Lee HHS Projects Focus on Violence Prevention, Fighting HIV/AIDS
(Washington, DC) – Congresswoman Barbara Lee (D-Oakland), who serves on the Labor, Health and Human Services and Education Subcommittee of the Appropriations Committee, announced today that the Fiscal Year 2008 Labor, HHS Appropriations Bill that will be voted on next week will include $2.7 million for projects in her district, including money for long term priorities of Lee’s in the areas of community health and violence prevention.
“This funding represents a significant investment in the overall health of our community,” said Lee. “These projects will be helping prevent youth violence, stopping the spread of HIV/AIDS and expanding access to healthcare in vulnerable communities.”
A list of projects included in the bill that was approved by the Appropriations Committee today follows:
1) $500,000 - City of Oakland - for the McClymonds Youth and Family Center project, which will bring nationally recognized clinicians from Children’s Hospital at Oakland to work in a state of the art facility to mitigate the severe health care disparities that plague West Oakland. The goal is to move beyond harm-reduction by integrating pro-social youth development programs and health services must be integrated with traditional clinical services. The funding is for the renovation of an abandoned construction bay contiguous with the new health center in order to expand the current health facility to broaden the health and youth development services available at this licensed health facility. The importance of imbedding adolescent treatment services in a comprehensive youth development paradigm is designed to address the three leading causes of death for teens in West Oakland, which are homicide, suicide, and unintentional injury.
2) $250,000 - Alameda County Public Health Office of AIDS Administration - for the High Risk Behavior Change Campaign Initiative, an aggressive social marketing program aimed at increasing HIV testing in the African-American community especially in Oakland and specifically targeting heterosexual women, with the goal of identifying women who are HIV positive and placing them into treatment.
3) $150,000 - Institute for the Advanced Study of Black Families HIV/AIDS & SA Prevention Technology Transfer Project in Oakland, CA. The project is designed to provide sustainable technical assistance, clearing house, capacity enhancement and prevention coordination for integrated HIV/AIDS and substance abuse prevention with African American women and teenagers.
4) $250,000 - The Chez Panisse Foundation - for the School Lunch Initiative. The funding will aid the School Lunch Pilot Program in Berkeley in the development of a program that would treat lunch as an academic subject for all public school students in the district, from kindergarten through high school. These funds would support a comprehensive approach to improved health and health education in the public schools that will instill students with a sense of responsibility for themselves and their health.
5) $250,000 - La Clinica de La Raza - for the San Antonio Clinic Expansion Project. With the funding, La Clinica will expand the space of its San Antonio Neighborhood Health Center (SANHC) to serve 2,500 additional low-income residents who are in need of health care. With the renovation of space located next door to the existing clinic, along with the remodeling of the existing clinic, the number of exam rooms will double.
6) $200,000 - Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) - for the Technology Integration Project. Funding is needed to support development of data systems to support decentralized decision-making. For example, service units need to offer billable services that can be ordered by computer and instantaneously deducted from school budgets, and modern methods are urgently needed for tracking books, students, employees, and teacher activities, all of which are currently manual processes.
7) $200,000 - Peralta Community College District- for renovations necessary to relocate the nursing training program facility to a currently unused wing of Highland Hospital.
8) $200,000 - National Council on Crime and Delinquency (NCCD)- for a pilot program of the Violence Prevention for Asian and Pacific Islander (API) Youth project, a school-based model for how to address the needs of API youth to prevent violence, provide technical assistance to cities, counties, and communities experiencing violence by and of API youth, provide diversity and cultural competence training, and work with law enforcement, courts, health departments, schools, and other agencies to establish positive and effective relationships with API communities.
9) $700,000 - UC Berkeley Institute of Government Studies - for the creation of the Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service in Berkeley, CA. The Matsui Center for Politics and Public Service will develop a curriculum that will encourage students to think about politics and public service not as separate activities but as a continuum of civic engagement.
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