By Anna Bedell 

The first order of business at the monthly Diversity Council meeting, which was held outdoors on Tuesday, July 27, in front of Mrs. Rockwell’s Pavilion at Rockwell Park, was to elected new officers.

Jeff Israel and Sandra Bogdanski stepped down as president and vice president, respectively. of the Diversity Council as Alicia Washington and Erica Pearson were voted in, as president and vice president, respectively. 

Most of the meeting, led by Washington, addressed concerns about how the Diversity Council can move forward as a group to benefit the community more affectively, based on information from a city-wide census and a city-wide health assessment and information to be gathered from a community-wide conversation on Wednesday. 

Mayor Ellen Zoppo-Sassu attended the meeting along with Police Commissioner member Gloria Smith.  

Among the topics discussed was moving forward with the idea of having a “declaration for racism as a public health crisis.”  

Although this position was not formally approved, it was greeted with enthusiasm.  

“What’s interesting is that a lot of the stuff that are identified [in the city-wide census] really ties into the inequities conversation, kind of our purpose,” said Washington.  

“Our goal is to really focus on inequities in the city, and this really gives us a good foundation of how to do that, collect data, provides websites where we can download information and really see what’s happening in Bristol.” 

Council members will review the material so that they might identify areas of inequities here in town for a more in-depth conversation at the next monthly meeting. 

Some of the information will be collected at the next city-wide conversation to be held this Wednesday, Aug. 4, at Rockwell Park Amphitheater from 5 to 7:30 p.m. 

Other information involved in the inequities research will come from a Bristol Health District city-wide assessment. 

The 2nd Annual City Conversation will focus on diversity, equity and inclusion and feature discussions addressing police accountability, education, and inequities within the community. 

There will be opportunities to engage with city leaders and numerous City of Bristol stakeholders to discuss what steps are being taken to promote a diverse, equitable and inclusive community. 

The amphitheater has seating but it is recommended that attendees bring their own chairs. 

First 160 participants will receive a free food voucher and T-shirt. 

“I see an opportunity for us for collaboration with the other departments, for instance…make schools safe, equitable places to learn, and avoid unfairly penalizing students who live in poor neighborhoods, or who are experiencing health learning or psychosocial social challenges,” said Washington.  

“Implementing trauma informed school discipline or restorative justice policies. Something that’s interesting about this one is that even though we can help with policies we can help push policies along in the city.”  

Zoppo-Sassu said that earlier that day, the American Rescue Plan meeting, which is one of Bristol’s task force members, informed her office that the Bristol health organization completed a community assessment that gauged levels of services as well as inequity.  

These services provide household assistance, small business assistance, those types of projects that are going to be eligible, she said. 

“The data standpoint would be very beneficial for this group as well so that’s two great pieces that we can instead of, I hate recreating the wheel, so we’re going to have two really good data pieces specific to this community within the next 30 days,” said Zoppo-Sassu. 

The local health district does have specific data, like maps and reports and things of that nature, she added.  

“A specific one that is of interest to me always that I look at and there’s probably others are vaccination rates, because they track that for schools, there’s teenage pregnancy, which is just a personal interest, I always look at that graph,” said Zoppo-Sassu. “And then we have an opioid case, where we can see where the opioid overdoses are occurring, and we map that by neighborhoods.” 

She said those are three that she is aware of, and she will check to see if there’s others. There is a maternal health piece because the city has a grant for that, that might link to the poverty, she said.  

Washington said, “I think that’s what we want is to be able to pull as much data as we can so we could see where the gaps are and then go from there and determining next steps.” 

Washington also referred to Bristol Health District PLUS census, with which the Diversity Council was one of the leads.   

“Over the course of the last year and a half and we achieved 95 percent response rate after the neighborhood we canvased so we did really well,” said Washington. “Statistically evidenced based on the percentage, that’s way above average — it was below 70 percent 10 years ago, so that’s good.”