BY SANDRA GUY

The growing COVID-19 pandemic is highlighting community health centers’ critical, though little-known, role in serving those most at risk and the growing numbers of the unemployed and uninsured.

The country’s nearly 1,400 community health centers provide services for 28 million people each year at more than 13,000 sites. They’re often the only point of care for the poorest and most medically vulnerable, including Black and Brown communities whose lack of access to quality healthcare, fresh foods and other systemic disadvantages have increased their coronavirus risks.

The community health centers act as “the shock absorbers for hospitals,” as Steve Carey, chief strategy officer for the National Association of Community Health Centers, put it — not only by keeping uninsured patients out of the emergency room but also as a first line of defense against COVID-19 and by serving COVID-19 patients with milder or moderate symptoms.

Just as National Health Center Week’s recognition nears — it’s Aug. 9-15 — the demands on the centers’ services look to become overwhelming, since an estimated 5.4 million Americans have lost their healthcare insurance since the pandemic lockdowns started four months ago due to job losses. That’s more people who’ve become uninsured ever in a single year, surpassing the 2008-2009 recession, according to a study by the nonpartisan consumer advocacy group Families USA.

Another study found that more than 80 percent of uninsured children and adults younger than 65 live in working families, and that recent immigrants accounted for a relatively small proportion of the uninsured (fewer than one in five).

The patients have a voice in the way the health centers are run: By statute, patients must make up more than 50% of each community health center board.

Patients and community members also have a voice in electing the U.S. Congressmen who vote on the health centers’ budget. The U.S. Senate is now poised to act on the Health and Economic Recovery Omnibus Emergency Solutions (HEROES) Act, which, in the U.S. House version, would provide $7.6 billion in emergency funding to help the overwhelmed community health centers.

But some lawmakers say more far-reaching efforts are needed. For example, one proposal calls for $77 billion in funding for community health centers over five years so the centers can set up telehealth services and offer critical job-training programs such as the National Health Service Corps and the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education program. Senators Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass. and Bernie Sanders, I-Vermont, and U.S. Rep. Ayanna Pressley, D-Mass., are sponsoring that funding proposal.

Hand-in-hand with greater funding is the idea of universal healthcare coverage. Supporters of Medicare for All and other guaranteed healthcare proposals see community health centers as a key piece of such a system. Another expansion would enable the centers to hire hundreds of thousands of unemployed Americans who’ve lost their jobs and train them to be a corps of COVID-19 contract tracers. The long-term goal would be for many of those workers to progress into chronic disease management positions.

To keep up with the latest news about the health centers’ evolving role, see
https://www.cdc.gov/nchhstp/preventionthroughhealthcare/healthdepartments/commhealthcenters.htm

In William Safire’s delightful book “On Language” (New York, 1980, Times Books),  he has a funny entry about a category I loved laughing about before I knew its technical name, mondegreens.

Actually, hearing sounds and thinking they sound for the wrong words has many names — Safire prefers mondegreen to the more technical “homophone,” “unwitting paronomasia,” and “agnominatio,”  writing that those terms “sound like fancified dirty words to me.”

Mondegreen, according to Safire, was coined in a 1954 story in Harper’s Bazaar magazine, “The Death of Lady Mondegreen,” by Sylvia Wright. She “recalled a Scottish ballad, ‘The Bonny Earl of Murray,’ from Thomas Percy’s Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,’  which sounded to her like this:

‘Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands,

Oh, where hae ye been?

They hae slain the Earl Amurray

And Lady Mondegreen.'”

Safire says that Wright didn’t want the Earl to die alone, so she imagined this lady dying with him — even though she knew they laid him on the green.

The rest of the column is full of wondering about what “in a future century” (and remember, he was writing in 1980) might happen to some of the easier metanalyses, or misdivisions of words. Just as an “ekename” of long ago is a nickname now, Safire wonders, would an exorbitant charge get called “‘a nominal egg.’ perhaps committed by a ‘next-store neighbor’?”

I could go on until the dawnzer gives its lee light, as Beverly Clearly so memorably had her children’s book character Ramona learn in school. But, as Safire counsels, a nuff is a nuff.

That leads me to French — the “goose eggs” on scoreboard and “love” in tennis both relate to mis-hearing the French word for an egg, l’oeuf. Of course, that looks like a zero… but that means nothing. Signing off now.

Margaret Serious has a page on Facebook. 

After college football programs across the country shut down workouts in March, Kare’ Lyles was at a loss.

“I spent two weeks just trying to get a grasp on what was going on,” said Lyles, the starting quarterback who led Southern Illinois to a 7-5 record last season, its best since 2013.

Longing to keep the momentum going from a breakthrough season for the Salukis – who haven’t been to the FCS playoffs since 2009 – Lyles had an idea. He would drive from his home in Madison, Wis., to Carbondale, which is nearly 450 miles, for anyone who wanted to stay sharp.

He contacted his receivers and invited those who could make the drive to Carbondale to unique workouts.

“I make the 7-hour drive frequently to see my family,” he said.

In April, Lyles was joined by juniors Avante and D’Ante’ Cox from Rochester, Ill., near Springfield, and redshirt freshman Branson Combs, who lives in Evansville, Ind. The group spent several weeks working out together five times a week, according to Lyles, at any local field they could find to prepare for – hopefully – a full 2020 season.

Lyles said the group took plenty of precautions amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

“They were wearing gloves,” he said. “I wore a glove on my left (non-throwing) hand. We were always (socially) distanced from each other.”

Along with running routes, the Cox brothers added their special touch to the workouts.

“Avante and D’Ante’ come from a track background,” he said. “So we all did these speed and agility drills. It was really good. The only thing we didn’t have was a weight room. That was different.”

Lyles said he returned each month for at least two weeks at a time, and as local public health restrictions loosened, more players joined the workouts.

“We were getting in some good work,” he said. “I was always willing to take that 7-hour drive.”

Driven by winning

Kare’ Lyles

Coming from Scottsdale (Ariz.) Community College to SIU, Lyles was used to helping programs succeed.

“The biggest thing for me is winning,” he said. “Ever since I was young playing quarterback, I’ve never had a losing season. I’ve been blessed to be a part of great teams.”

When the Salukis put together a five-game winning streak during Missouri Valley Football Conference games in October and November last season, they forged a new identity, according to Lyles.

Winning in one of the nation’s most talented conferences has provided a lift for the Salukis, who are scheduled to open the season Sept. 3 at Tennessee-Martin.

“That all came down to our practice mentality,” Lyles said. “You could see a big jump. That really pushed us over the edge. Now, you can see that consistency and that mentality in the off-season.”

Lyles noticed a change in mentality during 6 a.m. workouts over the winter months.

“Now guys are more focusing on their nutrition,” he said. “They’re making better choices off the field.”

What’s ahead

While Lyles took over in the third game of the season from an injured Stone Labanowitz and held the job for the remainder of the season, the passing game wasn’t SIU’s biggest weapon.

The Salukis ran for 231.8 yards a game – which ranked 12^th in the nation — and 28 touchdowns last fall. A powerful offensive line and a backfield led by breakout freshman running back Javon Williams Jr. helped the Salukis control games and wear down opponents.

The challenge for Lyles and his receivers this season is to rev up a passing game that ranked 93^rd in FCS with 185.2 yards a game.

Though Lyles threw 12 touchdowns and eight interceptions, his pass efficiency rating was fourth in the league and his 62.9% completion percentage was 23^rd-best nationally. He also threw more than one interception only once in game last season.

“My expectations are always going to be high,” Lyles said. “The things I can change are just being more comfortable in the system and knowing that I’m the starting quarterback.”

Lyles said his focus is on three main tasks this season.

“All good quarterbacks limit the mistakes, they take advantage of each opportunity for an explosive play (in the pass game) and they move the chains,” he said. “Those three things are always something you want to evolve in.”

A fun and easy way to celebrate your favorite team or both teams is with the Goddess and Grocer’s Chicago team-themed cake.

The Goddess Home Run Cakes features six layers of red and blue cake with vanilla buttercream for all Northside Cubs fans, or layered black and white cake with vanilla buttercream for South Side Sox fans. Price: $7.00 per slice, $80.00 for a 10” Cake.

Photo courtesy of Ringo H.W. Chiu AP

Defund the police is a demand that was created by Black organizers and activists. It’s not a new demand. It may be new to us as white people, but just because we never heard of it until this summer doesn’t mean it didn’t exist (see-Columbus and his “discovery” of America). 

Defund the Police means to divert funding from police departments to communities. If society invests in the communities that need it instead of policing then that would help everyone.

Keep in mind that here in Chicago, our city has been defunding schools for years. Librarians have been defunded, counselors defunded, schools defunded to the point of being closed. 

Like schools, Chicago’s Black and Brown communities, while never invested nearly enough to begin with, have also been defunded. The theft of TIF funds earmarked for one community that needs it, but then given to communities that don’t is an act of defunding. Closing mental health clinics is defunding. Banks not giving loans in Black neighborhoods is defunding. Our schools and communities have been defunded for generations, we can easily understand this concept of defunding.

Happening simultaneously to these examples of defunding schools and communities is the record increasing of the Chicago Police budget. The city always finds money for policing. When intra-community violence occurs, instead of realizing the root causes of violence, the city’s response is more policing. Even when the Chicago Police Department, as it far too often does, harms Chicagoans on the street or even in our schools, we say let’s reform the police. Reform is just another way of giving police even more money. Defunding the Police is a response to all of that, it says reform and more policing have been tried for generations and have failed. Instead actually listen to organizations in the communities and fund the communities. 

I hear far too many white people say, “I wish they would call it ______ instead of Defund the Police.” Let’s be clear, the semantics of a demand does not matter. It would seem that Black Lives Matter is a basic and obvious demand but clearly white people argue that. 

As white people it’s not our job to argue if the term Defund the Police is effective or not. It’s our job to learn about the demand. Once we educate ourselves, we then need to amplify the demand while educating other white people as to what the demand of Defund the Police actually means. All these statements ideas and topics can be researched, you know we love to Google. We just need to do that work.

Defund the Police.

Image created by Monica Trinidad