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Teachers and students in San Diego are joining their counterparts around the world in the Global Climate Strike, calling for action to combat climate change. Plus, with the growing senior population, a local hospital is launching a program to meet the needs of older patients recovering from a trauma.

Speaker 1: 00:00 You're listening to KPBS midday edition. I'm jade Hindman. Students from around the globe are walking out of class today for the second annual global youth climate strike here in San Diego County. Students are being joined by their supporters and calling for action to deal with the threat of climate change. We're joined by two student leaders of the walkout. Sara Carver is the lead organizer of the walkout at San Diego state where she's a senior and Annie doe is a sophomore at Serra high school. She's taking the lead in organizing the walkout. They're welcome to you both. Thank you for having us. Yes, thank you. So what led you to get involved, to devote so much time and energy to this demonstration? Sarah, let's start with you.

Speaker 2: 00:42 Yeah. So I, um, am my climate advocate on campus and that just really pushed me to want to do some more policy change on campus. And it really happened when Cindy go through 50 reached out and said, you know, we, we've been seeing these lockouts all over the world and we really want there to be something at the universities level in San Diego. So more adults can show up and really be there for students. Any what about you? So I learned about climate change in my English class quite extensively and shout out to Mrs Elmos if you're listening to this. Um, so after learning about it, I just felt this whirlwind of emotions. I was one, I was furious with adults for letting this happen and was terrified for my own future. And I felt so useless because there I was with all this knowledge and I couldn't do anything about it. And then I saw this movement of teenagers around the world who are my age doing exactly what I wasn't doing and I just felt moved to join them.

Speaker 1: 01:42 No. And I know there, there's an overall list of things you all want to see happen from passing the green new deal to implementing sustainable agriculture. Are there any things that you're making specific to San Diego go

Speaker 2: 01:53 county? Yeah. Are, um, so on the SDSU campus, we're really focusing our ass at our administration. Um, so our, one of our big asks is to create an enforced and STC green new deal, uh, to re achieve carbon neutrality by 2030. And that's really important, um, because our climate action plan right now does not address the economic and racial disparities in climate action. So I think that'll have a really big impact on San Diego County as a whole. When something as big as 30,000 students have to abide by that plan. Andy, what do you, what would you like to see happen locally, locally? Um, let's go more towards a personal level. I am personally walking out because I feel like there's, there should be more of a personal call to action for this, especially a students. I see a lot of kids who don't really know what's going on and they don't care.

Speaker 2: 02:46 And I want to inspire my peers to join me in this because this is all of our futures and we all, we're all directly affected by this. You'd like to see more students get engaged along along with the members of the community because, um, we have, we're going to have a lot of spectators that are walkouts too. Hmm. What's been the reaction of your, from your fellow students when you approached them about supporting this effort? Yeah. At SDSU we've really got great support from our students. Um, especially we had a sign making a event on Wednesday and everyone that we talked to was just so excited and really ready to strike and are, they're all very aware of the environmental issues and that they just really need that catalyst to be able to exercise their civic engagement. Annie, a very similar situation with me at Sarah.

Speaker 2: 03:35 Um, like I said earlier, I learned about it a lot in my classes. I'm learning about climate change a lot in my classes and um, I feel like a lot of the students were like me, we're in the same boat as me before this. They had no idea how to act on it and, or they just didn't know what they could do something at all. And so like Sarah said, this is a catalyst for them and a lot of them have been very um, enthusiastic about joining me, asking what they can do to help as big as it is, you know the walkout is just one day change will really have to come from lawmakers at all levels of government. What are you doing and what are you urging others to do to get leaders to really take action and get involved in this? Yeah.

Speaker 2: 04:18 At SDSU we are ending our strike with the registration devote drive cause a lot of our students are incoming freshmen who maybe have never registered, maybe didn't have the chance to register before college. So we're really pushing to get the youth engaged and vote for those climate conscious candidates. They may not have the most robust climate plan, but anyone who's really willing to accept the climate science and shows an interest in our collective duty to do that is as a climate conscious candidate. Any, well, very similar situation on Sarah as well. Actually we have, we're going to have a robust voter registration table because very soon high school students will be able to vote. And when we are able to, we want to support more decisions like the clean community choice energy, um, that was just passed earlier this week. And when we are able to, we're definitely going to support things like that.

Speaker 2: 05:16 New York City schools are giving students an excused absence for the walkout, but most districts have made it clear they won't follow suit. What's happening in that regard here? A Annie at Sara that administration has been very supportive because the San Diego Unified School district has actually passed a youth, um, climate action support resolution in which schools are officially required to allow students to walk out this Friday. And um, they actually left it quite ambiguous when it comes to personal repercussions class by class. But a majority of the teacher that Sarah have been very supportive of this and are actually planning to walk out alongside us. Oh Wow. You know, if, if more people want to get involved in the effort, what can they do? Yeah. So you can come to any of the climate strikes that are open to the public and you can find those, um, at climate walkout, sd.org, um, there's a lot of high schools that have opened their doors and of course universities.

Speaker 2: 06:12 So we have USD and SDSU and next Friday you CSDS climate strike. Um, so community members are 100% welcome and we really expect everyone to show up and be there for students. So Sarah, do you have any idea of how many people are walking out? Uh, across San Diego? Yeah, of course. In San Diego they're at least 18 high schools and five colleges organizing actions and we really expect more that have just not registered yet. So this is at least 1500 students who are going to participate. And that's just students. So we expect a lot more with the adults who are coming to, and then when we add a factor in the f that the fact that this is a worldwide effort, uh, any, any idea of how many students are doing this across the world? Well, student head count is actually really difficult because there are actually 45,000 events worldwide as this is a global climate strike and I least 137 different countries. Have you guys been able to connect with um, people from other schools, other countries who are taking part in this? Oh yeah. Um, my peers at San Diego three 50 I've met with them and they're all planning events as far as south as Oti ranch and as far north as Escondido. All right, Sarah, Annie, thank you so much. I appreciate it. Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Speaker 3: 07:43 [inaudible]

Speaker 2: 07:45 nearly half a million people in San Diego County are over the age of 65 that number is expected to double in the next 10 years. Sharp Memorial Hospital is preparing for this aging population with the development of a new geriatric trauma program. KPBS is Ebony Monet sat down with the hospital's director of trauma. Dr Diane wince. Tell us about this new geriatric Patrick,

Speaker 4: 08:09 a trauma program and sharp memorial decided to look at the statistics for San Diego County from 1990 until the year 2020, which is just next year. The population will have gone up by 150% for the geriatric patients, age 65 and older. And we recognized that on our trauma program we were seeing more and more um, geriatric patients who really were very active people prior to their injury patterns. Um, just to give you some rough numbers, we see about 70 to 90 geriatric patients per month and we admit, um, around 60 to 70 of them. Um, and so our a teams developed a task force that ran over eight months during 2018 to develop this program. We took expertise from physical therapists, occupational therapists, speech language pathologists, respiratory therapists, and together we developed this very patient centric program that we now have.

Speaker 1: 09:24 So recovering from trauma can be a long road for anyone. Why would seniors in this population need specialized care?

Speaker 4: 09:33 Well, I'll give you an example. Um, we started this program based on one patient, a test patient. He didn't know that he was getting this very specialized treatment plan because we hadn't even developed the program yet, but he was 89 and he was working on, um, the gutter that runs along the roof of his home. His wife was holding the ladder, she heard the phone ringing so she ran inside to get the phone as he was coming down the ladder and towards the very bottom he had a trip and fall off from height and put his arms out to sort of brace the fall and broke both risks. We did double sessions of PT, OT every day. His wife learned the techniques. Then we, um, enforced his sleep hygiene, very strict lights on, lights off, um, nighttime, uh, medications to enable sleep that are more natural like Ray Melton or Melatonin are great adjuncts to the care. He got multiple sessions, um, of just the daily activities practice with that because he was right handed and he needed to practice how to do these activities with sort of minimal movements, minimal weight in the hands, and we got him home in four days.

Speaker 1: 11:02 Wow. Why now? Why is this a good time here in San Diego County to develop such [inaudible]

Speaker 4: 11:07 program? We're going to see the numbers increasing. It's not a right now problem. It's going. I mean, we're going to get there. You know, if, if we're all lucky enough, we will get into that age group at some point in our lifetime and we want the care to be such that we know that we can maintain independence as long as possible. Dr Diane wince. Thanks for your time. Thank you.

Speaker 1: 11:36 That was KPBS is Ebony Monet speaking with Dr Diane winds with Sharp Memorial Hospital. Speaking about the hospital's new geriatric trauma program.

Speaker 3: 12:00 [inaudible].