standpoint well george i got started and continue my education from a bachelor's degree and which i graduated in one thousand nine hundred sixty eight went on to graduate school to get my master's in health care ministr services at famine hospital which we had a clinic there and although i had other responsibilities other than hiv it opened up my eyes to a lot of things around each of the and how this epidemic was impacting the community as a whole and with the minority community in particular you know we had started we were first was basically a male gay male disease now we move from a male disease to a cross section and even we're seeing a geriatric part relations is exposed tells a little bit about that change in the population that you saw and and the different needs of those populations now yeah the population has changed although being an administrator's and a manager you know i don't get a chance to see patients as often as you do as a provider you know i as an administrator you address issues of need for you know equipment supplies and medications but basically the patient population i hear about it mainly through meetings that i have with the staff at different levels but i have seen a lot of changes where it has impacted people of color and even women more so than it was say fifteen twenty years ago and so to me that stache really impacting our community in a big way which i'm really concerned about because i don't know how much we are doing and this particular townie to think that it hasn't really changed that much for people of color and i want to stay with the people of color i mean both brown people and black people but especially within the black community i see that within the larger population there's really been a lot of progress but within the people of color and especially black folks i haven't seen a whole dramatic change although we're living longer but still the rate of this epidemic within our community is still higher than it is and others and so i'm concerned about that so you think young black male bisexual are gay in this message it seems that that seems to be as high impact area right now and still has been and always has been what are you seeing in terms of the nest is out that particular community well you know the message is out there but i think some of the messages that we use they are kind of outdated in my opinion although i'm not an educator and i guess that i'm more of an administrator type but i just don't think that the young population fears this disease as much as it did when i first got into this  whole epidemic and i don't know why i don't have the education and in schools or education some of these programs are not making young people aware of it but when i talk to some of the young folks they're still out here doing some  same things they were doing there just the older people were doing many years ago and i don't see i haven't seen a great change and when i talk to some of my colleagues and specially those in education and and who are doing some of the first line  treatment they feel the same way and there's there hasn't really been much of an impact and then plus within this particular county alameda we were impacted by losing half of our education prevention dollars from the the other concerns that you have and could you can you know you're still in the i think that i think that the health here the primary care issue is not to me a problem i think the problem is informing  educating the community about this epidemic i think that's the real issue because as i said we're of budget of and when i first came to the aids office in one nine hundred ninety six i believe we have a we had an education that you know the county needs to address that they have done some things but i think they need to do a lot more and out most of our population their issues is housing and food the and we've done place surveys to find  what are your needs what do you need and you know your particular situation a lot of say we need housing we need food we need transportation and they talk about primary care mental health and subs bills maybe about eighth or ninth on the list and so and to me yeah i think the providers what i'm noticing that a lot of the the young folks who are going into the medical school now going into specialties he says they're not interested in doing primary care or anything like that i think that  you know we need to think about educating our kids and also to think about trying to push some effort with the edge and with with the i would say the medical institutions to provide more people going into primary care because i think that that's a real big issue but i don't think that there's a waiting list for people to get into primary care i think there may be a waiting list for those to get into specialty services and that's a real big problem because you know with the epidemic it affects all of your body i mean you had with diabetes cancer all types of other types of chronic diseases and also what i'm finding is that some of the clinics in our community most of those patients are chronically ill patients more so than people who think it's going to impact because it opens up the opportunity for people to get care then use the emergency room for care but i don't know whether or not our community is ready for it because a lot of times what i'm finding out is a lot of people are not ready to leave for a million with the affordable care act and what what that means and how that impacts their services but you know as a person who's always supported it when it first came out i think is definitely a great need but i think it needs  more education for people to understand and how they can go about getting services and so i don't know how it's going to impact a job b and it's in this whole aids arena but i think that it's not going to be one focus like has been you know i haven't seen it in action in the community i know that they're part of the affordable care act that's what they want to talk about senate care and those type of things but i don't know whether or not again i go back to whether now we're ready to as as black people and and health professionals to look at it from their standpoint i think that you have these larger organizations health care and they are coming into the community by buying up some of the services in our community so i don't know if we're ready to really i definitely see that and you see that do you think that from diagnosis to treatment and again your impact is a ministry that time is shortened and folks if they have a provided knowledgeable are good at least some of the care that they need yeah i believe that i think that you know with this whole of horrible care if you if you go around the country now everybody is trying to get in their health care w before that was an issue and they all want to be associated with the clinic because they are looking to survive as an as a clinical an agency so they're trying to get into those type of course services like substance abuse mental health services and primary care i think that for me it goes back to what i said earlier i think we as professional educational social workers need to really look at this this this epidemic and see how we can in a city and i see the difference of hiv in san francisco compared to say oakland in berkeley and alameda county as a whole sense of difference well i think there san francisco tends to put their border supervising to put a lot of money into services if there's a cut from the state the feds they'd supplant that money from their budgets to make sure that they keep the services at the standard that they feel is necessary for the population  here i don't see that as much here in alameda county especially populations of folks returning from across aeration women are they trying to do you see a management well i guess you just said it s most most of us most of our clients i have dual diagnosis i mean you know their their subs abuses and their mental health issues and their primary care issues and i think that for small agencies it's very difficult to try to address all the needs of that population and again i think that there has to be a lot more collaboration then it is within the committee although they have they have groups that's working for those with training that from the institutions and they have a group doing something with kids in school that have another group doing something with people who are in college or trying to educate them i think that there needs to be a collaboration of all of those organizations because right now we kind of splintered out and trying to address this epidemic in this particular county and i'm more familiar with this county since i've worked over here a majority of my life as a minister it's also about the cost the cost of care the cost of maybe servicing one going up army although you have programs like aid app and you have a few other programs that institutions of community based like the three forty before we do see drug agencies can purchase drugs at a different rate and then charge those rates at a higher for they can get reimbursed third party payers but i you know my feeling is that as again as i've said it repeatedly here that i think that there needs to be a close relationship of working together with the providers the educators the social workers and administrators to really address this epidemic and the political falls because it takes those political people to make those decisions to put the money where it needs to be put placed in the community because otherwise we're going to continually have this problem how can we do to a aids free generation that question i really don't know how we would go about doing that i  know it would require some resources will require education i know it will require people just really working together trying to address this epidemic and then we have to start with our youth because this is where it's going to happen those that  population which is also being impacted by this is in foster yeah the foster care yeah all of those issues that i'm concerned about i don't hear a lot of conversation about it but i'm definitely concerned about it you know you've been doing this work for resource coming from the powers to be the lack of education in the community about this epidemic a lack of people who don't care about using protective sex in this community and and just the idea that we are not working together to try to address this i do a lot about the four things that i can say that that bothers me you know th the things that i feel good about is that i think there are a lot of people now who have the disease and aware of the disease and who's been educated they're trying to do something about it and for those that have other types of problems like like i said subs abuse problem mental health problems they're trying to reach out to communities some of some of the community providers are trying to reach out to their population to try to bring him in i'm i mean i'm not  a health care delivery type person and so but being thrust into it being interested in it and want to try to make a difference that's what i've been trying to do with my short period of time being here working in this epidemic tell us about delivery get back you know i you know when i was the director of a job before alameda county the only really support that we were getting was from the thing that i didn't see a whole lot coming from the state like i said they cut ou budget prevention budget in half the county well they were doing what they could do but i think they could do a lot better and some of the congressional the i think that barbara lee has done a remarkable job where she could under her situation i've always tried to tap into all our legislators like feinstein and palosi and boxer because i think we need to broaden our political base and who we go to like san francisco they use all of their congressional people we tend to here always go to bar and i think that we need to move out of that and go to her but go to others also because they're our representatives and so when they need to try to help us with whatever needs that we have you know but so i have found that you know when you go to when you go to these process well you know as i say to a lot of my staff and colleagues and friends of mine you know in order to be in this work this type of work and i call it the social service work well that is health care education housing  you have to be a person a tough line person you gotta let it bounce off you can't get it too personal because you know we all have our private lives and our families you can't let it get next to you but it is very frustrating i mean when you don't have the money to do the things you need to do for the population you serve it becomes very frustrating i mean you have to you gotta you try to get money to do the things you need to do which you know in certain populations you don't you know they don't have those kind of problems but we have it over here so that's been very frustrating to me is th yeah there's a lot of competition but i think there are within our community they always want us to to i feel to to to to to always be the one to have to make the change you know a good example is that we've had some concerns about all the population but then certain populations say that we don't want to work with that particular population and and that's not true and i mean and what i'm talking about it being a black agency you know if no other groups a hispanic or asians come to you know agency and they say they're not being served then i funders always jump on our agency saying well why aren't you serving this population i don't see them jumping on those other agencies who may happen to be asian or hispanic sand wh you serve in the black population and those kind of racial issues that i see that pop up i don't know how much of it's intentional i you know but i know a lot of it is political and i think it's unfortunate that we play each other that way but that's that's the reality then i do ask most of my career working and health care on the west coast but i you know i go back home quite often and i see the difference of what they do there and and i think there's a lot more working together  and doing a lot more than i do see here on the west coast and which is really strange because when i came here in one nine hundred seventy seven there was a whole lot going on here in oakland and particularly sam cisco about a collaboration of us black folks talk about how we can plan for care and i don't see that anymore i mean you know i don't see that collaboration i think everybody is trying to fight for whatever resources and so i'm at this stage of my life now i'm in more of a retirement mode and this is probably the last position that i'm going to take on i'm going to try to relax and try to be with my family and my my grandchildren on the east coast and so i'm a do more of that maybe i'll do some consulting work on the side but i think this is the last full time job that i'm going to take on this really frustrates region this last one yeah it's been frustrating and i you know i cannot to get into all the details but it has been like you know when you when you when you're dealing with a staff in the staff is not easy but then you have to deal with a board and you know all the politics that go along with that and i haven't dealt with a community board until the first time i came to california and i was running a clinic i had a board with the board was a whole lot different than the board i'm dealing with  it's a political animal and the politics that go on in there and and if you're not playing the game then you know you become the loser but you know i have my whole issue is that i'm stand a cause and do what i have to do and hopefully that when i when it's all over they can say that mr person was trying to do the best he could under the limited resources and he was treating everybody fairly well ron i want to thank you for coming on always