Health

Elevators in New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA) buildings are plagued by problems, with 75 percent failing routine inspection. Since 2001 about 300 residents have been injured in elevator related accidents in buildings maintained by the City's public housing agency. The elderly and disabled are affected the most, making it hard or impossible to leave their apartment when elevator service is down. This problem can be addressed in the interim by adding transparency and notice while we work to fix the underlying problems. A list of NYCHA elevators and their current status as functioning or in need of repairs must be put online in accordance with open data standards. NYC Alert must be leveraged to alert NYCHA residents when their elevators are out of service through robo-calls, text messages, or emails to prevent deaths or injuries from faulty elevators. NYCHA must work with social service programs such as Meal on Wheels to provide food and medical care to stranded seniors and the disabled. The Public Advocate should write an amicus curiae in support of the current federal lawsuit to compel NYCHA to fix elevators and provide help to disabled residents when elevators are not working.

Thousands of children across the City suffer from chronic health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, sickle cell anemia, and poor dental or vision care. The City should fund a Health Coordinator in low-income school districts to oversee a team of case managers to work in schools, linking uninsured children and children with chronic illnesses to doctors and other appropriate pediatric resources. Health Coordinators and their staff would also track sick days and new sicknesses, catching problems before they become bigger. By placing information online, and having a phone number to call, the Health Coordinator program would be a place where parents can learn about new threats to their children’s health, such as this year’s Swine Flu, and public health officials can better study trends in children's sicknesses.

Transgender individuals must be able to live with the same freedoms as the non-transgendered without fear of accusal for fraud, harassment, discrimination or rejection for showing identification which displays a gender other than the one they display. In order to avoid such discrimination, we should allow transgender individuals to change the sex on their birth certificate or other standard forms of identification without undergoing sex reassignment surgery, while ensuring that people who wish to conceal their identity cannot take advantage of such a program.