Kansas City Council Business Session - April 28, 2022: Maternal Health Pilot, Body Camera Audit, Illegal Dumping Audit
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Kansas City Council Business Session - April 28, 2022
Mayor Pro Tem Kevin McManus presided over the business session on Thursday, April 28, 2022, with seven council members present. The meeting included three major presentations: a proposed maternal health pilot by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, an audit of police body-worn cameras, and an audit of the city's illegal dumping program. Council members discussed each item, expressed support, and received departmental responses.
Consent Calendar
- Approval of Minutes: The minutes of the business session of April 14, 2022, were approved by unanimous voice vote (motion and second, all ayes).
Maternal Health Pilot Presentation
- Carmen Parker Bradshaw and Terry Riley of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City presented a proposal to pilot a maternal child health program for city employees. They highlighted data showing significant racial disparities: Black women in the city have higher maternal mortality, preterm birth rates (nearly double white women), and lower rates of timely prenatal and postpartum care. The pilot would place community health workers (CHWs) with lived experience to assist employees, with a projected return on investment of $2.30 for every $1 spent. The program would be at no cost to the city; Blue KC would fund the CHW. The pilot would start in mid-to-late summer 2022 and include implicit bias training for providers (to become mandatory in upcoming contracts). Councilmembers Robinson, Hall, O'Neill, and others expressed strong support, sharing personal stories of premature infants and the importance of equitable care. Councilwoman Robinson co-sponsored a prior resolution on the topic. The presenters requested only that the city designate key decision makers to help design workflows and metrics. No formal vote was taken, but the council indicated clear direction to move forward.
Police Body Worn Cameras Audit
- City Auditor Doug Jones presented the audit, which reviewed the Kansas City Police Department's body-worn camera program. Key findings from a sample of 98 videos and dispatch comparisons: about 20% of dispatches during July-August 2021 lacked required videos; 17 of 98 videos did not capture the entire incident; some videos were misclassified, leading to improper retention; and about 7% of cameras were not docked timely for upload. The department made 11 recommendations, including specifying camera placement, requiring officers to explain late starts, improving classification defaults, and establishing supervisory review criteria. The police chief agreed with all recommendations. Deputy Chief Hicks stated a policy revision is underway and will be completed within the year. Councilmembers asked about camera placement, classification, and upload timeliness for specialized units.
Illegal Dumping Audit
- City Auditor Doug Jones presented the audit, which analyzed 2,700 illegal dumping service requests from February to August 2021. The average response time to close a request was 24 days. Only 20% of residents were satisfied with cleanup efforts, the lowest in six years. The report recommended consolidating all requests through the 311 system, setting response-time goals, and developing a community engagement campaign similar to the successful recycling initiative with the Mid-America Regional Council. Public Works Director Michael Shaw agreed with all recommendations, noting that the COVID-19 pandemic slowed previous efforts and that bulky waste collection is being expanded with additional trucks. Councilwoman Robinson emphasized the need for faster response (e.g., 2-3 days) and automated pickups rather than relying solely on resident reports.
Key Outcomes
- Approval of minutes (unanimous).
- Maternal health pilot: Council consensus to proceed; Blue Cross Blue Shield will design the pilot with input from city stakeholders. No formal vote was required.
- Police body camera audit: Recommendations accepted; policy revision underway.
- Illegal dumping audit: Recommendations accepted; Public Works to consolidate data, set goals, and launch a community engagement campaign.
- No other ordinances, resolutions, or communications were introduced from the floor. The meeting recessed at 3:10 PM.
Meeting Transcript
Well, good afternoon, everyone. I'd like to go ahead and get started. This is the business session for Thursday, April 28th, 2022. I'm Kevin McManus, Mayor Pro Tem, uh joined here with we've got seven uh total council members, and I'm sure others will join us soon, but I want to get started because we do have a full agenda for business session. First item is approval of minutes for business session of April 14th, 2022. Is there a motion? So moved. I'll second. It's been moved and seconded. All those in favor, please respond by saying aye. Aye. All right. Uh the motion passes. The second item is the maternal health pilot presentation. Please come forward. Thank you for being here. Good afternoon. Before I get started, uh, Mayor Pro Tem, may I ask how long we have on the agenda? So I respect your time. Um I think I we have three items total. I'd say 10, 15 minutes should be plenty of time. I just want to, if you could keep it to 10 minutes or so, that would be best. That way we have enough time for questions, because I'm sure there's going to be questions or a discussion afterwards. You bet. Well, thank you for having us today. My name is Carmen Parker Bradshaw. I'm with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, and there I get to lead our community health, our health equity, and all of our quality of care programs. So what we're going to talk with you today about is a possible pilot to focus on maternal child health with the city of Kansas City, Missouri. And with me I have Terry Riley, a colleague. Hello, my name is Terry Riley, client relationship executive, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City. It's good to be here. I remember this place somewhat. Welcome back. Okay, we'll move through this really quick because you'll have slides that that I'm happy to respond to via email if you have questions. And in the amount of time we have, we really want to focus on the on the most important aspects. To begin with, I want to provide just a little bit of a snapshot of what the maternal landscape looks like from a community lens in Kansas City, Missouri. The whole urban area, so all the counties that kind of come together. This is not Blue KC's data. This comes from public source data and lets you know kind of what the health outcomes look like. When we talk specifically about maternal mortality, there are many things that I want to just make sure we level set with. If you look at Missouri, you can see that black women have substantially higher mortality or death rates than white women. We also see it in the state of Kansas, and compared nationally, this is a growing problem. Missouri ranks in the bottom 10 nationally, and there's a lot of concerns here we need to talk about. So a little bit behind the numbers. Meaning, when you go back and look at the coding that's used, if there could have been earlier detection or intervention or ways that we could connect and provide care to these pregnant women, those deaths could have been avoided. In Missouri, that's about 82%. Those are representative of the state, though, and not just our urban core of Kansas City. When we also look at the numbers, 23% of the pregnancy related and 47% of the pregnancy associated deaths occurred around 43 days after birth. Very similar for the state of Missouri, which tells us what are we doing not only during the pregnancy, but after the pregnancy to make sure both mom and baby are healthy and stable. Oftentimes when we look at the data, the leading causes come back to either a clampsia related issues, which is high blood pressure or hypertension that should be detected during pregnancy if there's engagement happening or cardiovascular related issues.
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