Supporting Wellness Minutes

June 18^th 2004

1:00-3:00

Present: Bowen Chung, UCLA RWJ

Lona R Seymour, HAAF

Delores Hill, K-P

Drew Jones, Synergy Solutions (Visitor)

Nisaa Madyon, Student Community

Sylvia Jones, Universal Multi-Cultural Awareness Foundation, Inc. (New

Member)

Tanika Spates, CSU Dominguez Hills

Ted Booker, HAAF

Andrea Jones, HAAF

Kavita Patel (on telephone)

The Meeting

Introductions
Nisaa Madyon went over the background of the Support Council and the purpose it serves. She explained the purpose of this meeting, which is to further prepare for the July 15^th Conference, because at the Support Council Presentation, we were not quite ready. Our goals are to present to the community what we’ve learned over the past year, do this in a manner that the community can understand and appreciate, and then make sure that what we’ve learned is correct from the community’s point of view. Nisaa expressed dismay that the Qualitative and Quantitative Analyses’ were not made available to everyone sooner.
The Action Plan was gone over item by item and changes were made. Kavita is going to type up the changes and e-mail them to everyone.

There was much discussion over the questions that we will ask the audience to vote on. It was not just a matter of, “What question to ask?” but also “How to ask it?” These are the questions we decided on:

1) Are the results of the Policy & Advocacy Working Group useful to you?

2) Do you feel that racism has an effect on depression in vulnerable

populations?

3) Should racism be a focus in a policy/advocacy campaign?

4) What is your main concern for an advocacy campaign to address depression

among vulnerable populations?

a. Health insurance

b. Poverty

c. Employment

d. Quality of care

e. Environment

f. Racism

(This question, or some form of this question, was tossed around so much in

the meeting that I wasn’t sure of the final decision.)

Action Items:

. 1) Add a “Reason” column to the Action Plan. The purpose of this column will be to explain why we did each thing that was done.

2) Everyone needs hard copies of everything we’ve done up to this point—minutes, action plans, etc., and a notebook.

3) Nisaa, Kavita, and Bowen will present. Susan and Delores are back-up. (Nisaa wants it noted that this is a group project and everyone should take turns at presenting. It should go around the table.) It was decided that the group would stand to the side during the presentation.

4) We will have 10 minutes to tell our story—this does not mean just reading the action plan! Afterwards there will be 10 minutes for the audience to ask questions.

5) It is important that the community sees its representation. To help facilitate this, it was decided that as a background to our presentation, we would use a screen to show a “Community Family Tree” which will feature pictures of everyone involved with the Supporting Wellness Group, along with a short blurb about each person. The trunk of the tree will say “Supporting Wellness: Policy and Advocacy for Wellness”.

There will be four roots, each one bearing the logo of our collaborators: HAAF, RAND, UCLA, and DREW. Tanika will draw the tree. Blurbs must be 25 words or less. Aretha can take pictures in the HAAF office or you can supply your own picture. Pictures and blurbs can be e-mailed, sent, or brought into the HAAF office, but they must be in by the 25^th.

6) We will have a packet which will feature our “Community Family Tree”

on the cover. It will also include all the information pertinent to our group in a nice,

neat, easy-to-read format. Delores is going to condense the Policy & Advocacy 101

training for the packet.