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As it prepares to disband, Michigan task force on COVID racial disparities leaves a healthy legacy

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As it prepares to disband, Michigan task force on COVID racial disparities leaves a healthy legacy


This text is a part of State of Well being, a sequence about how Michigan communities are rising to deal with well being challenges. It’s made attainable with funding from the Michigan Well being Endowment Fund.

Black Michiganders have been among the many hardest hit within the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, representing 29% of COVID-19 instances and 41% of COVID-19 deaths regardless of being solely 15% of the state’s inhabitants. In April 2020, Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer established the Michigan Coronavirus Job Pressure on Racial Disparities. By the tip of September 2020, Michigan’s Black residents made up solely 8% of instances and 10% of deaths.

“When that change occurred, we have been in a position to flatten the curve,” says job drive member Renee Canady, CEO of the Michigan Public Well being Institute (MPHI). “However extra importantly, we have been in a position to construct and strengthen group voice and the way authorities responds to the wants of people, wants they face on a regular basis.”

This dramatic discount in disparities concerned creating extra alternatives for testing inside communities, connecting folks of colour with main care suppliers, enhancing contact tracing and isolation methods, selling protected reengagement, and using trusted group leaders within the broadcast of dependable COVID-19 info. Now, as the duty drive prepares to disband, its members are wanting again on the work they’ve achieved and the groundwork they’ve laid for continued progress towards dismantling well being disparities in Michigan.
Renee Canady.
“Collectively as a job drive, I used to be amazed on the stage of dedication and dedication. … We needed to downside remedy and assume deeply,” Canady says. “As a public well being skilled my whole profession, seeing group have interaction and construct partnerships at this deeply genuine stage was completely inspiring and motivating for me. It actually was about execution and motion and alter.”

Comprised of 23 Michiganders from numerous areas, backgrounds, sectors, and ethnicities, the duty drive was directed to extend transparency in reporting COVID’s racial and ethnic impacts, take away limitations to accessing well being care, cut back medical bias in testing and therapy, mitigate environmental and infrastructure elements that exacerbated mortality, and enhance programs for bodily and psychological well being care in addition to long-term financial restoration. To perform these directives, members of the duty drive joined different group leaders in workgroups centered on strategic testing infrastructure, main supplier connections, centering fairness, telehealth entry, and environmental justice. Job drive member Jametta Lilly, CEO of the Detroit Mum or dad Community, says the duty drive’s reviews in November 2020 and February 2022 present that the workgroups grew to become “fast-moving entities” that recognized targets on the group and statewide ranges. 

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“We introduced collectively individuals who do not essentially plan collectively — community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, hospital directors, tutorial directors,” she says.

Overcoming roadblocks to telehealth

Lilly sat on each the Major Supplier Connections and Telehealth Entry work teams. Whereas rising telehealth alternatives enabled folks throughout the state to obtain medical and psychological well being care throughout COVID shutdowns, the modality additionally underscored the fact of the digital divide.  

“An accomplishment is the work that is been completed to acknowledge how the digital divide exacerbated the demise and mayhem that we noticed, whether or not that was in well being, in training, in all of our social companies, in entry to meals, and within the employment market,” Lilly says. “There was a recognition that the digital divide needed to be addressed if we have been going to create structural change not solely to deal with COVID but additionally to maneuver the state of Michigan ahead.”

The Telehealth workgroup’s efforts have been partly accountable for a subsequent gubernatorial govt order that referred to as for expanded high-speed web entry for all Michiganders, and an ensuing state funding of $3.3 million to appreciate that objective.

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Rooting out implicit bias

Following one other suggestion from the duty drive, a July 2020 gubernatorial govt order directed the Michigan Division of Licensing and Regulatory Affairs (LARA) to require implicit bias coaching for well being care professionals licensed and registered within the state.

“It takes a stage of braveness and funding to start out the journey, to say, ‘This isn’t acceptable,’” Canady says. “We do have proof of bias, experiences of group members, companions, and sufferers. We’re not keen, as Michiganders, to look the opposite approach on this. A one-hour coaching shouldn’t be going to disrupt many years of socialization. However our hope, and positively my hope as a member of the duty drive, is that it’ll whet the appetites of clinicians, employers, and civil servants in Michigan to say, ‘Wow, I did not understand this. I must be taught extra. I want to consider what we must be doing otherwise.’”
Dr. Denise Brooks-Williams.
Job drive member Dr. Denise Brooks-Williams, senior vp and CEO of market operations at Henry Ford Well being (HFH), acknowledges that HFH was invited to the desk due to its lengthy historical past of making an attempt to remove well being disparities, partly by requiring its workers to finish implicit bias coaching.

“Amongst the duty drive’s many accomplishments was placing a culturally numerous lens round advertising and marketing and the way we attempt to appeal to folks to well being companies,” Brooks-Williams says. “As we moved into having vaccines obtainable however seeing a low response amongst these eager to have them, [it] actually did take time to put money into some multicultural advertising and marketing sources. They did a very good job. That can pay dividends for a very long time.”

Canady hopes that, along with requiring implicit bias coaching, the state will be capable of measure important modifications and larger consciousness, data, and understanding of the unresolved penalties of bias and discrimination.

“We have to assume otherwise about systemic inequities and tips on how to preserve relationships throughout disciplines,” Canady says. “It isn’t simply the Division of Well being and Human Providers’ accountability. It isn’t simply LARA pushing on folks’s licenses to follow. It truly is all of us in partnership collectively.”

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Well being care in group

The Major Supplier Connections workgroup sought to take away limitations to care by making well being care extra accessible. Methods for doing so included creating check and vaccination websites inside trusted neighborhood areas like church buildings and faculties, growing cellular clinics, and involving trusted group leaders as ambassadors of dependable pandemic well being info. Brooks-Williams reviews that HFH’s cellular clinics will proceed post-pandemic as a much-needed useful resource for communities that lack main care areas. One other plus is that varied group stakeholders are actually linked in dialog.

“We have now acquired group companies speaking with well being programs, speaking with the well being departments, speaking with the state, in a approach that we in all probability did not earlier than,” Brooks-Williams says. “If we maintain these conversations getting into our communities, that may assist.”

Lilly says one key space for enchancment is in high quality care coordination – making a main care system the place main care suppliers, Federally Certified Well being Facilities, group well being staff, and hospitals are built-in into an accessible continuum of well being and well-being for all.

“That is our nirvana,” she says. “However that is not the system now we have in the US.”

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Funding shall be a precedence

A lot of the duty drive’s work was funded with COVID reduction {dollars}. Job drive members hope that when these funds dry up, these making budgetary selections on the federal and state ranges will proceed to fund profitable developments like telehealth, cellular clinics, implicit bias coaching, and culturally competent messaging.

“We’re all saying that we have to have a extra sturdy public well being system that will get funded adequately, not simply because we immediately discover ourselves in a pandemic,” Lilly says. “Now that our public well being programs have readiness, I believe we’re in a a lot better place. The Federally Certified Well being Facilities are in a a lot better place. There are cellular clinics and digital well being programs which have the potential of speaking to one another.”

Whereas the duty drive will disband within the close to future, members hope that their legacy and work will proceed to cut back racial disparities in well being care and on different fronts akin to training, employment, and financial alternative.

“Relationships do not finish when a committee ends or when a convention is over. They’re luckily transportable,” Canady says. “I consider that these relationships will proceed as all of us, in our particular person areas of accountability, proceed to attempt to execute on the issues we realized on the duty drive.”

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Lilly provides that now it is time to assess the teachings realized from the duty drive’s work.

“What are the gaps? What are we doing about them?” she asks. “What’s so encouraging is that [the Whitmer] administration understands that now we have to look very intently at what are the insurance policies that both allow or perpetuate [disparities], or can probably be a automobile to create the systemic change we’d like.”

Estelle Slootmaker is a working author specializing in journalism, e book modifying, communications, poetry, and youngsters’s books. You’ll be able to contact her at Estelle.Slootmaker@gmail.com or www.constellations.biz.

Renee Canady photograph by Roxanne Frith. Jametta Lilly photograph by Nick Hagen. Denise Brooks-Williams photograph courtesy of Denise Brooks-Williams.



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Michigan

New bowl projections have Michigan in play at four different sites

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New bowl projections have Michigan in play at four different sites


Michigan clinched bowl eligibility by landing its sixth win of the season over the weekend, a 50-6 beat down of lowly Northwestern.

And while all eyes are on the rivalry game against Ohio State this Saturday (Noon, FOX), the postseason is fast approaching. In 13 days, the Wolverines will learn of their bowl draw. It won’t be a high-profile game like years past, but several intriguing sites remain a possibility for Sherrone Moore’s team.

The most popular pick this week is the Music City Bowl in Nashville, set for Dec. 30 at Nissan Stadium. It would mark Michigan’s first-ever appearance in the game and pit the Wolverines against an SEC school.

ESPN’s Mark Schlabach has Michigan playing Ole Miss in the Music City Bowl, CBS Sports’ Jerry Palm predicts a Michigan-Missouri matchup in Nashville, while USA Today’s Erick Smith projects the Wolverines to play Texas A&M. All three SEC schools have been in the playoff picture this year, setting the stage for an intriguing neutral-site game.

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Three other national writers have Michigan playing in three different bowl games. ESPN’s Kyle Bonagura predicts a Michigan-Syracuse matchup in the Duke’s Mayo Bowl on Jan. 3 in Charlotte. The Action Network’s Brett McMurphy, whose track-record projecting bowl sites and matchups is among the best, has the Wolverines playing Pittsburgh in the Pinstripe Bowl on Dec. 28 at Yankee Stadium in New York. And in an interesting outlier, The Sporting News’ Bill Bender projects a Michigan-Texas A&M matchup in the Dec. 31 ReliaQuest Bowl in Tampa, Fla.

How the top of the Big Ten fares when it comes to the 12-team playoff matters here. Getting four teams in like some are projecting would help Michigan’s standing in the bowl selection process. But if one of those teams gets left out (looking at you, Indiana), it would almost certainly kill any chance of returning to Florida.

After the playoff bids are doled out, the Citrus Bowl has the first pick of the remaining bowl-eligible Big Ten teams, followed by the ReliaQuest Bowl (former Outback Bowl). An 8 or 9-win Illinois would likely be the next Big Ten team off the board, followed by a 7 or 8-win Iowa. After that, though, is anyone’s guess.

And what if Michigan pulls off the upset in Columbus and gets to seven wins? It could suddenly move the Wolverines up the pecking order and give the ReliaQuest Bowl a reason to pick them, provided that Indiana does make the playoff.

This week will help offer some clarity with the Big Ten standings. There’s also a possibility of college football having too many bowl eligible teams this year. And while that certainly won’t affect Michigan — its brand and following are too large to keep out, even at 6-6 — but could limit the number of secondary bowls available to the Big Ten.

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Michigan State engineering prof, student design helmet inserts to help drown out crowd noise for QBs

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Michigan State engineering prof, student design helmet inserts to help drown out crowd noise for QBs


EAST LANSING, Mich. — The sight was a common one for Andrew Kolpacki. For many a Sunday, he would watch NFL games on TV and see quarterbacks putting their hands on their helmets, desperately trying to hear the play call from the sideline or booth as tens of thousands of fans screamed at the tops of their lungs.

When the NCAA’s playing rules oversight committee this past spring approved the use of coach-to-player helmet communications in games for the 2024 season, Kolpacki, Michigan State’s head football equipment manager, knew the Spartans’ QBs and linebackers were going to have a problem.

“There had to be some sort of solution,” he said.

As it turns out, there was. And it was right across the street.

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Kolpacki reached out to Tamara Reid Bush, a mechanical engineering professor who not only heads the school’s Biomechanical Design Research Laboratory but also is a football season ticket-holder.

Kolpacki “showed me some photos and said that other teams had just put duct tape inside the (earhole), and he asked me, ‘Do you think we can do anything better than duct tape,?” Bush said. “And I said, ‘Oh, absolutely.’”

Bush and Rylie DuBois, a sophomore biosystems engineering major and undergraduate research assistant at the lab, set out to produce earhole inserts made from polylactic acid, a bio-based plastic, using a 3D printer. Part of the challenge was accounting for the earhole sizes and shapes that vary depending on helmet style.

Once the season got underway with a Friday night home game against Florida Atlantic on Aug. 30, the helmets of starting quarterback Aidan Chiles and linebacker Jordan Turner were outfitted with the inserts, which helped mitigate crowd noise.

DuBois attended the game, sitting in the student section.

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“I felt such a strong sense of accomplishment and pride,” DuBois said. “And I told all my friends around me about how I designed what they were wearing on the field.”

All told, Bush and DuBois have produced around 180 sets of the inserts, a number that grew in part due to the variety of helmet designs and colors that are available to be worn by Spartan players any given Saturday. Plus, the engineering folks have been fine-tuning their design throughout the season.

Dozens of Bowl Subdivision programs are doing something similar. In many cases, they’re getting 3D-printed earhole covers from XO Armor Technologies, which provides on-site, on-demand 3D printing of athletic wearables.

The Auburn, Alabama-based company has donated its version of the earhole covers to the equipment managers of programs ranging from Georgia and Clemson to Boise State and Arizona State in the hope the schools would consider doing business with XO Armor in the future, said Jeff Klosterman, vice president of business development.

XO Armor first was approached by the Houston Texans at the end of last season about creating something to assist quarterback C.J. Stroud in better hearing play calls delivered to his helmet during road games. XO Armor worked on a solution and had completed one when it received another inquiry: Ohio State, which had heard Michigan State was moving forward with helmet inserts, wondered if XO Armor had anything in the works.

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“We kind of just did this as a one-off favor to the Texans and honestly didn’t forecast it becoming our viral moment in college football,” Klosterman said. “We’ve now got about 60 teams across college football and the NFL wearing our sound-deadening earhole covers every weekend.”

The rules state that only one player for each team is permitted to be in communication with coaches while on the field. For the Spartans, it’s typically Chiles on offense and Turner on defense. Turner prefers to have an insert in both earholes, but Chiles has asked that the insert be used in only one on his helmet.

Chiles “likes to be able to feel like he has some sort of outward exposure,” Kolpacki said.

Exposure is something the sophomore signal-caller from Long Beach, California, had in away games against Michigan and Oregon this season. Michigan Stadium welcomed 110,000-plus fans for the Oct. 26 matchup between the in-state rivals. And while just under 60,000 packed Autzen Stadium in Eugene, Oregon, for the Ducks’ 31-10 win over Michigan State three weeks earlier, it was plenty loud. “The Big Ten has some pretty impressive venues,” Kolpacki said.

“It can be just deafening,” he said. “That’s what those fans are there for is to create havoc and make it difficult for coaches to get a play call off.”

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Something that is a bit easier to handle thanks to Bush and her team. She called the inserts a “win-win-win” for everyone.

“It’s exciting for me to work with athletics and the football team,” she said. “I think it’s really exciting for our students as well to take what they’ve learned and develop and design something and see it being used and executed.”

___

Get alerts on the latest AP Top 25 poll throughout the season. Sign up here. AP college football: https://apnews.com/hub/college-football and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-football-poll



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Former Michigan 4-star QB commit chooses new Big Ten school

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Former Michigan 4-star QB commit chooses new Big Ten school


Amid Michigan’s widely reported pursuit of Belleville 2025 five-star quarterback Bryce Underwood, Fort Myers (Fla.) Bishop Verot four-star signal-caller Carter Smith backed off his verbal pledge to the Wolverines on Oct. 30.

Michigan secured a commitment from Underwood on Thursday, flipping him from LSU, while Smith also has found a new home.

The No. 164 overall prospect nationally, per the 247Sports Composite rankings, announced Sunday night on social media his intention to play at Wisconsin.

“I’ve talked to a lot of coaches in such a short time and have made many amazing relationships,” Smith wrote in a first-person story in the News-Press. “I am extremely grateful for all the opportunities that were offered to me. With that being said, I decided to commit to the University of Wisconsin.

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“I fell in love with everything that they had to offer: an electric fan base, an incredible coaching staff, and a great education. I could not have gotten more lucky! Go Badgers!”

Smith was one of the first players to join Michigan’s 2025 class, committing in November 2023 when Jim Harbaugh was still the coach. He took a visit to Ann Arbor for the Wolverines’ showdown against Michigan State on Oct. 26, but shortly after, Michigan’s full-court press to try and land Underwood, the No. 1 recruit in the country, became highly publicized.

“He felt extremely disappointed in how they handled everything,” Smith’s father, Dan Smith, told ESPN.

After reopening his recruitment, Carter, the Gatorade Player of the Year in Florida in 2023, received interest from a handful of schools and took an official visit to Wisconsin on Nov. 15 against No. 1 Oregon. He becomes the highest-ranked prospect in the Badgers’ class and is the second former Michigan pledge to choose Wisconsin in the past week. Palatine (Ill.) four-star defensive lineman flipped his commitment on Wednesday.

Michigan turning its attention to Underwood during a season where the offense has largely been inept signals a shift in recruiting under first-year head coach Sherrone Moore. Multiple outlets have reported that Underwood is set to earn a name, image, likeness package in the millions when he is expected to ink his letter of intent during the early signing period Dec. 4-6.

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The state recorder holder in passing and total touchdowns is the second No. 1 overall recruit Michigan has landed in the online rankings era.



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