Petaluma health fair seeks to shrink racial disparity in outcomes

When life gives you lemons, grab some apples, as well.

That was one take-away from Saturday’s Petaluma Health Fair, held under sunny skies in the parking lot of the Petaluma Health Center, just a couple blocks south of the Lagunitas Brewing Company on North McDowell Boulevard.

The first table visitors encountered was set up by the nonprofit Petaluma Blacks For Community Development, which partnered with the health center to host the event.

Bookending the organization’s brochures were containers of complimentary apples and lemons. As a steady trickle of attendees stopped by the booth, the apples disappeared more quickly than the lemons.

The half dozen tables and booths included those hosted by Zero Waste Sonoma, the wide-ranging Petaluma People Services, which features more than 70 programs, and a table set up by the health center itself.

“We are the minority here, we recognize that,” said Faith Ross, president of the PBCD. Indeed, Black people make up about 1.7% of Sonoma County’s population of 487,000, according to the county. “But we’ve decided we’re going to be involved in things. We’re going to be part of this community.”

Events like Saturdays are important because they can reduce the disparity in health outcomes between Black people and other ethnic groups.

In a recent presentation called “The State of Black Health in Sonoma County,” put on by the NAACP Santa Rosa-Sonoma County, officials in the county health department focused on some alarming statistics.

In California and across the country, Black people have higher rates of illness and death, including infant mortality, said Dr. Kismet Baldwin, Sonoma County’s Deputy Public Health Officer.

Black Americans have significantly higher rates of diabetes and heart disease than other groups. And Black residents of Sonoma County have an average life span — 71 years — that is 10 years shorter than any other racial and ethnic group in the county.

While the crowd was light, it was — unlike Petaluma on the whole — quite diverse, with a mix of young families, the elderly, people who have lived in the county for decades, and those who just arrived, like Benjamin Wilson, who rocked a navy polo shirt bearing a Penn State logo.

Wilson just started his new job as Basic Needs coordinator at Santa Rosa Junior College. A year ago he was a member of the Nittany Lions football team. When a bystander mentioned the team’s recent dismemberment of Auburn, Wilson said offhandedly, “Yeah, well, that’s what we do.”

The opposite of bashful, he made the rounds with a notebook, introducing himself to people in attendance. “I’m just trying to network, get to know the community a little better,” he said.

Ten feet away was Gloria Robinson, who grew up in Florida, then moved to San Francisco at the age of 20. That was 60 years ago.

Upon arriving in the Bay Area, she and her husband, Herbert, were drawn to Petaluma by its affordable housing. After moving there in 1970, they found community by working with the Santa Rosa chapter of the NAACP, among other groups.

Through the NAACP, she’d met Joe Rappaport, whom Robinson describes with a smile as a “Jewish chicken farmer.”

One day she mentioned to Rappaport that she was thinking of forming a group devoted to Black people in Petaluma. She still remembers his reply.

“If not you, who?”

Fast forward to Saturday afternoon. There was Robinson, sitting at the table of the nonprofit she founded in 1977, partly obscured by a large bowl of lemons.

Robinson is a former board member of the Petaluma Health Center, so it made sense, said Eliot Enriquez, a program coordinator at the health center, to partner with Petaluma Blacks For Community Development for Saturday’s fair.

“Our job,” he said, while grabbing a stack of at-home COVID-19 tests to take to his group’s table, “is to make sure anyone in the community has access to quality care, regardless of their ability to pay, or insurance status, or documentation. These doors remain open to everyone.”

And that, he said is one way to close that gap in health outcomes: “By making sure you stay available to everyone. And by just showing up.”

You can reach Staff Writer Austin Murphy at austin.murphy@pressdemocrat.com or on Twitter @ausmurph88.