starts Reimagine’s violence prevention efforts. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

It’s been six months since the county announced it would commit $50 million over five years to reduce community violence, which happens between unrelated people outside their homes and disproportionately affects youth in communities of color. The Allegheny County Department of Human Services [ACDHS] selected 13 local organizations through two requests for proposals to carry out its plan: to treat violence like an infectious disease. The effort adapts programs that have proven to be successful in other cities — including three from Chicago — to “high-priority areas” in the county. 

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An act of violence is rarely limited to one neighborhood, said Rev. Paul Abernathy. “If we don’t have a coordinated effort across community lines, it will be difficult to address the violence in our region.” 

Abernathy is CEO of the Neighborhood Resilience Project based in the Hill District. The county appointed the organization to be a “countywide convener” and awarded it more than $177,000 over the last year to bring all stakeholders together to collaborate and share resources. 

Leaders at some of the involved anti-violence organizations told PublicSource they’re hiring staff and building out programs. Some said the funding is a good start, but isn’t enough to address the root causes of violence such as poverty and structural racism. Others aren’t counting on the funding to continue beyond the county’s five-year commitment. 

Read more: Vote delayed on proposed Allegheny County housing health code changes

‘This is the most we’ve ever gotten, but it still isn’t enough’  

Lee Davis stood on Margaretta Street in Braddock on a sunny afternoon in late August. Behind him was a memorial at the edge of a grassy patch called New Hope Green Space, which belongs to the local Baptist church. 

On the night of Aug. 27, two teens were shot and killed on the spot, which was now adorned with candles, stuffed animals and pinwheels that spun in the wind. Nazir Parker and Rimel Williamson were both 17-year-old seniors at Woodland Hills High School. A third teen was found shot in a nearby home and was taken to a hospital. Davis said he was in stable condition. 

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Davis is the director of violence prevention for Greater Valley Community Services [GVCS]. The organization will receive more than $1.3 million from the county over the next year to adapt two models to the Mon Valley: Cure Violence, which trains trusted community figures to work with at-risk youth, and the Rapid Employment and Development Initiative [READI], a transitional jobs program for at-risk men.  

Davis and about 30 members of the Greater Valley Coalition Against Violence gathered at the site of last month’s shooting to peacefully object to what happened. The practice is recommended by Cure Violence, which calls for violence prevention workers to “change norms” by visibly responding to every shooting in their coverage area. 

“People just drive by and beep and see that you’re out here,” he said, waving at a school bus as it drove past. “It lets them know that you care.” 

During an interview that took place before the shooting, Davis said the county’s funding will help GVCS “enormously” as it continues the violence prevention work that he said is helping to reduce gun-related homicides in the area. There were 7 homicides in the Mon Valley in 2020 — the lowest number since 2007, according to the county Office of the Medical Examiner. But homicide numbers have climbed since then: There were 11 reported homicides in the area this year through July, according to the county’s homicide dashboard. The number of countywide homicides — most of which are gun-related — jumped from 93 in 2019 to 128 in 2022. The victims are mostly Black men and boys.    

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Davis said GVCS has hired 10 people for its Cure Violence program — called CURE V.I.B.E. — and plans to hire eight people for its READI program, called Achieving Change Through Transitional Employment Services [ACTES]. Both programs will be staffed by site supervisors, program managers, therapists and outreach workers. 

But “I see a disaster” if the county doesn’t continue the funding beyond five years, he said, predicting that community violence will increase if funding for violence prevention dries up. “We probably need 10 or 15 [years] because we all know this stuff didn’t happen overnight. This is the most we’ve ever gotten, but it still isn’t enough.” 

From top left: Lee Davis leads a meeting of the Greater Valley Coalition Against Violence in Braddock on Aug. 29; Davis stands outside the building after the meeting; community members created a memorial on the spot where two teens were killed in Braddock on Aug. 27; Davis waves at a school bus during a Cure Violence response to the shooting on Aug. 31. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

Rashad Byrdsong, who mentored Davis in the 1990s, agrees that the funding doesn’t go far enough. Byrdsong is the founder and CEO of Community Empowerment Association in Homewood. The organization received more than $131,000 from the county over the last year to provide gun violence victims with therapy and other supportive services. 

“Even though $50 million was appreciated, you’re going to need much, much more to address this plague mainly in the Black community here in Pittsburgh,” he said, adding that the funding won’t erase “years of social neglect” and the structural racism that “incubates violent behavior” by keeping Black and Brown people from “having the same rights and access as everyone else.”  

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‘We don’t have unending resources’ 

Erin Dalton, the director of ACDHS, doesn’t dispute concerns about the limits of the effort. 

“We don’t have unending resources, but we make a lot of those investments and care deeply about making sure people have their basic needs met,” she said during a late August interview. She added that the kind of funding and policy changes that address the root causes of community violence should happen at the federal level.  

Abernathy said the programs the county selected aren’t meant to address the root causes of community violence. “It’s really focused on disrupting the violence in real time,” he said, adding that the county’s commitment is “an opportunity to leverage additional investment” to transform formerly redlined communities that have experienced “trauma over multiple generations.” 

Dalton said the county’s decisions to renew funding over the five-year period are contingent on each awardee’s performance. That includes their ability to get violence prevention programs up and running and to keep risky situations — such as fights in schools — from escalating into something worse.   

“I don’t care about all this funding if we’re not actually preventing violence,” she said. 

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It’s hard to measure the outcomes of violence prevention programs, said Steven Albert, a professor of behavioral and community health sciences at the University of Pittsburgh. Gun violence is relatively rare, so a cluster of violent acts around one event — such as a party — can ruin the data. 

The main drivers of community violence are poverty, the availability of guns and “an underground economy that enforces using violence,” said Albert, who co-leads with Garland the Violence Prevention Initiative at Pitt’s Center for Health Equity. It’s why he believes strong gun-control measures would have the biggest impact in communities affected by violence.    

“But I think these violence interrupters are critical,” Albert said. “They don’t get the pay or recognition they deserve. And the funding for them is a good idea.”

Dalton said $50 million is the largest amount of money the county has invested in violence reduction, which has typically been funded by private foundations in the past. She said she'd hope to see “all violence ... eliminated,” adding, “That hasn’t happened yet. But I do expect that if these programs are working well and reducing violence in these communities, then we may be able to move on to a lower-level effort.”  

The county’s plan was structured in a way to encourage coordination, not competition, among the organizations that were awarded contracts, said Jessica Ruffin, deputy director for ACDHS’s Office of Equity and Engagement. 

‘Money is always the issue. Hopefully it doesn’t run out.’ 

An Lewis speaks to Garland from Reimagine almost every day.  

Lewis is the executive director of Steel Rivers Council of Governments, which received more than $900,000 from the county over the last year. A portion of that funding will be used to implement a Cure Violence program called Cure Mon Valley in Homestead, Duquesne, McKeesport and Clairton. She said her organization used the funding to hire 17 new staffers to “intervene before shootings and killings occur” across those four communities. 

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While the council of governments has worked to change the Mon Valley through infrastructure improvements, it’s never run a violence prevention program. That’s where Lewis’ regular conversations with Garland come in. 

“We really are curating these programs together,” she said, referring to Cure Mon Valley and Garland’s hospital-based work. “We have to coordinate because the people Richard’s team are responding to are coming from our communities,” she added. 

From left, Richard Garland’s email shows one of the gun violence patient information forms he receives through his organization’s hospital-based violence prevention initiative. “Everybody’s coming together as an Allegheny County unit, all the different organizations,” said Gina Brooks, director of violence prevention for Reimagine Reentry. Garland holds the elevator for one of his fellow violence prevention team members as they leave for a meeting. (Photos by Stephanie Strasburg/PublicSource)

“[Reimagine’s] QR code was brilliant,” Lewis said, adding that Cure Mon Valley is considering deploying its own QR codes in the communities it serves. Since the Cure Violence model aims to detect and interrupt conflicts, the codes would allow community members to quickly send the team information about people who need help. 

In Stowe-Rox, Cynthia Haines and her team at Focus on Renewal are building an ACTES program that places participants in jobs at local businesses. 

Employers weren’t always so eager to hire Focus on Renewal’s clients, said Haines, who is the executive director of the McKees Rocks-based organization. But funding from the county — about $1.3 million over the last year — allowed her to hire a job coach and supervisor to help participants succeed in their new roles. Their schedule includes four-hour workdays, cognitive behavioral therapy and guest speaker sessions to “open their minds up” to different career possibilities. At least 20 local businesses have committed to hiring them, she said. 

“So people are opening up their arms, their hearts, and more than that, their place of business for these men,” she added.

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Mike Skirpan and his team at Community Forge in Wilkinsburg joined the effort when ACDHS officials told them they were having trouble finding a provider to launch a Cure Violence program in the eastern part of the county. Skirpan hired 16 people, including a program manager and two site supervisors who manage violence interrupters throughout the area. The team will peacefully resolve conflicts and connect families and individuals to services such as therapy, SNAP benefits and workforce development programs.     

“I am very hopeful that continued investment in these communities happens after five years,” said Skirpan, Community Forge’s co-founder and executive director. 

Back in the Hill District, Garland’s team is working to keep nurses and social workers informed about what’s happening on the streets. They give presentations to hospital staff throughout the county every six months, he said.   

“But money is always the issue,” he said. “Hopefully it doesn’t run out.” 

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health and mental health reporter. She can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org.

Stephanie Strasburg contributed reporting to this story. 

This story was fact-checked by Tanya Babbar. 

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

The post Anti-violence teams surge as $50 million in Allegheny County funding flows appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.

The Allegheny County Board of Health postponed an expected vote to revise a set of rules that empower inspectors to crack down on substandard landlords. 

The board was scheduled to vote during its bimonthly meeting Wednesday on proposed changes to the county’s Houses and Community Environment regulation, known as Article VI. It establishes the “minimum standards” for safe housing conditions and explains what owners and occupants must do to meet those standards. If approved, the changes will be the first update to the county’s housing code in more than 25 years. 

The vote was removed from the meeting agenda Tuesday to allow the board more time to consider the changes, said Neil Ruhland, a spokesperson for the Allegheny County Health Department [ACHD]. A previous version of the agenda shows that the proposed changes to Article VI had been scheduled for board approval. 

“The Board of Health as well as the department wanted to take one more final look at it and try to see if there were ways that they could strengthen it even more before bringing it to a vote,” Ruhland said. He declined to say if the changes would be ready for a vote at the board’s next meeting in November.

The proposed update includes new requirements for installing deadbolts and carbon monoxide detectors, updated violation and penalty procedures, and rules for dwellings to be graded and properly drained to prevent landslides, among a host of other code revisions.

Some board meeting attendees expressed surprise that the vote was removed from the agenda on short notice without communication to interested organizations. 

Chavaysha Chaney, manager of advocacy and health policy at Women for a Healthy Environment, attended the meeting because she expected the board to approve the proposed changes. 

“It’s disheartening to know that there was no communication made to folks about the change at all,” she said.   

Chaney is among a group of advocates that want far more community involvement in the process of updating the housing code. Women for a Healthy Environment is among 18 organizations and 19 individuals who signed a petition calling for the board to create an advisory committee. Composed of experts, advocates and residents, it would help modernize the code, which they said should go beyond minimum standards and do more to protect the health and rights of tenants. 

“[T]he code has not kept pace with best practices,” advocates said in the petition, which was also signed by Community Justice Project and Get the Lead Out, Pittsburgh. “The broader public has an important role to play” in making sure the county adopts those best practices.   

Kevin Quisenberry, the litigation director of Community Justice Project, said representatives from ACHD met with him and with other leaders from organizations that had pushed for the creation of an advisory committee ahead of the board meeting. The department representatives — Timothy Murphy, a housing program manager, and Otis Pitts, deputy director for public policy and community relations — told Quisenberry and other advocates that they will not be recommending the creation of an advisory committee. 

Quisenberry declined to share ACHD’s reasoning behind its decision to forgo the creation of an advisory committee. Ruhland, the ACHD spokesperson, declined to provide additional comments. 

“I hope [this postponement] is because they’re rethinking it,” said Quisenberry. 

Advocates told the board they were disappointed that ACHD is not creating an advisory committee.   

“It’s disappointing to residents, communities and advocates who have relentlessly asked the Health Department to create equitable approaches to address critical needs in the community,” Chaney said. She added that going beyond the bare minimum outlined in Article VI would strongly impact those living in “low-income Black and Brown neighborhoods.” 

Robert Damewood, a senior staff attorney at Regional Housing Legal Services, told the board that the county’s system of enforcing healthy housing standards is “fundamentally broken.”  

“Tenants have very little bargaining power when it comes to whether or not to accept housing that is unsafe and unhealthy,” he said, adding that the current process can lead to landlords retaliating against tenants who file complaints.  

“And very few tenants are willing to risk being put out on the street. And so few file complaints with the Health Department. That’s the way the system is set up,” he said, which is why “the problems that Article VI is set up to address go unresolved.”

The Health Department has said the proposed changes to Article VI will improve safety, clearly define violations, clarify the roles of tenants and landlords and make the code easier to read and understand. It asked the public to comment on its proposed revision to Article VI during a 60-day period, which ended on July 10. Health officials also took public testimony during a July 6 hearing. 

Venuri Siriwardane is PublicSource’s health reporter, and can be reached at venuri@publicsource.org.

This reporting has been made possible through the Staunton Farm Mental Health Reporting Fellowship and the Jewish Healthcare Foundation.

The post Vote delayed on proposed Allegheny County housing health code changes appeared first on PublicSource. PublicSource is a nonprofit news organization serving the Pittsburgh region. Visit www.publicsource.org to read more.