A Sunday News article “Urban League is broke; closes doors for now” reports:
“Kent Trachte, chairman of the board, said in an email Saturday that the organization’s financial challenges date back to 2008, with the loss of a grant from the National Urban League. Things got worse as a result of the economic downturn, “and the organization has struggled to make ends meet ever since.”‘As a consequence of reducing the hours of the financial officer as well as limitations of the budget, the organization has not had an external audit for several years,’ Trachte said.understandably placed a moratorium on our funding.’ “
“Staff was let go, and the hours of remaining staff members — including the league’s financial officer — were cut back. That created more problems:
“Without the audit, the league was unable to renew its license with the state Bureau of Charitable Organizations, Trachte said.”
“When the license lapsed, Trachte said, the United Way ‘understandably placed a moratorium on our funding.’
We are heartened that Urban League services have only been suspended for a duration to provide adequate time for an audit, re-licensing by the State for soliciting funds, reflections, planning, and arrangements for its future.
According to the Urban League of Lancaster’s web site:
“… We believe in promoting equal opportunity through employment and educational assistance, intervention and preventive initiatives. …Today, we include technology involvement and training, workforce development, health services, and programs of leadership development — an abstinence-based initiative, and services for pregnant and parenting teens.”
“Intervention and preventive initiatives….health services” are vague references to providing Harm Reduction services to drug addicts. The Urban League sought to provide a unique and essential link to a segment of the community largely alienated and out of the reach of efforts to provide them with basic health care, education and, when they are ready, detoxification and entry into long term rehabilitation programs with the goal of restoring them to family life and employment. Another essential purpose is to retard the spread of HIV / AIDS and sexually transmitted diseases.
Two years ago the Urban League had requested funding from Lancaster General Health to operate a full scale syringe exchange* program as part of an expanded harm reduction program… a service available throughout Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and a nearby city.
According to reports, members of the medical staff of LGH supported the request and a serious discussion took place, but LGH’s board ultimately demurred… we believe in contradiction of its own espoused mission statement: “To advance the health and well-being of the communities we serve. “
A visit to LGH web site providing descriptions and photos of the board members indicate that they are all Caucasian, establishment figures, and predominantly male…there is not a single person of color or representative of unions, clergy, or any non-governmental organizations providing social services.
(A Public Charity, LGH’s short falls in serving the needs of the Lancaster community may stem from this lack of diversity.)
Although a small syringe exchange operated out a Lancaster inner-city church for over a decade, an effort that both then attorney and now mayor Rick Gray and NewsLanc’s publisher helped launch, its church based circumstances limited its scope. (Today, due to deregulation, syringes are availabe for purchase without prescriptions and identification at almost all pharmacies.)
Representatives of LGH and health care NGOs sought to involve the isolated exchange into a harm reduction continuum that begins at the exchange level and continues through detoxification, counseling, and often treatment via Methadone or Suboxone.
To fulfill an essential role in the community, the services to be provided by a reconstituted Urban League need to be comprehensive… harm reduction, job placement, assistance for pregnant teenagers in cooperation with the School District of Lancaster, rudimentary education. They should be the first contact with addicts and serve as the foundation for a superstructure of services for the poor, the sick, the needy…helping them to cope with and rise above their plight in a challenging and complex society.
A reconstituted and revitalized Urban League can complete and make much more effective harm reduction efforts throughout Lancaster County with its estimated 5,000 to 10,000 heroin addicts. For every dollar spent, the savings are likely to be ten to twenty times as much in tax dollars and in lower regional health care insurance costs.
Moreover, less families will suffer the scourge of social diseases and the loss of loved ones to addiction. As we have experienced within the last few days and so often beforehand, problems of dangerous drugs (legal or illegal) respect no class or economic boundaries. Any parent that thinks otherwise is living in fantasy land.
*U.S. Surgeon General on scientific evidence: “After reviewing all of the research to date, the senior scientists of the Department and I have unanimously agreed that there is conclusive scientific evidence that syringe exchange programs, as part of a comprehensive HIV prevention strategy, are an effective public health intervention that reduces the transmission of HIV and does not encourage the use of illegal drugs.”
Source: US Surgeon General Dr. David Satcher, Department of Health and Human Services, “Evidence-Based Findings on the Efficacy of Syringe Exchange Programs: An Analysis from the Assistant Secretary for Health and Surgeon General of the Scientific Research Completed Since April 1998,” (Washington, DC: Dept. of Health and Human Services, 2000), p. 11.
