One local organization has come up with a “full-filling” and economical way to feed Central Baltimore’s hospital staff while also supporting local restaurants. The initiative is called Square Meals.

Launched by the Central Baltimore Partnership (CBP), the program provides meals for emergency and critical care hospital workers at MedStar Union Memorial Hospital. Meals and snacks are provided by local restauranteurs, which helps them to maintain some operations and stay open during the coronavirus crisis.

“By this week, we would have served over 1,000 meals,” said Ellen Janes, executive director

of Central Baltimore Partnership. “That includes the medical, professional, and other staff working in those areas. These workers are so busy, and once they come on, they can rarely take a break. They are very appreciative and excited about this effort.”

She added, “All of the restaurants are in Central Baltimore. Right now, we have eight restaurants participating, and we will be bringing on new ones. The goal is to expand participation.”

The participating restaurants include Bramble Baking Co.; Carma’s; Clavel; Larder; Sophomore Coffee; and Secret Sauce Company at North Ave Market. The restaurants all prepare dinners, breakfasts, and snacks for the effort. The hospital picks up meals and snacks at the restaurants. The food is individually wrapped and distributed on the designated hospital floors.

Dinners are provided in grab-and-go form twice daily (once per shift), and breakfasts and snacks are provided throughout the day. CBP allocated existing funds and raised additional money from the community to cover the cost for these meals, giving 100 percent to restauranteurs and other vendors prior to or at the time of sale. The cost for one dinner is $12 per person, and breakfast and snacks, average $8 per person.

Courtesy Photo

Clavel restaurant owner Lane Harlan and an employee after loading food for Square Meals.

According to Janes, CBP has raised over $50,000, largely from grassroots fundraising for the initiative. The effort recently received a donation from Baltimore Raven’s Head Coach John Harbaugh and his wife Ingrid. The amount of the donation was not disclosed, but made it possible to fund two meals per day for all emergency and critical care workers at Medstar’s Union Memorial Hospital for the next four weeks.

“This makes the Harbaughs our largest donors, and we are deeply grateful,” said Janes.

Square Meals was launched Friday, March 27, 2020. Janes talked about how the program came to fruition.

“Early on, we looked at what was going on in Seattle, Washington and in San Francisco,” recalled Janes. “There were efforts in those areas to support hospital workers, and we knew we wanted to do something like that. At the same time, here in Central Baltimore, we were hearing that people were staying home, and that restaurants in the community were really feeling the loss of business. We have worked so hard to help build Central Baltimore businesses, and we didn’t want to lose that momentum.”

She added, “We reached out to the restaurants, and got their insight. What we heard from the restaurants was that they didn’t want to lay off their staff. Some worked part-time, while others were not eligible for federal assistance. The restaurants helped us to think through the price point they would need. We felt that if we could raise the money, we could help the restaurants.”

Janes said she also discussed the idea with Bank of America.

“We asked Bank of America to reprogram a grant they had given us, and they instantly agreed. We saw this as something that would resonate with people. I am honored to be a part of many good things, but this is really gratifying. School children are writing thank you notes, and florists are sending flowers. We also get to support a nice array of businesses. It just keeps growing every day. We are determined to keep this going as long as the crisis persists.”

CBP is a ten-year old nonprofit with over 100 partners who together achieve a comprehensive strategy for community revival in 11 Central Baltimore neighborhoods. Their mission is to galvanize the renaissance of Central Baltimore. The organization pursues their mission by partnering with neighborhood organizations, nonprofits, educational institutions, businesses, and industries in Central Baltimore.

In addition to Square Meals, CBP’s other Coronavirus efforts include ensuring older adults living in senior high-rises in Central Baltimore receive food; helping senior citizens to obtain reusable face masks; organizing volunteers to help residents with errands such as picking up groceries and prescriptions; and helping businesses to apply for state and federal COVID-19 relief grants and loans.

“We’ve had 400 individual contributions, which is remarkable,” said Janes who was receiving a grocery donation from Wegman’s supermarket in Hunt Valley at the time of this interview. “It’s all been very heartwarming. Baltimore has always been a city of activism. But in this crisis, we have seen activism at its best.”

To make a contribution to Square Meals, visit www.centralbaltimore.org/donate-to-square-meals.

Visitors at the Walters Art Museum are not only astonished by the museum’s stunning panorama of thousands of years of art, but they are also impressed by the museum’s continuous alliance with the autism community, as well as launching a virtual learning for kids at all ages during this time of uncertainty.

While the sensory program allows families of children with autism the opportunity to access and enjoy public spaces without worry, the virtual museum page is helping kids enlarge their circle of learning during quarantine.

It offers a number of digital resources such as coloring pages, lesson plans and manuscripts inspired by the museum art collection, where kids can dive into thousands of artworks from around the world and across centuries.

“We are trying to make the museum more accessible and welcoming place for everyone, we are providing a quiet space with sensory equipments and visual supports to provide families with more activities and to show parents that their kids are accepted as they are,” said Rebecca Sinel, a manager of the family program at the Walters Art Museum.

Brooke Shilling, 41, has a daughter with autism and is non-verbal. Shilling and her family have been attending Sensory Weekends at the Walters for 18 months.

“The program has fun crafts, manipulatives, sensory break and sensory play areas, and even provide social stories in advance so the kids know what to expect. The program is exceptional and our whole family loves it,” said Shilling.

Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a developmental disability, which causes significant social, communication and

behavioral challenges. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, about one in 68 children are identified with autism spectrum disorder. This new estimate is roughly 30 percent higher than the previous estimate in 2012 where one in 88 children were identified with autism spectrum disorder. As the number of kids receiving a diagnoses of autism has been rising for years, the stigma around autism still run high as many families with kids with autism often face stereotype and misconception.

Lynn Canterbury, a director at the Forbush School at Glyndon, Maryland, which serves students with emotional disabilities and autism spectrum disorder, believes that stigma about autism was worse five or six years ago than it is now. She thinks that people are more accepting and understanding. Yet, she says that families’ lives and activities can be deeply affected by autism.

“It is difficult for some parents to take their kids in public, when the child is constantly scripting, screaming or flapping. Their normal everyday life and activities have to be adjusted,” said Canterbury. “Maybe if it’s a family of three they have said that one of the adult stayed home with the child with autism and the others go out, unless there is something so specific like programs at the Walters Art Museum where parents can take the entire family.”

Sinel says all the staff at the museum are welcoming and accepting to all families, especially the ones who are sometimes concerned about going to public places because of the perception about their kids behaviors; and how people will look at their kids; stare or yell at their kids; or ask them to leave.

“Through the sensory program, we are assuring families that this is not going to happen and hopefully they will have such a positive experience and come visit the Walters each and every time,” said Sinel.

The Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) at the Kennedy Krieger Institute provides volunteers to facilitate activities at different stations alongside the Walters’ museum educators.

“CARD staff will support the museum educators by providing developmentally appropriate modifications, facilitating communication, and helping children engage with the materials and activities provided,” said Taylor Racicot, a Therapeutic Assistant at the Center For Autism and related Disorders at Kennedy Krieger Institute. “For a place like The Walters, an art gallery, with so many presumed rules about social behaviors, to say, ‘you are welcome here,’ and to back the sentiment up with physical supports is huge in the fight against the social stigma individuals with autism face.”

“The program offers special access to the museum, either before or after hours, and the support of Kennedy Krieger therapists. It is essentially free therapy with excellent therapists and supportive educators in a very special and serene environment,” said Shilling.

With the collaboration of Center for Autism and Related Disorders (CARD) at Kennedy Krieger, the sensory program at the Walters offers different intervention options and provides individualized treatment in small-group settings to children under age six. Children are given opportunities to work with new materials and practice their skills with new people. They even create works of art that are displayed in the Walters during sensory weekends.

“The Walters Sensory program helps to expanding the creative experiences children have and their access to the kinds of community engagement and experiences that neurotypical children have. The program also demonstrates to the larger community that individuals with autism are creative, innovative and deeply appreciative of art forms but they may just express that appreciation differently,” said Racicot.

Families continue attending and enjoying the sensory program at the Walters. Such events carry on with its mission to increase awareness and understanding and eventually fight social stigma that many families and kids with autism experience.

“I am grateful for the Walters program, it is a model of inclusion and should be replicated everywhere,” said Shilling.

In a letter dated February 4, 2020 and sent to U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-MA) said comprehensive demographic data on people tested or treated for the virus that causes COVID-19 doesn’t exist.

Cities with large black populations have now emerged as new hot spots for the spread of the virus. They include Houston, New York, Detroit and New Orleans. Nearly 70 percent of the COVID-19 deaths in New Orleans have been African American.

“Any attempt to contain COVID-19 in the United States will have to address its potential spread in low-income communities of color, first and foremost to protect the lives of people in those communities, but also to slow the spread of the virus in the country as a whole,” Warren and Pressley the lawmakers wrote to Azar.

“States MUST start tracking and reporting race data in connection with #Covid_19. As of Friday morning, African Americans made up almost half of Milwaukee County’s 945 #Covid_19cases and 81 percent of all 27 deaths in a county whose population is 26 percent black,” wrote attorney Kristen Clarke of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law on April 3, 2020.

An April 3, 2020 report in ProPublica analysis stated that “early data shows African Americans have contracted and died of coronavirus at an alarming rate.”

African Americans made up almost half of Milwaukee County’s 945 cases and 81 percent of its 27 deaths in a county whose population is 26 percent black. Milwaukee is tracking COVID-19 cases by race— one of few cities that does so.

In Michigan, where the state’s population is 14 percent black, African Americans made up 35 percent of cases and 40 percent of deaths as of Friday morning. Louisiana has not published case breakdowns by race either.

“COVID is just unmasking the deep disinvestment in our communities, the historical injustices and the impact of residential segregation,” said Dr. Camera Jones, who spent 13 years at the CDC. “This is the time to name racism as the cause of all of those things. The overrepresentation of people of color— is not just a happenstance— it’s because we’re not valued.”

As public health officials watched cases rise in March, misinformation has also been a factor. Rumors and conspiracy theories proliferated on social media, pushing the bogus idea that black people are immune to the COVID-19. Much of the initial focus was on international travel and closing borders and not underlying health disparities that persist in the U.S.

Lauren Victoria Burke is an independent journalist for NNPA and the host of the podcast BURKEFILE. She is also a political strategist as Principal of Win Digital Media LLC. She may be contacted at LBurke007@gmail.com and on on twitter at @LVBurke.

With evidence growing that African Americans are disproportionately affected by the novel coronavirus, only nine states and the District of Columbia have released a racial breakdown of those diagnosed with the disease.

Concerned health experts, members of the U.S. Congress, and civil rights organizations have ramped up their call for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), to provide a detailed report.

“We know that there’s a disproportionate rate of infections and death nationwide,” stated Congressional Black Caucus (CBC) Chair Karen Bass (D-Calif.) in a conference call with the Black Press of America represented by the National Newspaper Publishers Association (NNPA) on Tuesday, April 7, 2020.

“It’s happening in all of our [African American] communities nationwide. We feel that it’s an emergency that needs to be addressed right away, and, importantly, we need data, and the CDC is not compiling data,” Bass added.

Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.), the chair of the CBC’s Health Braintrust, agreed that statistics along racial lines are vital.

“The data already released shows troubling trends for African Americans that must be addressed to ensure public health,” Kelly said.

African Americans makeup about 18 percent of the population in Michigan but account for approximately 40 percent of coronavirus-related deaths, according to Rep. Brenda Lawrence (D-Michigan).

“I am speaking as just one part of the major piece of concern, and that’s the alarming way in how this pandemic is having an impact on our Black community,” Lawrence said. “We are the number one target for this disease. We have pre-existing conditions, and yet we’re told to go home when we visit the emergency room. We know that there must be some form of regulation in place for testing and getting testing sites and equipment into the community.”

A published report this week noted that the Louisiana Department of Health revealed that 70 percent of coronavirus deaths in the state are African American, despite Black people making up just 32 percent of the population.

In Milwaukee, Wisconsin, African Americans reportedly accounted for nearly half of coronavirus cases and more than 80 percent of deaths related to the disease.

“I have seen in my waiting room mostly black and brown patients who are essential workers and service workers who can’t afford to stay home,” Uche Blackstone, the CEO of Advancing Health Equity, told The Hill. “These are the ones that I see presenting to the clinic with COVID-19 symptoms.”

Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.) led a group from congress recently in demanding that the federal government release data about racial disparities in America’s response to the pandemic.

Pressley said she and her colleagues made clear in the letter to Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar that the government is failing to collect and publicly report on the racial and ethnic demographic information for coronavirus tests and patients.

“Without demographic data, policymakers and researchers will have no way to identify and address ongoing

disparities and health inequities that risk accelerating the impact of the novel coronavirus and the respiratory disease it causes,” the letter said. “Although COVID-19 does not discriminate along racial or ethnic lines, existing racial disparities and inequities in health outcomes and health care access may mean that the nation’s response to preventing and mitigating its harms will not be felt equally in every community.”

Dr. Ebony Hilton and Dr. Taison Bell, of the Virginia Medical School, have publicly demanded the release of racial data surrounding the virus.”Release the data,” said Dr. Hilton, who continuously posts that message on social media sites like Twitter.

“We see in states that aren’t reporting on racial demographics that there’s been a surge in patients dying from respiratory distress and respiratory failure,” Dr. Bell said.

The NNPA and its Coronavirus Task Force was the first media related entity in the U.S. to declare a “State of Emergency for Black America” as the fatalities among black Americans continue to rise across the nation. Using social media to increase public awareness about COVID-19, the NNPA is encouraging the use of the following hashtags: #SaveBlackLives and #NNPACoronavirusTaskForce.