Massachusetts State Senator
“These kids are really the heroes of their own education,” Barrett said. “They get up much earlier than their peers at a time when research shows students should be sleeping in. I am blown away by the quiet passion of these students.”
An initiative to reduce health disparities linked to race and ethnicity should be widened to include people with disabilities, according to experts and self-advocates who turned out en masse at the State House.
A proposed new Office of Health Equity is directed explicitly to work in tandem with the existing Massachusetts Health Disparities Council, already tasked with a three-part focus on race, ethnicity and disability. Yet recent legislative action, little noticed, seeks to exclude people with disabilities from the scope of the new Office, de-aligning its mission from that of the Council.
Read moreEach year, Massachusetts residents borrow 6.5 million items that happen to be unavailable at their local libraries. This, thanks to resource sharing among communities. I recently chatted about funding for this initiative and others with Sudbury librarians Megan Statza Warren, Esme Green and Marie Royea.
The League of Women Voters does terrific work, pushing back against global warming and unlimited money in politics. Local chapters came to the State House recently to advance these causes. Above, with team Concord-Carlisle; below, with the group from Waltham.
A budget priority of mine: The detention diversion program run by the Robert F. Kennedy Children’s Action Corps is an initiative to prevent young people from re-entering the juvenile justice system. Its community-based support includes 24/7 case management — coordination with probation staff, face-to-face communication and curfew checks and weekly family check-ins.
An initiative to reduce health disparities linked to race and ethnicity has widened to include women and people with disabilities, thanks to a bill just passed by the State Senate.
Health disparities are gaps in access to care or in actual outcomes that confront certain groups disproportionately. As they relate to disabilities, health disparities include inaccessible doctors’ offices, ill-equipped examination rooms and frustrating communications barriers.
Read moreAn initiative to reduce health disparities linked to race and ethnicity has widened to include women and people with disabilities, thanks to a bill just passed by the State Senate.
Health disparities are gaps in access to care or in actual outcomes that confront certain groups disproportionately. As they relate to disabilities, health disparities include inaccessible doctors’ offices, ill-equipped examination rooms and frustrating communications barriers.
Read moreMany thanks to the Weston League of Women Voters of Massachusetts for hosting its recent legislative talk. State Rep. Alice Peisch, D-Wellesley, and I took questions on solar initiatives and rising health care costs, to name a few. Photo courtesy of Katherine Wolfthal of the League.
Walking the State House halls with Boston Bar Association President and Lincoln resident Lisa Arrowood. We discussed funding for legal aid lawyers, who represent low-income people confronted with non-criminal crises like evictions, heating shutoffs and high hospital bills.
