POOR-NABE KIDS NEED CLOSE LOOK Open schools carefully: docs
Pediatricians who serve low-income and immigrant neighborhoods say city schools should reopen — so long as educators work closely with community-based medical professionals to protect the most vulnerable kids and families.
“From day one we’ve been on the front lines,” said Ana Olivero, a pediatrician in the SOMOS network, a group of 2,500 doctors who serve Medicaid patients in the city’s minority and immigrant neighborhoods.
“We serve a community of people with a disadvantage. On behalf of those kids, we are here to claim our seat at the table,” Olivero added.
SOMOS doctors say they’ve seen first-hand the devastating and disproportionate impact of coronavirus on their patients, and the shortcomings of schools’ remote learning programs.
“As a pediatrician, I lived frontline how the health disparities in our communities increased the infection rate…and the deaths in our community,” said pediatrician Denise Nuñez.
When SOMOS doctors and health care providers surveyed their patients about virtual schooling last spring, they found roughly two-thirds of students they treated weren’t participating in remote learning at all.
On balance, SOMOS doctors say,
ANNAPOLIS, Md. — A psychiatrist retained by prosecutors can testify about his evaluation of whether a man who killed five people at a Maryland newspaper was legally sane at the time of the attack, a judge ruled Tuesday.
Judge Laura Ripken ruled against a motion by defense attorneys representing Jarrod Ramos to suppress Dr. Gregory Saathoff ’s evaluation.
Attorneys argued that their client’s rights were violated when Saathoff looked into his jail cell to make observations and when he interviewed 35 personnel at the jail about him.
Ramos has pleaded guilty but not criminally responsible due to mental schools should reopen — but with special precautions to protect vulnerable kids and adults.
They recommend constant communication between school nurses and pediatricians to facilitate the diagnosis and treatment of any COVID-19 cases.
That could get complicated with the shortage of nurses and privacy restrictions on medical communications, according to school nurses who spoke on the condition of anonymity.
“We can’t speak to their doctor, unless the parent” gives explicit permission, said one school nurse.
SOMOS pediatricians also urge city officials to offer COVID-19 tests to every city school student as often as twice a week. The doctors say they’re ready and willing to take up posts in city schools to administer the tests.
Current Education Department plans largely leave COVID testing up to individual families, and encourage teachers to to get tested before school starts.
School staff will perform temperature checks on random numbers of students each day, according to city plans.
The SOMOS pediatricians say their patients are wary of hospitals and similar places, and might be more willing to interact with doctors they know who speak their language and see them in familiar surroundings. illness to the June 2018 killings at the Capital Gazette. The latter term is Maryland’s version of an insanity defense.
The second part of the trial to determine criminal responsibility is scheduled for December before a jury. If Ramos were found not criminally responsible, he would be committed to a maximum-security psychiatric hospital instead of prison.
Saathoff looked into the window while on a tour of the detention center where “numerous other people” had access, Ripken said in court. The doctor’s viewing of the cell did not constitute a search, as defense attorneys argued, she said.