California Roots Festival @ Monterey Fairgrounds

[Drunk Monk]

Behind the scenes with JahMed, the medical group providing on-site care at Cali Roots.

• Jesse Herwitz
   
  
• May 26, 2022
  

JahMed, the team providing first aid and medical assistance at Cali Roots, originated at another reggae festival and is staffed by volunteers who are also a part of this festival family.
c/o LEE LEER





[b]W[/b][b]HAT YOU MIGHT NOT THINK ABOUT AS YOU HEAD TO THIS YEAR’S CALI ROOTS FESTIVAL IS YOUR SAFETY.[/b] Who will have your back if something goes wrong? If you get dehydrated? If you get an injury or have a migraine? Or worse? The good news is that you will be in great hands. Lots of great hands. With a cadre of volunteer medical professionals who share a similar love of the music and atmosphere of Cali Roots, you will be treated by doctors and nurses who, as JahMed founder David Moss suggests, are “doing what they love to do: helping people.”
JahMed is a Humboldt County-based nonprofit that began in the mid-1990s, after Moss took on the task of handling the medical treatment at the annual Reggae on the River festival. Prior to that, the medical tents and care had been provided by the George Graham nonprofit group Rock Medicine which, in the early 1970s, innovated the idea of “free, non-judgmental care.” Moss, who had been a volunteer for Rock Med, quickly assembled a group of doctors, medical care professionals, and volunteers and went to work.
“At that point we didn’t have a name. We called ourselves ‘Dread Med’ because we had lots of doctors with dreads,” recalls Moss, who has led the nonprofit organization since 1996.
Since then, JahMed – or JMed, as the group later came to be known – has provided on-site medical care at concerts and festivals in Central and Northern California, including this year’s Cali Roots.
“It’s a small family in the realm of festivals, especially in Northern California,” notes Moss, who has worked with producer Dan Sheehan for all the preceding Cali Roots festivals. “JahMed provides top-notch medical care with rapid response. Without an organization like ours, the local hospitals and urgent care sites become inundated. We can treat as many as 300 people over a weekend.”
Some of the more memorable moments in JahMed’s 20-plus-year history include treating women in labor and an instance of people chaining themselves to generators claiming aliens were coming to take them away.
“We’ve seen all types of things,” Moss says.
In addition to the medically loaded tent that serves as their base of operations, JahMed hosts self-care stations that supply band-aids, aspirin, earplugs and sunscreen, as well as more than 100 volunteers including medical doctors, EMTs, and non-medical experts.
“Effectively anyone with a radio (including security guards) can call us in,” Moss adds. The average response time for medical assistance is under two minutes. Each of those with a radio also has direct access to EMS and, if need be, can contact 911.
There’s also a non-medical safety component to what JahMed does – the group has a special team of experts trained to deal with any situations that might turn violent. And they have some qualifications you might not expect – “they are (literal) Kung-Fu experts who specialize in soft takedowns,” says Moss, who stresses safety at large events is critical.
Safety measures also come from behind the scenes. Cali Roots is joining the trend of many large festivals and restricting bags to small and clear. “In light of the shooting that occurred in 2019 at the Gilroy Garlic Festival, and all the other recent shootings at events, we have decided it is now time to take further measures to ensure the safety of everyone participating in Cali Roots,” organizers write in the policy.
Of the 100 JahMed volunteers, a core group of team members, including Lee Leer – Moss’ own doctor in Humboldt County, later business partner and, according to Moss, one of the reasons the nonprofit exists today – will work 24/7 over the three-day festival. This will be JahMed’s first large music festival since the pandemic began. All volunteers are required to be vaccinated and boosted. Their protocols are aligned with CDC recommendations.
As an equal contribution to the treatments JahMed provides concert-goers, Moss also sees what his group does as a unique opportunity for the doctors and nurses who volunteer their time.
“The red tape is intense,” says Moss, referring to medical insurance practices doctors encounter in their day-to-day jobs. “And on some levels, this is the way medicine is supposed to be. When people need help, we help. All our doctors and nurses don’t look at it as work. This is a very cool thing.”

 

George Graham? Srsly?

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Yesterday = 4.5 miles