Page 41 - Sonoma County Gazette - August 2017

RRARA cont’d from page 40
Business Expo
at the Forestville Farmers Market
Tue, Aug 15, 4pm - 7pm @ our Downtown Park
6990 Front Street, downtown Forestville, across from Fred’s Liquors
Hosted in partnership with the Chamber of Commerce, this is a chance to get to know you LOCAL businesses. Please support your neighbors and come see what they offer our community in goods and services.
Live music by Endless Vacation: The Tuesday Night Farmers Market will be in full swing with farm fresh food produce, dinner and treats to enjoy while you wander booths. Come spend time with your neighbosr!
The Gazette will have a booth - Come say HI!
Housing: Housing is getting increasingly di cult to a ord for many community members. Over the course of three meetings, stakeholders identi ed priority strategies to create a housing action plan. The collaborative is planning to work with property owners and managers to expand the availability of housing. To lead this campaign, the collaborative identi ed nding funding for a West County Housing Specialist as a key strategy that appears likely to be funded soon. Additional strategies include advocacy
for funding for a ordable housing, policy advocacy to support vulnerable populations, supporting replication of the Lilypad Homes model in the Russian River area, and continuing to meet as a collaborative.
Transportation: RRARA hosted a Transportation Planning meeting that convened an array of stakeholders to start developing an action plan. Many area residents, especially the homeless, seniors, and low-income families, struggle to access needed services, such as health care, government services, child care, education and employment because transportation facilities and services are insu cient. The group is building on the Lower Russian River Community-Based Transportation Plan and is committed to implementing
the priorities. RRARA would like to bring these stakeholders back together to continue to develop and implement an updated and current transportation action plan.
Opioid addiction: In partnership with West County Health
Center’s Innovations program, RRARA is participating in the Center for
Care Innovations Catalyst Innovations Program focusing on addressing the especially high rate of opioid abuse in the Russian River area. The partnership is currently engaging community members to identify solutions. Other Activity: RRARA took a lead role in mobilizing community support of a County Tobacco Retail License Ordinance, which has been shown e ective at addressing underage smoking. The local High School District has the highest female teenage smoking rate in Sonoma County along with an overall rate that is higher than the county and state average. In addition to direct health impacts, lost productivity from tobacco use and buying tobacco reduces resources families. The Board of Supervisors approved the ordinance that RRARA organized for and acknowledged the importance community support had in the decision.
14045 Mill Street, Guerneville, CA 95446 • (707) 478-5684 • Fax (707) 869-5983 • RRARA.org
O
leadership in the persons of Interim CEO John Peleuses, Chief Nursing Officer Barbara Vogelsang, Laboratory Manger Portia Diez, and several excellent additions to our clinical staff. We have been gearing up for new lines of service which should help stabilize the financial base for our hospital while allowing us to continue our excellent clinical care in all our current departments.
If you’re feeling like you want to get active, but the thought of exercise sounds less than awesome, then you should check out Zumba on Tuesdays from 9 to 10am at the Occidental Community Center! It’s taught by Katie Evenbeck, the director of St. Dorothy’s, so you know that everyone, including the teacher is there to have fun, and not just sweat. Plus, it only costs $5 per class, so you (and I) should probably go.
To that end, early in the year SWMC and the District (PDHCD) began investigating service opportunities that would provide medical assistance for people abusing substances. After much discussion and much legal negotiation, SWMC has engaged Aaron Durall to assist with this transition by not only adding service lines but also supporting and expanding our present service lines of an acute care hospital with an emergency department.
h, late summer! I missed the birdsong and the old men grumping at me at 7am. Oh yes, as of the time of writing, the Grove is in full swing, and every day I don the ugly red smock and say “sir” like it’s the only
word I know. It’s not so bad though, because this year I’m a server,
and I don’t start work until 6:30am and not at 5:30am like I did as a busser. Also, I don’t have to marry Tabasco sauce. That’s another big improvement.
The next exhibit at the Occidental Center for the Arts is called Sea Creatures, and it will be up from August 4th to October 1st. The show will feature sea creatures real and imagined by Sonoma County artists. The gallery is open Fridays from 11 am to 6:30 pm, Saturdays and Sundays from 11am to 4 pm, and during Occidental Center for the Arts events or by appointment. If you go to the gallery from 4 to 6:30pm, then you can enjoy the art while wine tasting!
Sonoma West Medical Center UPDATE
If the end of summertime has you wanting to get outdoors and get your hands dirty, then you should check out Garden Volunteer Days at the Occidental Arts and Ecology Center. The days are every Wednesday from10am – 5pm, and you can go for part or all of the day. At 12:30 there is a volunteer lunch that OAEC chefs prepare that is always organic and vegetarian. If you’re going to go, bring a hat, sunscreen, extra layers or rain gear depending on season, sturdy shoes and water bottle. Feel free to bring your kids, but make sure they can participate in adult work, and please supervise them. You don’t even have to register beforehand unless your group is larger than six.
By Gail Thomas
Since February Sonoma West Medical Center has added strong new
Who wants to take over this column?
Speaking of going... I’m headed to Boston to attend Northeastern University this fall, and I need to give up my column. While I’d
love to keep writing on Occidental’s behalf, since I will no longer
be living on this coast, I feel I perhaps should not. Therefore, I am officially asking anyone who is interested in writing this column to email Vesta Copestakes at vesta@sonic.net to let her know you are interested. I hope that if you have an inkling that writing a monthly column might be for you, you’ll decide to give it a try. It’s been such a pleasure to write this column and I couldn’t be more grateful to Vesta and the Gazette sta for making this possible for me. I’ll talk to you next month, and save the longer, sappier goodbye for then. Until that time, enjoy the last weeks of summer!
Our discussions with Durall has led us to discussions with Sonoma County Public Health Department, who approve and encourage our efforts. Part of having such a program is being able to provide the laboratory work which
is used to test for dependency. We have identified an area on the hospital campus, formerly used by the Foundation, as appropriate for a toxicology laboratory and have begun equipping it and training staff. It is in full operation as of the end of July.
We plan to provide a much needed toxicology service in our county and clinical detox service in the hospital for patients who need it. Physicians ordering toxicology testing now need to send their requests to a lab that
does such testing; California physicians have limited options and we plan to provide a good lab service here locally so that we would be their lab of choice.
In our ongoing efforts to provide an excellent medical facility, we are expanding our programs and know our District will get behind a program which has benefits for our community and can keep our hospital sustainable to serve our community. We have a hospital which has recently and historically scored THE HIGHEST patient satisfaction scores in Northern California. We know we can count on your support.
8/17 - www.sonomacountygazette.com - 41