Top U.S. health official praises Davis dining program; weighs in on hot topics

U.S. Health and Human Services Secretary Xavier Becerra dropped by the UC Davis Medical Center in Sacramento to praise the facilities’ sustainable food production and to answer questions about issues top of mind in the Golden State. 

During the Thursday visit, Becerra toured the medical center’s kitchen and sampled some of Chef Santana Diaz’s food, which Becerra said made him reconsider his position on red beets. 

“Every time they're out there, I always just say ‘no that’s okay I don’t eat ‘em,’” he said. “This time, I ate them. Yeah. And I didn't even realize it. It was all tasty.”

The medical center has been recognized for its sustainable approach to food procurement. Most of its food is sourced from farmers and ranchers within 250 miles, and it is the region’s largest daily food production kitchen, creating about 6,500 meals a day, according to UC Davis Chancellor Gary May. 

Becerra said the facilities’ Good Food as Good Medicine approach should be replicated across the nation and HHS wants to help. 

“It's time we moved to a wellness care system where we talk about how we're keeping you healthy, we're letting you enjoy wellness and hopefully avoid becoming diabetic, someone with hypertension, the kinds of things that ultimately cost our healthcare system so much money,” he said. “UC Davis is doing this, and they're doing it right.”

Becerra also took time to weigh in on a few issues that are top of mind for Californians, including food insecurity, artificial intelligence and efforts to increase the minimum wage for health care workers, including medical assistants and personal care aides. 

The HHS Secretary went on to Oakland to announce details of the federal Health Workforce Initiative, which will reportedly offer scholarships and loan forgiveness as well as health care training to strengthen pipelines into the profession.

Becerra took questions from reporters and his answers have been edited for length and clarity.

On artificial intelligence in healthcare:

Our Office of National Coordinator on Health Technology is working on this. 

And one of the things we're working on is this issue of AI. We're going to look into these algorithms. We're going to require these players to show us how they're coming up with these algorithms, because we know that these algorithms could hurt communities that haven't always been part of that traditional system of health care. And we're not interested in letting that become the case. And so we're going to, from the beginning, look into this. 

On a proposed bill that would raise California’s minimum wage to $25/hr: 

Here's the real tragedy that we face in America. [It’s] better in California, but still tough. 

You can go flip burgers and make more money than doing child care, nursing home care. It's a sin. It's a sin to believe that someone who's taking care of your beloved grandmother in a nursing home or someone who's taking care of your little child while you go to work makes less money than the person flipping burgers. And by the way, there's a lot of dignity in working in a fast food restaurant. I just think that there's no reason why someone who's caring for one of our loved ones should make less than someone who's about to make a burger. 

I trust the leadership in California that we want to move in the right direction. I'm not in the legislature. I don't get to make that policy. But I hope that they will move to respect people who do really important work. And one of the ways you show them respect is by paying them a decent wage.

On food insecurity: 

We are giving states an opportunity, and California is one of the first states to take us up on it, through their CalAIM program, to actually use health care dollars under Medicaid to go beyond just providing medical care. 

And so we believe that's going to help keep people healthy from the beginning, keep them well instead of trying to only treat them when they're ill, when it's very, very expensive. As I learned from one of the best experts on health care, my mom, she said ‘mejor prevenir que remediar’: better to prevent than to remediate. That's what this is all about. Rather than try to cure someone of diabetes, rather than try to cure their hypertension, which is extremely expensive, if at all possible. How about we keep them from becoming hypertensive? How about we keep them from becoming diabetic?

On changing federal marijuana laws: 

On the issue of marijuana, what I can tell you is that the president instructed us at HHS, the Food and Drug Administration in particular, to take a look at how we treat marijuana, to see if we can update our review of marijuana as a drug and how we can make sure we treat it going forward on a federal level. 

Places like California have already changed the laws. The federal government has not. And so we've been instructed and we're underway with that review as we speak. It’s not just HHS, It also includes the Drug Enforcement Agency, other agencies. But we're working together to try to see if we can give the president an answer that's based on the science and the evidence. Stay tuned. We hope to be able to get there pretty soon, hopefully this year.