 You're tuned in to the COVID-19 community report here on KDRT 95.7 FM in Davis, California. I'm your host, Autumn Lab A-Reno, and today is Tuesday, April 14th. We're sharing local news and resources focusing on what's impacting Davis and nearby cities in Yolo County during the COVID-19 pandemic. My guests today are Michael Bish, Executive Director for the Yolo Food Bank, and Karen Larson, Director of Yolo County's Health and Human Services Agency. The show airs live at noon on Tuesdays and Fridays, and repeats at 5 p.m. both days and at noon on Sundays, and you can also listen online at KDRT.org. The news yesterday of a tragic outbreak of the COVID-19 virus at a nursing home facility in Woodland came just as governors on both sides of the country formed a regional alliance to map out a gradual and strategic return to business as usual. At a pace, no surprise, that's at odds with the Trump administration. This week, the CDC reports total cases of 554,849 and total deaths inching towards 22,000, making the United States the global epicenter of the pandemic. The California Department of Public Health reports 22,348 positive cases, 687 deaths, and Yolo County Public Health reports 101 cases and four deaths. As a reminder, you can visit yolocounty.org and click on the COVID-19 dashboard there for a wealth of information. And now I feel a need to share something uplifting after those statistics, so let's try this. Have you seen the signs around town that say miss you, love you, wash your hands? Each features a QR code. Scan that and you'll end up at a YouTube music video that's intended to empathize, connect, or just generally relate to what we're all going through right now. The concept originated with area teacher Kyle Monholland and is continually updated and driven by community participation. The project was recognized this week by Inquirer ED, an inquiry-driven, standards-based online curriculum resource used by schools all over the country that asks, how can we support and encourage our community during difficult times? Kyle is a friend and someone I've co-organized many benefits with, so I send out my congratulations and appreciation. Kyle, miss you, love you, wash your hands. Today, we're going to shine a light on one of the largest nonprofits in Yolo County, the Yolo Food Bank, and we'll have that interview in just a few minutes. I'd like to share a few of the resources available to nonprofits right now. As nonprofits, and Davis Media Access is one, we are mission driven, working to address specific problems and provide specific services in our communities, and that is all good, but it also means we tend to operate on slim margins and rely on funding sources that may be there one year and not the next. So today at 2 p.m. the Yolo Nonprofit Leaders Alliance, which is a partnership between the Yolo Community Foundation, the Yolo County Library, and the Impact Foundry offers a webinar. They have a, if you can't make, if you're a non-profit and you can't make today's, they're offering another one on April 20th about fundraising and challenging times. PS, we're there. Today's is creating financial certainty and uncertain times. Let's build your action plan together and it's a free Zoom webinar that features local CPA, Megan Likes of Likes Accounting, and she'll show, share how nonprofits should take action now to understand and improve their cash flow, assess options for the next few months, and make a plan for long-term survival, including considering how to best connect with donors. The invitation I received included a web link, but I believe if you are a non-profit in Yolo County, you can get there simply by calling the Yolo Community Foundation at 530-312-0593 and requesting a link. And I also wanted to mention, because we had him on recently, Congressman John Garamendi is holding a telephone-based Town Hall Forum on April 16th at 2.30 p.m. for his constituents. The number to call in is 855-962-1140, and he is going to have with him a panel of health and employment experts. And again, 855-962-1140. And we'll get set up for our first call here. We are back and the current crisis has done a brilliant job of highlighting some of the weaknesses in our social fabric, whether that's lack of access to broadband or the prevalence of food insecurity. Here to tell us how the Yolo Food Bank is managing during the COVID-19 crisis is Michael Bish, the organization's executive director. Michael, thanks for joining us today. Hello, how are you? I'm doing well. How about yourself? You are a busy man. Yes, yes, I'm busy sheltering at home here today. Good. Everywhere I look these days I see references to the food bank and I am aware that you all have stepped up your game just incredibly during this crisis. So I'm hoping you'll walk us through some of the changes you've had to make over the last month and tell us about who some of the helpers are. Well, fortunately for us and fortunately for the community, we were pretty well positioned to address some of these concerns before COVID-19 even came on to the community's awareness. So we are an emergency service provider and this of course is a very unprecedented emergency that we're now in. And so some of the things that we've had to do is we've had to dramatically increase the amount of food that we distribute that we distribute from our from our ongoing distributions because there are so many more individuals that are now food insecure. We've also started a free home delivery service for all of these seniors and residents with underlying health conditions that have been ordered to remain at home without food. They have no way to stay in their homes. They would have to emerge from their homes and go to a supermarket and expose themselves to the coronavirus. So in that way we've definitely been helping to to flatten the curve. So right now we're feeding close to 5,000 individuals directly at their doorsteps. So we we have an army of volunteer drivers who pick up the food and then deliver it to the doorsteps of these individuals and then leave without ever having any direct contact with those individuals so that we don't expose them to the virus. And we've also started a new program in concert with the county, the cities, and YoloBus to provide full meal service for the homeless individuals that these jurisdictions have sequestered in motel rooms. So I think it's close to 200 such individuals now. And so they get three meals a day from from Yolo Food Bank seven days a week. So we've really had to ramp up the services that we've been providing all the while having to institute all these social distancing measures among our among our staff. So that complicates the work that we're doing, right? You can imagine how difficult it is to maintain six foot distance in a grocery store where the aisles aren't moving about, right? They're all in a static position, but in an outdoor distribution it's much much harder to to enforce these social distancing measures plus our warehouse is just super super full with volunteers working to put these food boxes together and then they're having to do all that while keeping a six and ideally a nine foot distance from one another. So it's been a very challenging time, but unfortunately we have terrific partners to help us out the county, the city, general community members. I think we're going to be hearing from Karen Larson a little bit later if we've been working very collaboratively with with her department. Oh good, I'll be sure to ask her about that. Yeah, by the way that was a brilliant repurposing of Yolo Bus drivers to to be delivering the food. I love seeing the kinds of partnerships and the creativity that's emerging around this. Now you are you are delivering to a number of communities. I've seen posts that you're out in West SAC that you're delivering to winters. So how many different places are you delivering on a daily basis? We deliver to every single community in Yolo County, so that's all the way north and done again south to Clarksburg from K-Pay Valley to West Sacramento and everywhere in between. We have over a we have over 120 distributions every single mountain spread around the county. So who are some of your, I'd love to hear the stories about who the helpers are. I'm channeling Mr. Rogers here. Who are some of the folks who are really making this possible in addition to your wonderful staff? Well we have some super interesting individuals that have been helping out. So Rob Davis, former mayor of Davis, very early on signaled that he wanted to help out in this unprecedented crisis. So we requested the university to allow him to leave his job until the end of April, his job on campus until the end of April, and he's been coordinating the entire home delivery program which we started from scratch right when this crisis started. So that's one example. As the current mayor of Davis, Brett, who works for FarmFresh to you, he helped coordinate the use of two of the FarmFresh delivery vehicles along with two drivers to help with these home delivery distributions. And then we have many many more examples of folks that have just really stepped up to help those in need by helping the food bank get food out. So are you in need of volunteers? I'm going to make a blanket statement here before I have you answer that. Because we're a non-commercial station the one thing we can't do is you know tell people go donate to this place or do that. We don't do that here but I will make a blanket statement that every non-profit who provides social services in this town needs people's health help and the big day of giving is coming up on May 7th and there are ways to you know contribute on your website and things like that. So I'm just going to leave that there because I know that help is is needed. How are you doing on volunteers and are there other ways that that people can help you out get involved? I'm not sure what your needs are these days but I'd like to find out. Right now we have about 500 volunteers helping out whether it's with distributions or with delivering food with their personal vehicles or with packing food in the warehouse or with helping maintain social distancing protocols at our distribution. But the need is just continues to rise dramatically week by week so we need to continue to recruit new community members to help volunteer. So we along with all the other non-profit social service providers are absolutely in need of community members to step up. So who do they call? How do they get in touch with you? How do they get involved? The best way to get involved is to go to our website at www.yolofoodbank.org. Okay. What else would you like us to know about what you're doing right now? First of all I do want to stop and just say thank you and you know I've worked a lot with Joy Cohen and Jodi Liederman and other folks on your staff over the years and you all are wonderful and you are doing incredible service for for humanity right now really in our county. So thank you for that. Well thank you for that for that plug out. We really appreciate it and it's that kind of raising a community awareness that all of the social service providers need right now. We need to shine a spotlight on what the needs are in the community and the entities that are that are meeting those needs so that we can direct the resources to them because there are many individuals that that want to help out but they can't help out unless unless they have that info. So this show in itself is a it's a great opportunity to do just I'm sure your chat with Karen Larson will will do the same. Yeah great well we appreciate you taking time out from your busy schedule to visit with us today and www.yolofoodbank.org folks and you can go there and and find out how to get involved how to give back and Michael Bish thank you so much. Thank you Autumn. All right you take care. It really is true I have seen Michael mentioned former Davis mayor Rob Davis and I have seen Rob all over on on Facebook looking for translators who can help me get this information to a client in Russian or or you know some other language and the great thing is that people have really stepped up. We are expecting a call from Karen Larson at 1220. I have a few other announcements to read so we will get to her call in just a few minutes. I want to remind people as I often do about the COVID-19 YOLO community response page on Facebook. Early on in the show I interviewed one of the founders Kate Mellon Anibaba and had talked about how the group had grown rapidly grown from a couple of dozen people to I think it's well upwards of four thousand now and it continues to be an incredible source for information and support and you can find it on Facebook. Folks I see that someone is trying to call in and and we are not taking calls on the show except from our guests so sorry about that but it is a half-hour show and there's only so much we can do and we will be talking with Karen Larson at 1220. Okay I want to talk again briefly about Davis Media Access's YOLO County Community Diary project we have going on and you can go to davismedia.org forward slash diary and find information about that. Basically if you think about every important moment or movement in this country historians look not only at events but at how people responded to them so letters, diaries, newspapers, other forms of documentation do as much to shape the record of an event as the event itself and in this spirit we invite you to help document the history we're making right now during this pandemic you can do that by participating in a collaborative virtual storytelling project and you basically just do a short video we recommend two minutes or less with your cell phone and upload it to the the website at davismedia.org slash diary and we'll collect those into different short programs that reflect areas of emphasis, nonprofits, businesses, kids, what's it like to be out of school right now I can only imagine for you parents with young kids. All right I am going to read a poem and I'm doing this for a specific reason I like this poem and yet I think it's going to set up how well let me just read it it's called pandemic by Catherine Omira and the people stayed home and read books and listened and rested and exercised and made art and played games and learned new ways of being and were still and listened more deeply some meditated some prayed some danced some met their shadows and the people began to think differently and the people healed and in the absence of people living in ignorant dangerous mindless and heartless ways the earth began to heal and when the danger passed and the people joined together again they they grieve their losses and they made new choices and dreamed new images and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully as they had been healed now what I want to say is well I think that is a very nice poem and I am encouraged about the things that are going on in terms of let me say I'm inspired by watching the global pollution indices drop every day that the the quarantine goes on I do think that there are a lot of people who are put at risk by the isolation and by being at home so we're going to take just a minute for music and then we'll be back with Karen Larson to talk about that a bit more all right so as I was saying I think the the shelter-in-place order may be particularly taxing for many among us and I wanted to know more about that so I reached out to Karen Larson the director of Yellow County's Health and Human Services Agency and she's with us here today welcome Karen thank you thanks for having me and thanks for being willing to have an open conversation about mental health it's so nice and refreshing to have some of the stigma lifted off this topic and now more than ever it's something we really need to be paying attention to this moment in our history is truly remarkable and for people that are already struggling with mental health issues it's exceedingly difficult and even for those of us who may not have mental health issues there are increased feelings of isolation and depression yes I think the extroverts among us are struggling a bit yeah yeah I'm missing giving hugs to people it's very difficult definitely and you know I think we're seeing increased substance use and and domestic violence and child abuse and all those kinds of things that happen when you have people kind of stuck together for long periods of time and so none of those things help with your mental health and wellness so yeah it's definitely a difficult time definitely an important topic for us to be talking about today right so what are you seeing in terms of you know our community and I also want to make sure we make time to talk about what resources are available through your agency well what we're seeing it's interesting because with the the stay-at-home orders while mental health treatment is considered an essential service a service many of those services have to be provided now virtually or telephonically and so that poses some issues as well so I we haven't seen a dramatic increase in you know calls to our crisis lines or visits to the hospital for mental health issues it's definitely triggering for people that have specific conditions that where things like this are more likely to trigger their symptom but we haven't seen a dramatic increase I'm more worried about those people like I spoke to that are kind of in a home environment where they don't have helpers around them and are really struggling in silence and so I did want to take a few moments to talk about some of the kind of strategies that we can all avail ourselves of even if we don't have access to a therapist or our helpers great let's do that so I think that the key concepts are really supportive relationships good physical health exercising sleeping nutrition getting your behavioral health your mental and behavioral health support needs met in other ways and and then mindfulness you know meditation and and those kinds of practices so I can kind of give some examples of some of those you know supportive relationships a lot of us are feeling isolated and and I know for me my parents are elderly and so they're especially isolated right now so getting them on zoom and face time and those kinds of things has been really helpful connecting with people that we that are supportive of us now for some of our residents that's not always a family member it might be someone else a mentor or someone that they have in their life that they feel like they can rely on so I think those supportive relationships are really important I will say that the news casters are not considered supportive relationships so turn off the news yeah taking breaks from the news and media is especially helpful I've noticed especially for our low-income populations those struggling with job loss and and additional stressors on top of just being at home the news can really trigger bad coping strategies and unhealthy coping strategies so finding ways to have embrace one another virtually however possible in a way that fills our tank is really important the physical health portion can't be overstated I think exercising daily is really important getting in at least 60 minutes a day whatever that looks like depending on your age and ability level even if it's you know walking around the block or doing a little dance party in your house with your kids or you know whatever the case may be just getting your heart rate up getting up and moving and not being so sedentary because it's our body sedentary often our mind goes to dark places healthy sleep is really hard I I know that sleep is a struggle for a lot of people right now because there's so much weighing on them and you know we're all anxious and worried and my dreams have become rather apocalyptic in nature so but trying our best to get go to bed at the same time every day get up at the same time every day avoid screens again right before you go to bed and avoid too much caffeine and also avoiding too much alcohol or other substances will really help with your sleep yeah nutrition I think I'm always struck by the things that are out in the grocery store I notice everybody's baking because there's no flour and everybody's baking yes which is is just own self-care tool but but we also need to remember to eat healthy you know we should be avoiding those refined carbohydrates and high fat high sugar kind of foods because they really don't help our mind to buffer itself against the stress yeah so a really really common thread I've heard from a lot of people lately is that everyone acknowledges they're drinking more yeah I think alcohol sales are up 50% or something like that and it's really I understand it I don't personally drink I've been sober for a very long time but I do understand that coping strategy when you just want to escape I will say after years of doing substance abuse treatment it is not a healthy coping strategy and it doesn't get us to a better place in the long run so whatever we can do to fill our tank in other ways is probably healthier right we're down to our last couple of minutes this goes really fast so so let's get in the last critical information you want to share that's perfect so taking care of our mental and behavioral health is really important we have some resources available locally hopefully nobody we don't see the increased suicide prevention calls but if we if somebody needs that service we do have the local suicide prevention of Yolo County their number is 888-233-0228 we also have for the county the mental health crisis and access line that number is 888-965-6647 and there's a variety of apps and online support groups and those kinds of things so anybody that is technologically savvy at all can go online and look up support groups for whatever the issue is right now and and get some additional support and generally for free there's apps like Headspace and Calm and those kinds of things that really help with those practices and taking care of our inside right you provide so many important services for our county and our various communities so I want to thank you for taking time to talk with us today thank you for providing me all right you take care all right you too that was Karen Larson of Yolo Health and Human Services the director there thank you Karen once again you have been listening to the COVID-19 community report this is episode 9 hard to believe I'm Autumn Lab-A-Reno and this has been live from the KDRT studio thanks so much for tuning in I'll be back on Friday