welcome to education in our community this show is about lifelong learning teaching and mentoring an ongoing process from for youth and adults today we are privileged to have as our special guest dr washington burns who is a medical doctor who specializes in pathology i believe and also he's going to tell us a little bit about the work that he does in the west oakland area and i believe he uses resources throughout the bay area could you tell us a little bit about your program that you have that has been going now for many years you have the prescott's of the center is the community  convent across the street from st patrick's church there was not a convent a convent and so we got together a bunch of civic and community leaders who felt the building should be preserved because of the national registry of landmarks and it should be and i thought it should be made into a community center to serve the under served people of west oakland and that's what was done the board was formed my brother asked me to be on the board at that time i was working in cisco it's a pathologist at the california pacific medical center so we started with very simple programs culture computer training services for the people that have men in need down there yes because i think that you have been doing something with young children probably in elementary school you started in there in that area yes we started first with  tutoring and the schools schools found out that the catholic school across the street surprisingly eighty five percent of the children were performing below grade level source started a tutoring and the social service department of county asked me to get involved in a family support service which we have called another road to safety children and families are referred to that service  feel that a child is in danger and so for we get a referral from child protective services to see the families and support them do everything we can to get you know stabilized to take the children out of danger to reduce the referral of children from foster care and we've done a significant job in that area and you chose the title another wrote another wro that the family needs we would support to get the family stabilized if the parents need a job would get job training for them and find them jobs your name is dr washington burns washington burned and it's been so interesting to hear about you but not knowing specifically what you are doing because i think thought maybe you had done some of the work with george washington carver or someone who had the name washington because it's just to hear of your name i used to always think i'd like to go and see whatever this facility is so the building that you're in used to be a convent right and you're you say your brother was a bishop he was a priest priest right and publish his name charles prince charles burns other charles burns was he known for his you know talent that he had working with people he was he was very supportive and got very much involved in every community that he was then los angeles cleveland chicago even  mississippi where he worked for a while you said you were from mississippi i believe yes i am for that so enclosed from mississippi right what part of mississippi greenville mississippi yeah well it had a good reputation didn't it it did have a pretty good reputation right so did you go to public schools there now i went to catholic school there catholic school also then you have a real grounding in the path of catholics right although my family i was methodists we we to catholic school and we were baptized my brother and i for many years actually i was baptized when i was fifteen years old as a catholic as a catholic so we know it but we know other religions protestant religion church and the united methodist church have a kind of a similar history but it's different so it sounds like you had a very eclectic exposure to the ology and religion right but i mean he did i did i was exposed obviously because i went to catholic school but the thing that that growing up in the south and under the area of oppression that existed was days much worse than it than it is now and it was during the time a severe depression people think the economy is bad now they have no idea how bad the economy was back then so i grew up in an area where i relate people that were of low income and one well educated so it was very easy for me when i retired from medicine in two thousand to go into a community w because i read data to the people in west oakland but when you were in mississippi you didn't practice as a medical doctor that you know i came to california when i was fifteen or fifteen and then you went to college right i went to o tech school and then from oakland tech i went to cal to major in medicine and then i went to i went university of buffalo medical school and having a residency in new york city and columbia presbyterian autopsies i did surgical i did cytology i did everything that any other but the allergist did but but my area of expertise was running a clinical laboratory so you had others who knew how to do those things as well right under your supervision right yeah well this is truly phenomenal because we were thinking the topic would be something like community engagement and preventative health care but it's also like you've been into holistic care  dealing with whatever the situations are in families right borden you know laurent people have many problems yes so that's why we have many problems many programs yes health care when i first got out of retired from medicine i didn't want to get involved in health care issues you did i did not but i found out that two thousand and one there was a lot of  ages five to seventeen were seven times more likely to be hospitalized for asthma than any other area in california and that hooked me yes i wanted to do something about that hospital yes so they didn't just have asthma they had to go into the heart it had to be hospitalized and most low income people because they don't have first of all they don't practice preventative care they don't understand that it's a generational thing that's gone on for years and the more educated you are the more you understand about preventative care most low income people are not generally really well educated on a twenty five percent for instance of people in west oakland have high school diplomas twenty five percent to five percent and so given that fact and the fact that they don't have the money to go to doctors regularly you don't have money to take care of medicines or even don't have money to go to specialists it is a problem not only that you have nutritional problems and all of the problems you lived and substandard housing all of these things contribute to the problem you probably don't have stores that have vegetables and things like that that's true and gardens to the families grow their own garden some do but many don't  the thing about community engagement and getting people to step up to the plate were you able to mobilize parents well what happened is we discovered a program called the breath mobile program which started in los we sikh children that have been identified as having asthma yes and everybody on board are no no as i'm a very well many providers do not know as i'm a very well testing to identify our genes and if a child has it and allergic asthma and we do everything according to national standards and not only that but we go to the schools every four to six weeks and we do it all without charging the patient anything at all it's all done free every four to six every four to six weeks that's quite often and yes and the thing is that we're teaching the  advantage of preventative care if you do follow directions take the right medications money to get the right medication i have you know in a church plan that can help you get medication you can stay out of the hospital and the emergency room oh that's good and that's what we mainly teach them about preventative care and you could do the same thing with other diseases thirty six percent of the children we say and we're saying predominately african americans now and latinos thirty six percent of the children are obese and obesity is a major problem contributes to the cards as diabetes hypertension and other illnesses including cardio you know cardio vascular disease so we have to address that issue yet obesity and our children so that it isn't just children who have trouble breathing and sneezing and things like that it's actually the obesity issue as well obesity or you know obesity is is a contributor to so the work that you're doing does that kind of relate to what the president's wife michelle obama is doing for the nation well she's she's on oprah you know she's pushing doing something about obesity yes which is very good to have heard do that and having children eat vegetables vegetables and cut down on fast foods and potato chips all of the things that contribute and then doing exercises as well and exercise is very important so how do you manage to get the mobile  to go so many different places well and where do the well first of all it costs money it costs about a half a million dollars have to raise about a half a million dollars every year to run the go out to all of the schools we can do about twenty three schools a month a month a month right and we go monday through friday to school and we're on school campuses for about six hours and it's all done on an appointment system i  after we work the person up the first visit is forty five minutes thereafter every half hour i return return visits the child is only out of class for one half hour you can't beat that anywhere  all done on an appointment system if they have an appointment at nine we see them at nine they are free to go back to that class at nine thirty we have to have parents of company and that's where the problem is often we cannot get parents to come with to be saying on the breath mobile they need to come also they have to come you've got to have a responsible adult present you don't send your child to a doctor alone they'll do that if they go to the emergency room or something they'll go with the child so the child all we want is the parent to come and that's the big problem we have we have poor compliance african americans and we do  engagement to us to try to find out what the problems are trying to encourage more people to take advantage of excellent service like this do you think it's a motivational issue or is it something else i don't know at this point i can't say what it is because i think sometimes it takes a high degree of motivation for women to get their husbands to go to the doctor right and in your case you're offering a free service that they have to come to the school with their child right still it sounds like they would be especially the mothers would be very motivated to come with the child right but it also could be just a survival issue lower income people often are surviving just to make it right that moment because another emergency might be coming up so it does sound like you need a real commitment on the part of parents so over the years you've been doing this for how long well we've been running amok this is our fifth year of running help them yes so it does sound like that's a very vigilant work that you do we even have a program where we were for them to help the homes program where our results if that's what you're talking about yes we have reduced emergency room visits and hospitalizations by eighty three percent but tricker in the home might be what or triggers ok we're talking about mold we're talking about animal cats and dogs we're talking about dust mites we're talking about smoking secondhand smoke there's a lot about people that smoke to tell them we try to get them go to smoke to say some classes we do everything we can and some people eventually come around yes but not everyone no no i can understand that that would be probably a very important thing to deal with the parents attitudes and their willingness to change some behaviors so you don't have too much compliance in that area know it's smoking is probably one of the worst addictions  well so then the over the years have you found that the church having you have a connection there with the church also we don't have much connection with churches  d we know churches we know pastors we go there we will bring then there are some times when they have health care and try to help them we do do that but we don't have very strong relationship with churches and perhaps we should have some of the adults have asthma problems today they certainly do so they want to be cured as well they would like for us to start and i bought a program that's what i would love to do that but when you have to raise i have million dollars a year starting another program that's a separate part of money yes you know so now your age group is what we're seeing children ages three months eighteen well that's a large span ri our nursing staff you know we have from several places you know people are contribute well it does sound like your crew that you have would be that would be a wonderful story for the city of oakland has the television station there publicize the work that you're doing i've had a couple of television interviews oh that's good and then they would have they've been inside the mobile to show as well it's an international media group although many international is shown internationally while this is exciting so you're getting a lot of exposure right the million dollars that you raise did you say one million are well have million dollars a foundations and we have a program that very simple program that's called twenty twenty campaign and twenty twenty comes in the fact that we would like to get twenty thousand people give twenty dollars twenty dollars not a lot of money that's the price of two movie right tickets probably yes and if we've got twenty thousand people giving two hundred dollars a year that pretty much covers that's about four hundred thousand dollars if we could five ten zero eight five six five one zero and we can help them help us oh that's wonderful so that you have you gotten many people over the past to get over the past twenty dollars over the  have that's how we've been able to keep going have you noticed whether the funds are coming from outside of west oakland there are we getting friend funds from new york in the midwest san francisco san francisco go to see more school or schools right yes it sounds self a nominal that you're doing this work and it sounds like you have a real passion for this work i do so are you beginning to find that it's very complex and that you really need others to come in to bring in some new person i certainly do i'm going to i'm going to be looking for a new crew for a second work on a second ben so if people watching this what kind of people would you want patients every time they come on board we review everything with the pace and how to use the medication how to use the inhalers how to clean their inhalers and any other devices that they may need and these patients are three months old up to fifteen  eighteen eighteen and the parents are also responsible for learning the right the parents learn and the kids as they get older learn also how to do that ok well i'd like to thank you so much for being willing to but you've been doing other things in west oakland before that yeah for eighteen years and that was health work as well right well thank you so much for being willing to share for us on short notice you're welcome and yeah and thank you for having me oh i just  eard your name over the years and i thought prescott school is right across the street from your what is the name of your organization again scott jones center joseph center and the building that is on your material that you have it's a lovely