Susan Adams

This past week I had the pleasure of interviewing Susan Adams, on the Marin County Board of Supervisors.

Susan Adams has a strong foundation of experience in the healthcare industry; she is a registered nurse and has been involved in the field for over thirty-five years. This background has served to guide her decisions on the Marin Board of Supervisors and has evident manifestations in the work she has done. Her motto that healthy people mean a healthy planet is also a large factor dictating her work. Due to this, her work intertwines movements towards more sustainable and eco-friendly systems in Marin as well as programs targeted towards disease prevention, obesity reduction and general wellness.

Throughout the course of this interview I learned about the devotion and dedication required for the installment of a variety of programs and benefits we enjoy in Marin that I had previously taken for granted. A primary example is the plastic bag ban. This movement towards reducing waste and reusing bags originated here in Marin and is an example of what Adams describes as ‘local jurisdictions guiding the state.’ Adams believes this to be the most effective type of reform. The plastic bag ban is now gaining popularity and speed and is being adopted in various regions nationwide. Another example is the program Safe Routes to School, which constructed class 1 and class 2 pathways to local schools, was founded here in Marin and now serves as the national model. This program incorporates Adams idea of interrelated progress towards human and planetary health by promoting both exercise and the reduction of fossil fuel use.

In the same vein as public transportation as a means of solving our environmental issues, the board of supervisors also successfully pushed for a federal grant for non-motorized transportation improvement. They received $25 million federal dollars and have used it to drastically improve public transportation here in Marin in the form of 12,000 new hours of local bus services.

The Board serves as Marin County’s legislative and executive branch and is in charge of a plethora of responsibilities, including governing the Parks & Open Space District, Transit District, the County Free Library and the Housing Authority. In addition to government obligations, they have initiated supplemental programs to benefit Marin as well. In addition to the Safe Routes to School and plastic bag ban, they have taken the initiative to convert Marin’s energy source to Marin Clean Energy, which uses renewable resources for our energy supply. Marin is the first county to have taken this action. They have also begun programs such as the Health and Wellness Center in the Canal, providing a variety of resources to the district and Housing First, a program designed to combat homelessness.

Another movement that Marin County has led is the paradigm shift in treatment for those with mental disabilities towards a social, rather than legal, approach. The idea is that if one with a mental disability commits a non-violent crime, instead of placing them in the overcrowded criminal justice system, to in-housing programs with resources for rehabilitation and guidance. In these programs they can engage in jobs to benefit our society and can be productive and healthy in the workforce as opposed to being tax liabilities. The state government has adopted this idea and has removed non-violent criminals from the state prisons, due to lack of space, and moved them towards rehabilitation programs such as those pioneered in Marin. This is one example of how Adams believes a social movement approach should be adopted in order to solve some of our nations most impending issues. A slightly different example founded upon the same principle is our country’s high obesity and alcohol and tobacco use. Our country spends the majority of our healthcare related money on handling complications from these three preventable issues. Adams believes that the most effective way of tackling these issues would be to raise awareness and provide prevention as well as rehabilitation programs.

The rigorous work of the Marin County Board of Supervisors has indubitably paid off. Marin is known as the healthiest county in the state, if not in the country. However, Adams and her colleagues are not yet satisfied. As Adams explained, we still have abnormally high binge drinking rates and pockets of poverty. Adams continued to explain the interconnected nature of financial status and health; that poverty is the biggest predictor of health.

One major obstacle that Adams believes our country faces is in reforming the current healthcare and insurance system. Adams’ experience in the industry has led her to the conclusion that the dependence upon the healthcare and insurance industry for profit has impeded our progress towards more equal healthcare for all.  She explains that insurance companies sell packages that don’t ensure the actual receiving of health care because not all providers will accept all of the packages. Additionally, Adams explains that the same pharmaceuticals in the United States cost up to three times as much as the same products in other countries such as Canada and that federal legislation has criminalized the purchase of pharmaceuticals outside of the United States. Adams believes that the ideal system would be a single payer universal health care system and that healthcare should be viewed as a right rather than a privilege. However, she believes that the largest impeding force to complete progress is the decision to grant corporations the same legal rights as individuals. Recently, there have been crucial advancements such as the Affordability Care Act enacted to further the cause of equal and accessible healthcare for all. The act established that insurance companies can’t exclude people due to preexisting conditions, allows people up until their late twenties to receive coverage under their parents plan, and also included a clause that incorporates prevention treatments as forms of insurance. These movements are steps in the direction of healthcare being treated as a fundamental right and are ones in which the Marin County Board of Supervisors are advocating for and seeking to advance.

-Rachael Ferm