CAYA Clinic, chosen by Public Health Madison and Dane County (PHMDC) to open a harm reduction clinic on Madison’s East Side, has withdrawn from the project and called for the process to restart to find a new provider, after falsely claiming in its proposal that it was led by people of color.
Last year, Dane County’s Opiod Settlement Subcommittee recommended that about $2.4 million received from opioid manafacturers be allocated to Public Health Madison and Dane County (PHMDC) to establish a drop-in harm reduction center. Four local organizations submitted proposals, and a group of evaluators recommended CAYA Clinic, which operates a substance use counselling clinic on Madison’s East Side.
In its proposal, CAYA (which stands for “come as you are”) said is it “led by people with lived experience and BIPOC leaders who understand their community,” but CAYA’s staff is entirely white. Founder and clinical director Skye Boughman initially said she was unaware that the proposal contained that language until asked about it by Madison365. In an email to Madison365 the following day, she said that she didn’t realize until near the deadline that the proposal had a word count limit, so she had to “do a lot of summarizing very quickly,” and unintentionally included that language. Later, at a Board of Health public hearing, she blamed artificial intelligence for including it.
“We take full accountability, that we made an error in our (proposal),” CAYA wrote in a statement issued Monday. “Regardless of our intent or the circumstances, this mistake has consequences. We understand that moving forward with the current process could increase mistrust and cause harm to the community we are committed to serving. We hold ourselves to the same standard of accountability and making amends that we ask of others in our community.”
The request for proposals (RFP) did not specify that proposals would be scored on cultural competency or staff diversity, but all involved agree that Black men are most susceptible to the harms associated with opiates; Boughman estimates that about one in four of CAYA’s current clients are Black or Latino. Some of the other proposals touted more specific information about staff diversity; Anesis Foundation, for example, in its proposal noted that “Across nearly 70 employees, 50% identify as Black, 27% Latine, 17% Asian, 5% White, and 1% Indigenous.”
The proposal was also called into question because County Supervisor Rick Rose, who chairs the Opioid Settlement Subcommittee, is employed part time at CAYA; both Rose and CAYA staff told Madison365 that he was involved in neither crafting the proposal nor the selection process.
CAYA’s proposed harm reduction center would be housed on Thierer Road and offer a needle exchange, access to medications to prevent overdose deaths, free meals, showers, and case management from 12-6 pm, Monday through Friday. The City of Madison’s zoning administrator told Alder Sabrina Madison, who represents the area where the proposed clinic would be sited, that as described it would likely be defined as a day shelter for zoning purposes and would therefore require a conditional use permit. Alder Madison also said a new day shelter would also require additional police and EMS resources, which were not planned for in the proposal.
“CAYA’s letter is an important step, and I encourage the Board of Health to accept it while also calling for an improved RFP process,” Alder Madison said in a statement emailed to Madison365. “This is an opportunity to allow Public Health Madison & Dane County to lead with a clear public health lens, and I would welcome the opportunity to collaborate with the County alongside my Common Council colleagues and City agencies.”
The Dane County Board of Health is set to vote on the proposal at its February meeting. With CAYA withdrawing and endorsing a new RFP process, it is unclear whether the vote will go forward or a new RFP will be issued. PHMDC staff told Madison365 early Tueday that they would look into that question and get back to us; we will update this story with their response.
