“We will be closed Thursday 9-26-2024 due to

The county also lagged in hiring a DEI chief to oversee the action plan. The Civil Service Commission, which runs the process for choosing and retaining county employees, initially didn’t approve the job description because the commission was concerned it would be redundant.Cephoni Jackson eventually was hired in January. She shared a draft of the yet-to-be-finalized plan, which outlines goals of creating a “culture of belonging,” building more inclusive leadership, and coming up with strategies to retain and develop talent. She wants to establish a committee made up of community members by 2025.

The goals don’t have a timeline, and various county leaders are tasked with “championing” each step. Jackson said she’s seeing high energy from employees to begin implementing the action plan, adding: “It’s like the conditions are right for the culture to shift.”It’s progress that’s “more than the bread crumbs they’ve given us,” said Kula Koenig, the chief program officer at Public Health Advocates.And Phil Serna, the county board member who brought forth the declaration, said it’s important to recognize what has been done — and what still lies ahead.

“I think in many respects dealing with racism, addressing racism responsibly, is kind of like painting the Golden Gate Bridge, right?” he said. “As soon as you think you’re done, you’re not. You have to go back and start painting again.”This story is part of an AP ongoing series exploring the

of what is widely called the

, which was sparked a decade ago by the fatal shooting of Michael Brown by police in Ferguson, Missouri.Gene therapies, which can be extremely expensive to develop, generally target more common disorders in part for simple financial reasons: more patients mean potentially more sales, which can help pay the development costs and generate more profit. The first CRISPR therapy

, for example, treats sickle cell disease, a painful blood disorder affecting millions worldwide.Musunuru said his team’s work —

— showed that creating a custom treatment doesn’t have to be prohibitively expensive. The cost was “not far off” from the $800,000-plus for an average liver transplant and related care, he said.“As we get better and better at making these therapies and shorten the time frame even more, economies of scale will kick in and I would expect the costs to come down,” Musunuru said.