 As part of our theme, or at least the last two years, this being the second, we have organized a panel of MPA students. And this year's panel comes from the PA530 Special Topics Group, which was, or which is, because we're not finished, Health Law. And in addition, then, to learning about health law, these students protest with how health law intersects with civic engagement. And they have been working on this project since I announced it going all the way back to last fall, trying to tell them, get ready, and today they are. They have gone through two dress rehearsals in class, and I even asked them to produce a final video of what the presentation would look like, and they sent it to me on Sunday. So these people are at the top of their game, and I'm looking forward to hearing them in their full dress presentation. Ladies and gentlemen, group on number one. Hi. Hi, this is our team panel focusing on using civic engagement to improve health disparities. I'm Barbara Fleury. This is my channel. This is the reason why I grew up in Ramirez. And we're going to start with Knight. We're here to use civic engagement. Oh, sorry. So health disparities are preventable differences in the burden of disease, injury, violence, or opportunities to achieve optimal health that are experienced by socially disadvantaged populations. The goal of this presentation is to focus on the common good that which benefits society as a whole by using civic engagement to improve health, to bridge the gap to better health and racial equality, racial equity. Racial disparities focuses on population specific differences among ethnic minorities such as African-Americans, Asians, Native Americans and Hispanics, along with the LGBT community and the disabled. For instance, there are limited resources of health care access to the LGBT community, specifically transgendered individuals who have limited to no access to providers with knowledge or experience in the area. Most notably, the U.S. health care system most greatly affects black and Latino people as well as other ethnic groups while focusing on minority children who may continue to experience multiple disparities in medical, oral, and behavioral health. Like social injustice, most disparities persist over time due to limited access to food, education, housing, and overall poverty. With efforts in focus, I'm giving more medical access to this disparaged group, namely through universal health care, more culturally-skilled health providers, and more hospitals with access to interpreters, cultural representatives, and advocates. These are important barriers in contributing factors in health and racial disparities. Health is not an internal issue. It's greatly influenced by many different factors such as social, economic, and the physical environment of the individual. These environments can change the health status of an entire population of people. And there are many different examples such as poverty, food insecurity, physiological needs, access to care, and barriers such as cultural and language barriers, also including an aversion to authority figures. Health disparity can be a generation's long social issue with inequalities that have adverse effects on a person's health and well-being. Some of the resources available for this at-risk population are community action agencies, disease management programs, medication programs, and food assistance programs. But unfortunately, they are overburdened with limited funds due to heightened population needs. The goal of this presentation today is to advocate by using civic engagement for the common good to improve health disparities by taking responsibility for promoting community health and to eliminate health and racial disparities on a local and national level. So, civic engagement to address the social determinants of health, which Knight mentioned, comes in different forms. One noteworthy form is community-based participatory research, which utilizes a collaboration of academic researchers, practitioners, policymakers, community members, and the politically elite to alleviate health disparity. CPBR collaborations also allow all parties to share in power initiatives in change, making change. It allows all members to be agents of change, and this type of research program mobilizes individuals and organizations to balance power dynamics. Two CPBR programs, which I will later discuss, are the Rhode Island Public Health Institute and Men on the Move. One mention is the White Coast for Black Lives, which collaborates between medical practitioners and the Howard University Medical Students to re-educate and community members to re-educate all parties involved on African American biology to dispel preconceived notion. In order to address civic engagement, we focused on MAPM, which is a framework that helps us create healthier communities and a healthier nation. This is a universal format utilized for civic engagement in order to plan and evaluate public health interventions. This model helps us to establish local and national health objectives and to provide data and tools to enable city, states, and communities across the nation to combine their efforts in order to achieve these goals. MAPM is an acronym that is defined as M for mobilizing individuals or organizations into coalitions and identifying their responsibilities. A is for assessing our community needs and identifying gaps to know where the work needs to be done. P is for planning to reach the objectives identified. A is for implementing the dissemination of information and finding a point person to be able to carry this plan from beginning to end. And lastly, T is for tracking our community progress by regularly evaluating and measuring in order to know what needs to be managed. In addition to this framework, one way Rhode Island is using civic engagement is through community health workers, also known as CHW, who are part of the implementation process. CHWs have a long track record in Rhode Island and they serve as a frontline public health professionals who often have similar cultural beliefs, chronic health conditions, disability, or life experiences as others in the same community. They serve as trusted leaders and are the links between their communities and the need for health and social services. CHWs also serve as liaisons to facilitate access to services and improve the quality and cultural competency of service delivery. CHWs also collaborate by increasing health knowledge and self-sufficiency through a range of activities such as outreach, community education, informal counseling, social support, and advocacy. A CHW can be found working in offices such as primary care provider's office, organizations that support the community like community cap agencies, and also Rhode Island Parenting Network, Rhode Island Parenting Information Network, also known as WRIPEN. The professional community that the CHWs belong to is the Community Health Worker Association of Rhode Island, which provides a formal certification and credentialing is provided through the Rhode Island Certification Board. The State of Rhode Island Director of Health, Nicole Alexander-Ska, has stated, community health workers is approving best practice in addressing preventable differences in health outcomes among socio-demographic groups. CHWs must demonstrate competencies in nine domains. Engagement methods and strategy, individual and community assessment, cultural and linguistic appropriateness response, and promoting health and well-being, just to name a few. And now we will discuss how MAPIT pertains to health disparities on a local level. So in Rhode Island is the Rhode Island Public Health Institute. The way they mobilize community partners is to go to the clinics, the churches, the classrooms, and to get together with faith-based organizations, policymakers, students, other community members, business owners, and practitioners. There were assessments conducted from 2010 of 29,000 adults in over five neighborhoods in Providence in order to gauge what's needed in those communities with regards to alleviating health disparity and also properly designing programs to get funding. So some of the programs that came from that, I believe, were the Food Animal Mobile Produce Shop, which brings fresh fruit and vegetables at discounted prices to underprivileged food deserts, HIV, HCB, and STD screenings preventative and post-exposure assistance services in the community, using resources in the state to improve physical education programs, and lastly, providing culturally-sensitive healthcare services to the LGBTQ community. MAPIT is actually in Pembroke Scott County, Missouri, and it addressed cardiovascular health disparities among African-American men. And the way they mobilized was pretty much the same way. Think tanks and discussions with community members, faith-based organizations, politically elite. They used these think tanks to assess what was needed. And what they came up with was changes in policy that granted land and water rights to these neighbors in the communities lacking that and not allowed them to grow their gardens, which alleviated food insecurity, which is one of the social determinants of health. In addition, these gardens help grow the produce that they use in their agro businesses to sell in retail markets. And it opened the discussion for racial discussions between African-Americans and Caucasians in the neighboring areas that weren't there before. So the Office of Minority Health is an amazing resource that we were able to obtain information both on the national, regional, and state level. So as we've mentioned, the goal is to ensure equality and equity for everyone. We hope this presentation has given you all a better insight to how we can use civic engagement to improve the health and well-being of our fellow citizens. No matter what race, gender, sexual orientation, or socioeconomic status, we are all equal and we all deserve good health and health care. Thank you. Good morning. Allow me on behalf of our group to warmly thank our organizers of this important conference. To Roger Williams University and the Rhode Island chapter of the American Society for Public Administration for Addressing You All. Our group is pleased to be with you here today and in presenting one of many civic engagement topics, human genome editing. I would like to introduce our group. My name is Marisa Pagliata. To my left is Manuel Ortiz. And to my right is Marc Zingarelli. CRISPR, Cas9, and Gene Editing. What is CRISPR? CRISPR, which stands for Clustered Regularly Interspace Shore Paladromic Repeats, is one of many gene editing technologies. Precision Scissors is a genetic editing tool used that allows us to cut and alter DNA in a genomic sequence. Cas9 is a protein that fights certain bacteria against DNA viruses. This is an emerging technology. This technology is less than 10 years old. CRISPR was founded in the late 1990s. Cas9 followed in 2005. The two are not identified to work together until 2007 to 2008. It offers many promises. It eradicates diseases, cures diseases, and produces antibiotic resistance. Consequences for errors resulting from the technology are unknown and unproven in the present day. Experts in the field have identified the vital need for public engagement. Although scholars agreed that we need to have civic engagement on this topic, the more important question is, why have they reached this conclusion? The technology is advancing very rapidly. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine explain that decision makers and public stakeholders can increase public perceptions of regulatory or policy decisions surrounding emerging technologies. But policymaking is lagging. There is not enough knowledge among legislators. Therefore, not enough legislation is introduced, produced, and passed. CRISPR, Cas9, and gene editing should focus on the public good. The public good of individuals is the main benefit of human genome editing. It is difficult for the common good to prevail against the intense concentration of those who have a special interest, especially if the decisions are made behind locked doors. A quote from our former president, Jimmy Carter. Now, the public good can be advanced by legislation and it can also be advanced by science, but that's just not enough. People need to know reality what's going on with genetic engineering. And this is why civic engagement is so important. And so, state in another way, our team recognizes that civic engagement is at the forefront of this. And so, what we learn is that civic engagement allows citizens to learn about their communities. It establishes shared values, builds social capital, and motivates citizens to contribute to their communities in positive ways. And so, when it comes to actually recognizing or identifying key goals that the scientific community can do to actually engage the community and do well, we came up with three of them. The literature indicates that this is a direct link between civic engagement and trust. Trust has been a significant predictor of volunteering and share of a given. Multiple studies have shown that trust is a requirement for citizens, especially women, to be able to volunteer. In reality, trust and science have not really gotten along and it's fragile. This stays back to closed door meetings in the 1970s when our DNA was being discussed in Asilomar and this left a sour relationship. And thus, science education and civic engagement needs to foster trust. When it comes to the relationship between scientists and the community, we recognize that scientists are experts and therefore they have a duty to share their knowledge with the community. For the same time, they also have a duty to listen to the community. And by doing so, this two-way communication, this new way of two-way communication, allows scientists and policymakers to understand what issues, what problems the society and the citizens believe are worth solving. And additionally, again, back to Asilomar, closed door meetings did not include those at the margin. And so, in order to build social norms, we need to be inclusive. What we're recommending for civic engagement in regards to science is that conversations are compromised if they don't include those at the margin. So where is civic engagement around genetic engineering today? If you were to walk out, now you would find a few main organizations and you would find that they're informative and transparent with their education, but they're passive with their engagement. And what that means is that citizens must reach out first to these organizations. First and foremost, we identify the World Health Organization and the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. These organizations set global guidelines for genetic engineering and they're focused on promoting health and knowledge. They are calling for public engagement. Nationally, we follow the Food and Drug Administration. This is a national body for regulating gene editing and bioethics. They award biological licenses and they publish the research that they fund on their website, clinicaltrials.gov. There you can find all the data and all the research that they fund. The third and probably most important is the National Institute of Health and the Recombinant DNA Advisory Committee. This committee is strictly human genome editing. Their education is transparent online. You can join an email list for free. They encourage you to go to in-person meetings and join via webcast if you can't be there in person. And what you can do is you can also post to their forums any suggestions you have for the guidelines. And what you can do in the forums is view any of the past suggestions as well from the public. These organizations are fantastic but they do share a common issue. They're transparent and educational but citizens must have reached out to these organizations first and interact with complex information without guidance. So my team is calling for more engagement. We suggest changing the flow of information. The organization must reach out to the citizens and this type of engagement allows policymakers to get an understanding of public priority and concerns with gene editing. There are two best practices on the civic engagement topic of human genome editing. Our group recommends the following intentional focus groups and social media. So in looking at practical approaches our team actually found this program Voices, Views, Opinions and Ideas of Citizens in Europe. It's a model that incorporates citizens voices in responsible research. Basically this is a model based on focus groups and where especially trained moderators met with groups around the European continent, 27 countries, 10 individuals in each focus group. And what they did is that they actually were able to look at a specific topic area of science and apply it through exercises to the everyday lives, identifying their concerns and proposing solutions as a group. The outcomes of these discussions were analyzed by researchers and policymakers and they were able to make recommendations based on this to priorities for the Horizon 2020 program, which is basically their big institute that guides their research. The big three things that I want to point out about Voices is one that we're intentional about providing content resources in a cultural and sensitive manner. 27 countries, different languages. And so there was translation provided. The recruitment efforts of the participants were intentional about having the characteristics of the people that were involved as those in the community. And most importantly, as our keynote speaker was talking, I really highlighted this, participants felt that they were part of the conversation and they were happy to be consulted on the issues. And their collective opinions could lead to actually solutions of these issues. So in conjunction with the Voices program that many described, we're suggesting using social media as well. Using social media, you can reach citizens in their pockets and in their homes. And it's inexpensive and simple. There's research out there that suggests social media is effective in spreading scientific awareness and conversation. We found literature published by Gerard Carrier and Rollins that supports the use of Twitter to spike conversation around breast cancer awareness. Conversations would spike and then taper off after two to three days. Celebrities and large organizations also had a large impact on how far that conversation would spread online. So what we're suggesting is using Twitter as a one-way tool to increase conversations about gene editing two or three days prior to RAC meetings or Voices or really any organization that's concerning gene editing or policy. Our group concludes that CRISPR and gene editing can have results for the common good. The common good is not simple for science, medicine and our government. Common good requires engagement with the community and what we offer here today are two examples of what can work. Thank you. Good morning. My name is Jennifer Shurillo and this is Brett Quinn and it is our honor to be presenting today. First we'd like to thank Dr. Michael Hall for his tireless support and help with our presentation and Lee Cube for organizing this event. Also we'd like to thank Serena Breeland and Kathleen Kerwin for asking the committee of members and our family and friends and peers for supporting us. This is our presentation on HIV and civic engagement practices. The epidemic is not over, 40,000. That's the number of new HIV diagnosis each year in the United States. 1,748 Red Islanders have died from HIV since 1983. Among these diagnosed in Rhode Island, 11% of individuals who are HIV positive do not know their status. And this is due to access to treatment and stigma surrounding the disease. Today we will be recommending best civic engagement practices to lower HIV infections while increasing HIV education and access to treatment. HIV is an infection that targets the immune system. AIDS is the final stage of HIV and is a disease resulting in severe loss of the body's cellular immunity. HIV is transmitted through an exchange of bodily fluids such as blood or semen. Those at greater risk of contracting HIV are people who have unprotected sex and intravenous drug users who share contaminated needles. Earlier this year the Trump administration announced their plan to eliminate the HIV epidemic by the year 2030. The plan is to draw national attention to the domestic epidemic and to offer new prevention and treatment options that reduce the risk of HIV transmission. The initiative proposes 291 million in federal funds for fiscal year 2020, which is the first significant increase for prevention and treatment programs in more than a decade. One type of civic action to fight the epidemic is billing social capital. Social capital has been identified as an important social determinant for HIV prevention. It is defined as the network of relationships a person has among those who live and work in their community. Social capital theories suggest that individuals embedded in social networks can access and benefit from group resources. Those with greater amounts of social capital are expected to exhibit lower disease rates. Research has contributed to the theory that social capital can be a protective resource for HIV prevention, with participation in community groups being one mechanism to achieve that. Building social capital through civic engagement can help raise awareness of PrEP. A recent poll by the Kaiser Family Foundation revealed that less than half of the overall public is aware of newer HIV prevention and treatment strategies such as the drug PrEP, which is a prescription medication that dramatically lowers the risk of getting HIV when taken as a preventive measure. Data suggests there is awareness of PrEP in the community groups where men who have sex with men participate. Health officials say expanding access to PrEP is a key component of seeking strategies to reduce HIV infection. Communing mobilization is another method to expanding social capital and civic engagement. One community mobilization effort, called Connect to Protect, sought to create communities that were competent to address youth's HIV-related risks and remove structural barriers to youth health. There were 14 Connect to Protect coalitions across the United States that fostered new or improved partnerships in their communities. Cultural competence significantly improved at a handful of the coalitions, particularly those focused on addressing the needs of young men who have sex with men. Connect to Protect frequently offered trainings for providers to increase their competence to work with youth. Coalition members noticed an increased ability and willingness among providers to work with disenfranchised youth populations. Education courses can help promote civic engagement as well. Rutgers University offered a course on HIV in which a research project was assigned. Students were asked to choose a target for HIV prevention and to develop a program to deal with the issue. They were then required to submit their proposal to three reviewers and one expert in the area to obtain critiques. When this was first done, 400 students showed their work to 1,200 other people, which meant that almost 2,000 people in the community were doing some thinking about HIV and therefore increasing their social capital for the common good. Civic engagement for the common good can be accomplished through partnerships with local advocates and organizations. There are local organizations in Rhode Island that assist those living with and at risk for HIV. AIDS Care Ocean State is Rhode Island's largest AIDS service agency. They provide housing, case management, medical care and prevention to those at risk are affected by HIV. Their prevention center offers free anonymous and confidential HIV testing, safe sex kits and educational materials. They also operate a street outreach team that goes out into the community and gives out safe sex kits, HIV testing information, toiletries and referrals for additional resources to the at risk populations. Family Service of Rhode Island is another local nonprofit organization and they provide a wide array of services to primarily low income children, adults and families in every Rhode Island community. One of their divisions AIDS Project Rhode Island provides a compassionate and collaborative response to the needs of people living with, affected by and at risk for HIV and AIDS. In addition to local Rhode Island organizations, there are national organizations that work to fight the epidemic through civic engagement. International AIDS Society is the world's largest association of HIV professionals working on all fronts of the global AIDS response. One of their civic action campaigns, Youth Voices, aims at collaborating and engaging young people. The goal is strengthen, support and amplify the voices of young people on current HIV related issues and trends to influence policy makers. The World Health Organization and the joint United Nations program for AIDS are global organizations who say stigma and structural barriers need to be overcome by ensuring those undiagnosed are tested and linked to treatment. As a result, they partner to create the STAR program which was a five year HIV self testing civic action initiative showing evidence that self testing is a critical strategy in accomplishing the 2030 initiative to end HIV. What will follow will be examples of civic engagement practices to lower new HIV infections while increasing HIV education and access to treatment. The best civic actions emerging from our research include education classes, building social capital and addressing policy initiatives. First is education. Three out of four people with HIV report that they have experienced a stigma. Stigma is defined as a mark of a disgrace that sets a person apart from others. When a person is labeled by their illness, they're no longer seen as an individual but as part of a stereotyped group. The literature says focusing on HIV risk behaviors targeted at educating young adolescents with community collaboration in a classroom setting is effective in prevention and reducing stigma. Of the 16 million college students in the United States, mostly adolescents and young adults may indulge in alcohol, drug and sexual behaviors that place them at risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases including HIV and AIDS. Our youth are a valuable resource for the future of this country. It is imperative that they may be equipped with the necessary information to protect themselves from this still incurable disease. We recommend education begin in secondary school and continue through high school and college. College and universities across the United States are attempting to make HIV AIDS education more meaningful with both targeted seminars outside the classroom and offering interdisciplinary courses. A study of students enrolled in an HIV AIDS education course at Rutgers University in New Jersey showed an increase in learning and behavioral changes in students' level of general knowledge and how to practice safer sex. Civic engagement around education should not be restricted to school. It should extend into adolescents' community groups. As mentioned earlier, building social capital is crucial to fighting this epidemic for the common good. We recommend that community groups be a place to provide on-site consultation and screening for prep use. Local organizations could partner with International AIDS Society to mirror their Youth Voices campaign to engage adolescents. Education departments and healthcare advocates can partner to deliver education on HIV prevention to at-risk communities. Another way to build social capital through civic engagement is by expanding community outreach for HIV testing. In 2012, the FDA approved the ORQIC HIV self-test kit designed for use by the general public that can be purchased over the counter. HIV self-testing has developed substantially over the past few years, providing to be a new and critical HIV response strategy in ending the epidemic. Self-screening permits individuals perceiving themselves to be at risk of infection to test independently and privately. By partnering with local healthcare organizations, routine testing can be implemented during key healthcare encounters like wellness visits or popular community events like water fire provenance. It's been shown that HIV testing in non-clinical settings is an effective action to bring HIV testing to the community. Our final recommendation is civic engagement towards policy initiatives. The Trump administration wants to eliminate the HIV epidemic over the next decade, but they also want to repeal the Affordable Care Act. Prior to the ACA, many people with HIV face significant barriers to accessing health coverage. Medicaid is the single largest source of coverage for people with HIV in the United States, and its role for those with HIV has significantly expanded under the ACA. If the ACA continues to be gutted, those living with and at risk for HIV could lose their coverage and in turn their sources of treatment or prevention. An effective civic engagement action is using public opinion as leverage. The public can voice their concerns in disagreement with the repeal of the ACA through social media campaigns using Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. We can encourage the public to write to their local government officials, organize focus groups and march in protests. As public healthcare administrators, it's our civic responsibility to support prevention, treatment and reduce stigma by focusing on community action to protect our communities and help to eradicate this disease for the common good. Thank you all. There are a number of notable things about this group. Number one, every one of them work outside of my classrooms. They also have families and other responsibilities, and yet they took this task on not only to learn about health law, but also to learn about the kinds of things you've heard here. And I insisted, I coached them to end with specific recommendations and they accomplished all of that. So thank you very much ladies and gentlemen. A couple of notes here of recognition. Number one, we have with us today the outstanding graduate in the MPA program. It is named for John Stout, who was the dean of the continuing education school and was instrumental in creating the PA program and undergraduate program and was certainly involved in the development of the full MPA program. The winner of the 2019 graduating class, John W. Stout Award is Mrs. Beth Lannigan. A companion award goes to the outstanding student in the Masters of Science in Leadership and she is with us this morning also, Cassidy Hammond. I have both of these young people spelled in the classroom and that is not an easy task to do when you're working and you have responsibilities outside the classroom and so on. So congratulations. Now by the way, one of the requirements of the, one of the obligations that goes with the award just mentioned is you have to come back on the fall and get it. Because otherwise Ms. Koo will take it away from me. I'd make that up. Each year the National Association of Schools of Public Administration and Affairs has a student competition called a simulation. And each year that simulation has grown and it is in fact worldwide in competition now. Every fall the principal representative from the program that is a member of NASA is asked to nominate people to be part of the simulation. In the past that email has come to me and I've nominated the student. We decided to depart from that single decision making this past year and we opened it to competition. If you were interested you would let us know and then we examine whatever credentials you might we might have asked for. This year selected not just by me but by the RIASP council as Manuel Ortiz. Senator Ortiz was posted to Villanova in Philadelphia and worked on the team there. And as in the past each team has assigned a policy area that they are required to come up with a solution for. And you don't know what it is until you get there. So it takes a great deal of skill and acumen to be able to pull all that together. And senior Ortiz was part of that group too this past fall. In the past we've had two others participate. Sasha Zapato was just here and is gone she had to leave. And she was on the winning team. She went all the way to Columbia in Central America. Not New York City. And she went there. They had it on the weekend at Carnival. So she managed to get there and not get distracted. And her team actually won. Last year we had Katrina Ramson-Shork and she also was in the first round winners. So we are very pleased to be able to do that kind of thing and plan to do it in the future. So anybody sitting here who's in the NPA part of wants to be part of that. Please let us know because Mr. Ortiz comes back with a recommendation that we should send a team. Which is fine with me. Now we're going to have an interactive session here very quickly. That will involve the high school students who were seated at the back. And that will be down the hall at the Williams room. It'll be on your right as you go down the corridor. And that would be also the place to interact with these fine young people here. But as part of our program this morning, Mayor Patucket, Mr. Gravini. I knew I was going to mess with that. Don't worry about it. Reapian has joined us and would have some remarks about our program and the students. So, Mayor. Thank you. Thank you. Good afternoon everybody. And like I tell my wife is call me anything you want. Just don't call me late for dinner because I do enjoy the right. First I want to thank Roger Williams University. And ask for all that you do throughout our communities, right? It's so, so important we talk about community engagement and civic engagement. You know, we all talk about it and we're all excited about it. But in a lot of ways we don't do enough. So thank you for all you do in our communities. It's so, so important. I'm glad to be here as part of the 10th annual public service and leadership conference. I'm more excited that we have some of our high school students here from Patucket. From Shea and Tolman. Shout out, give yourselves a round of applause. All right. Because there's no better community than Patucket. All right. I know that you're going to be going out and you're going to be doing your presentation. I'm looking forward to participating. So I don't want to belabor the talking points. But I just want to give a special thanks out, as I said, to Roger Williams, to Mrs. Serena Burland, the city manager from Texas of all places. So welcome. We're excited to have you here. Catherine Curwin, the director of communications. And also the American society of public administrations. And I know I'm going to sound corny and I'm going to start to show my age a little bit. In 1961, in his inaugural address, right, President Kennedy said, ask not what you can do for it, what your country can do for you, but ask what you can do for your country. And that's so, so true when we talk about civic engagement and what we can do and give back. And we talk about that and 60 years later still holds true. Truly. I can't say enough of the importance of engagement in our communities and both from the civic engagement and just engagement in itself is so, so important. But again, I want to give a shout out to all the individuals who are being recognized today. A real big shout out to the Pataki students and their teachers. And, you know, Mr. Conley was just showing me around in the room a little bit. And I want to say to you that I still call Mr. because like you, it was a little old and he used to beat me up in class. But I say that, you know, when I get out of line, he was able to hit me back then and we joke about that all the time respectfully. And I don't mean that anybody should be filing suit against him in today's world, right? But it taught, but it has an impact, right? Civic engagement, right? Government. He impacted my life in a lot of ways, just like those teachers today are impacting you as. You might not know it, but take advantage of it. We're proud of you and congratulations. We look forward to seeing your presentation. Thank you again for having me. Thank you, Mr. Mayor. Great to have you with us. This is the interactive portion, and it features the poster presentations that I mentioned earlier this morning from the high school students of Shea and Tolman. And again, I think the important thing is to recognize that none of this would be happening without Michael Conley. And he's just been a real inspiration for us all. Thank you, Mr. Conley. So before we go further, I believe Ms. Koo has a couple of remarks she'd like to know. Sure. I'm sorry. We're asking the students to get a little head start to stand at their stations for the poster presentation part. And then momentarily, I'm going to ask the rest of the audience to go and interact with the posters. Once you do that, this room, they're going to be set up for lunch. And so feel free to return to the seat that you're currently sitting on. You can remove any stuff off the table that you feel that's in the way. They're going to be setting up for lunch. If you picked up a name badge along with a little key card that has dietary restrictions, please put that in front of where you're sitting. So that way the staff knows, you know, which dish needs to be aware. Other than that, if everybody can... Oh, there's also snacks. And let's come prepared. There is snacks in the floor, and you can go and interact with the high school students. So at this moment, if you can please, if you have any questions, you can find me in the front. Thank you.