Hello, good evening. My name is Peter Sjaroszy and I'm the editor of the Drug Reporter website. Welcome to the first episode of our new live online video show, Drug Reporter Coffee, where we will regularly discuss new developments in the world of drug policy with professionals, activists and decision makers. Today, our show will feature drug policy reform in a small country in Southern Eastern Europe, North Macedonia. We will discuss the chances of reform with two guests, two activists from the country. But before we start the discussion, we would like to present you some breaking news on drug policy reform around the world. In a historic vote today, the United Nations has finally recognized the medicinal value of cannabis, reported leading drug policy reform organizations in a press release published this afternoon. After two years of fractious debate, today in Vienna, the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, this is the largest drug policy decision-making body in the world voted to remove cannabis from schedule four of the 1961 single conventional narcotic drugs, which is reserved for substances with limited or no therapeutic benefit. So by doing so, the UN finally acknowledges the therapeutic value of cannabis. This is welcome news for the millions of people who use cannabis as a medicine and reflects the reality of a growing market for cannabis-based medicinal products. Although welcoming the removal from schedule four, drug policy experts also expressed serious concerns that cannabis will remain in schedule one of the 1961 convention, maintaining it under the same strict controls as for example, heroin or cocaine. Following the first ever scientific review of cannabis by the Vertusse organization in 2018, some limited rescheduling of cannabis was recommended, but removing it from schedule one was no part of the package despite WHO's own finding that cannabis was less harmful than most other drugs in that schedule goes the press release. Vancouver city council unanimously begged the motion seeking to decriminalize possession of small amounts of illegal drugs in the end of November reports global news. The move comes as the city looks for out-of-the-box solutions to a toxic street drug crisis with a mounting death toll. The vote came the same day, the BC or British Columbia coroner service that reported 162 over those deaths in the province in October, about five per day. Vancouver does not have the power to decriminalize drug possession, but it will instead now seek an exemption from the federal control drugs and substances act. If the plan is approved, Vancouver would be the first jurisdiction in Canada to decriminalize street drugs for personal possession for medicine, for personal possession. Mexican Senate votes to legalize cannabis, but activists criticized the measure, reported the High Times Magazine on November 30. The Mexican Senate approved the landmark cannabis legalization bill last week, bringing the country one step closer to creating the largest legal cannabis market in the world. Under the bill approved by senators last week, adults would be permitted to possess up to 28 grams of cannabis and cultivate a limited number of cannabis plants for personal use. However, some activists, including Julio Salazar, a senior lawyer and legalization advocate for the, with the nonprofit group, Mexico United Against Crime have said that the bill is flawed, favoring large corporations over small businesses and family farms. The measure also does little to strip the cannabis trade from the cartels in Mexico, where more than 100,000 people have been killed in drug-related violence in recent years. Zara Snap, co-founder of the RIA Institute, a Mexico City-based drug policy research and advocacy group believes that the bill will exclude small businesses and currently illicit cultivators from participating in the world's largest legal cannabis market once the law goes into effect. So this was the news on Drug Reporter Cafe. And now let me welcome and introduce our two guests from North Macedonia, with whom we can explore what is happening in the country with regard to drug policy reform. First, I would like to introduce Natasha Boskova from the Coalition Margins, a non-formal joint platform and as the result of a joint effort of several organizations to promote the protection and respect of the fundamental human rights of marginalized communities. Hi, Natasha. Hello. And Vlatko Dekov from HOPS, Healthy Options Projects Copia, one of the leading harm reduction and drug policy organizations in the country. Hi, Vlatko. Okay, hello, Peter. So can we start with you explaining us what is the current legal status of cannabis in your country? Well, cannabis is a controlled substance which cultivation, as in most of the countries in Macedonia as well, cannabis considered a controlled substance which cultivation, production and processing and its selling is regulated by the law on control of opioid drugs and psychotropic substances. What is crucial for the cannabis is that until 2016, it was not explicitly mentioned in this law, but only in this list which you already mentioned as part of the conventions which were introduced in the national legislation in North Macedonia. In 2016, there was the first amendment to the law that introduced cannabis as a controlled substance and where the criteria for its cultivation, production and production of cannabis products was regulated. So this was based on several years of advocacy by the NGOs, mostly NGOs coming from different patients' rights organizations which represented people with different health condition, but also organizations such as HOPS and coalition organizations that are dealing with drug policy were also interested about the legalization of cannabis for medical use. So it's controlled under certain circumstances legal entities can cultivate and produce cannabis products otherwise it's considered as possession and use of cannabis is considered a crime. Do you think that this current decision of the UN will have any impact on the legislation of cannabis in your country? Yes, definitely. You are aware that there is an ongoing discussion about even legalization for recreational use of cannabis. So I believe that this decision today will affect in the improvement of the current law on drug control where there is a very limited access to the medicine, cannabis products as medicine. So I believe that this decision will improve this part of the regulation but also will affect the regulation of use of cannabis for recreational use as well. So you mentioned that North Macedonia allowed legal access to medicinal cannabis in 2016. Can you please tell us like what preceded this decision? Like what worked in advocacy in your country? Like did you show stories of patients to the public, the media or did you have any like consultation with your government? So maybe for those activists who work on similar issues in other countries that would be interesting like what are your experiences? What works in advocacy in this territory? Well, COPS Specialism Organization which more than 20 years is working in the field of drug policy and coalition joined a little bit later but still we are both organization advocating for generally the criminalization of drugs and legalization of cannabis. So at this point in 2016, actually at that time the government was closed for intervention by the NGOs although we publicly claimed for the criminalization and legalization of cannabis but still did not have access to institutions to negotiate to argue with the decision makers. So jointly with other organization for patients rights with different health conditions we use the public space, the media to claim for a legalization of cannabis for medical use. But I must say that that was one way communication while the government, the Ministry of Health they had some internal discussion about the amendment of the law on narcotic drugs and psychotropic control of narcotic drugs and psychotropic substances. And there were some few public debate where most of the experts and NGO were excluded. So we found out about the actually the amendments of the law when it came to the parliament in January 2016. And at that time it was too late to intervene in the process but however, we used all resources that we had at the time and we lobbied with one MP from the Green Party that was already in the parliament to submit amendments to the suggested law in order to improve the text of the law. For our lucky, she agreed with our claims and she proposed the amendments but unfortunately the amendments were not supported not even by the opposition and the position at that time. So that's why we have a law that is although we can say that there is a legalization for medical use in Macedonia, legalization of cannabis for medical use but still not many patients can access the law. The law has very flaws that should be improved with amendments that should happen in future. Vlatko, I know that you were also present. I would like to add something for this, yeah. Yeah, thank you, Peter. So in that time, I mean before legalization of medical cannabis, there was one organization calling Green Alternative and this organization organized several events about medical cannabis here and even invite the famous guy, Eric Simpson, who also participate in this event. But anyhow, the legalization of cannabis for medical use, it was very surprised for us because it's happened in a very short time and there is no doubt that economic reasons was the major aim of legalization of medical cannabis. And as Natria say, this law doesn't allow, let's say to make money from the company which is already registered in the country. Why? Because company cannot sell their products in abroad. They can sell only in Macedonia and Macedonia is very small market. So because of that, the current government propose changes in the law and want to allow export of raw cannabis and products. It would make sense, right? Because if there are economic incentives behind this reforms, then export would bring much more profit like North Macedonia probably with a small market for this products in itself, right? Yeah. So where would North Macedonia export medicinal cannabis? As I know, Europe is the major aim of the companies. So there is interest from Germany and other countries. So, but both of us and Natria and me, we are not coming from this, you know, companies and... Business sector. Business sector, so this issue is not very familiar for us. So, but for sure, we know that the most of the company prepare their self for selling in Europe, even probably in other continents. Okay, so, but from the perspective of advocates and activists who are fighting for the rights of marginalized people and patients, what do you think is the current regulation of medicinal cannabis appropriate for the clients, for the patients? So do they have safe and good quality access to medicinal cannabis products? Well, one of our key remarks on the amendments in 2016 were that the list of health conditions for which the cannabis can be prescribed is very limited. So oncological diseases, HIV, and epileptic symptoms in children. So these were the conditions where, and these conditions are stipulated in the law. So when we suggested the amendments to the law, we said that this list should not be exhaustive. It should be extended to many more health conditions, but also lists that should be put in the bylaw, not to be strictly put in the law. And every extension of this list should, that means that every time the list is amended, the law should be changed. So it would be much easier if it's based on the decision of the health minister of health or bylaw that can be changed easily. So one of the remarks of our of the law was that this list should be extended. There was also limitation that only few specialists, doctor can prescribe the medicine and only doctors which are working in the public health institution, not the private clinic. So, and as Vladko said, the limitation of the law that is only focused on the domestic market leads to high prices for a very small amount of products which are not very, with good quality and with price that people cannot afford. And following the adoption of the law, we made research among the patients and our findings says that beside the legalization of cannabis for medical use in Macedonia, people continue to buy it on the black market or to prepare it for themselves and expose them to criminal liability since the possession of a certain amount of cannabis can be charged with criminal sanction. So the conclusion is that the current law does not gives the aim or gives the result that was the aim of the decision makers at the beginning. So if we speak about recreational cannabis users who buy from the black markets, what is the, what happens then if the police calls them, if they are arrested by the police, what are the sanctions and what is the practice of law enforcement? Based on the criminal code, possession for personal use is not provided as is not considered a crime, but very well established practice by the police, by the prosecution office and courts for many years. Actually, we face with the fact of criminalization of possession of any substance including possession of cannabis. So people who are caught with small amount of cannabis can face criminal charge and possibly alternative measure, but if the amount is bigger then these people can face also jail, can face prison sentence. So that beside the advocating for legalization for medical use, we also advocate for the fact of the criminalization, legal and the fact of the criminalization for possession of cannabis. So, yeah, Blatko, please, yeah. I think it's very interesting to say that cannabis in Macedonia is traditionally cultivated in almost all regions in the country, but also for recreational use. We know that in scoping in 30s, some people use hashish, but the real boom of recreational use started in late of 70s and beginning of 80s. So there is some places in the country, even villages like villages Dobreici, which is very famous about this cannabis culture where majority of the people are user or are friendly for cannabis use. Let's say in 80s, in some coffee shops in Amsterdam, there was cannabis with name of these villages ago. There was a news published in all media under the name Stromica, which is the guy from the city of Stromica, tell the police that somebody's still from his cannabis plants. So that example shows us that people like this guy think that cannabis is something which naturally belong to him. So he don't fear from police. He going to police and inform police that somebody's still from his cannabis plants. So I'd like to stress that there is some kind of the traditional use. There is some part of the culture of the people who live in the country. So that also includes the police, that they are not so much prioritized on cannabis? I'm not sure exactly is the opposite, particularly in the last two years. So there is plenty of news, if you openly say the police information every day because police built them. So you can see that how many people are charged or arrested for possession of cannabis? So this is happen after legalization of medical cannabis, the number of people who are arrest for cannabis possession is much higher. Is there any other drugs in the country? Wow, but is there a causal relationship between the two? So that was the cause of the increase that medicinal cannabis was legalized? Yes, I think that there was a connection between these two activities of the government. So at the end of 2015, before the adoption of the amendments of the law where the cannabis was legalized for medical use, there was a very frequent cases of charging people for planting, for having one or two plants at their home. So this was somehow an announcement of this medicalization process. And since then we face every day with police reports where people are caught with small amount of plant. So I see some contrast in this because now the current prime minister of Macedonia just announced that the government wants to legalize recreational cannabis as well. And as far as I know, that was not his first statement on this topic. So can you explain then what is behind this? Like if you have a very repressive law enforcement policy against cannabis users and at the same time, it seems that at the highest level, the government already decided to legalize cannabis, right? Yes, actually this was his first statement about legalization of cannabis. Several times before, prime minister mentioned only decriminalization. So, but in his last interview, prime minister say that he support options, option of legalization of cannabis for recreational use in cafes, in other hospitality places, in capital city scope, but also in other tourist places in country. Also he added that the government investigated Amsterdam and Netherlands as possible model for legalization. And actually answer of your question is another his statement where he stressed that legalization of cannabis was a part of the government's planet package of measure for stimulating the economy, particularly after the COVID and health crisis. So no doubt that first reason for legalization in country is economic. But we as NGOs and as activists, we are going to raise other issue, which is also relevant, even much more relevant for us. And they are the health and well-being of cannabis and human rights. So people should not go into jail for growing of plants for personal use or possession of cannabis for personal use. So actually we recognize the possibilities to influence among the government within this issue. So we are part of the initiative calling operation... Liberation. Sorry? Liberation. Liberation or relief. I don't know how to translate. So until now this initiative is supported by 20-round NGOs, hundreds of public figures, like intellectuals, university professors, artists, musicians, politicians and numerous of cafes and music clubs. They support these initiatives. And the major requests of initiatives are decriminalization of possession and personal use of cannabis, decriminalization of growing plants for personal use, also to low to setting up of social clubs, cannabis social clubs, similar like, let's say, in Spain or something like that. Also, I think another very important issue is to establishing a special fund from taxes, which company who produce and trade with cannabis will pay and to specify exact percentage of this fund, which will be used for programs for marginalized groups and treatment of different medical conditions. And the last one is to increase the number, I think the nutshell already spoke, it's an increase of number of health conditions for prescribing medical cannabis because currently cannabis is allowed only for disease and also to allowing doctors from both health sectors, public and private to prescribe cannabis. So this is the request of our initiative and we hope that the government will invite to speak very close with them about our request. It's really nice to hear that now you have quite vibrant and strong and influential civil society done in North Macedonia, especially, you know, a few years ago you had a very similar situation like we had in Hungary with a government that scapegoats and GOs and accuses them of being Shorosh agents and that guy is actually now our only legal refugee in Hungary. So, how do you see that? Is the government really listen to this coalition of civil society organizations? Because I see that there are also some businessmen and companies coming from America, for example. I read an article that the businessman called Michael Stromatis who goes by Big Mike met with the country's prime minister. So it seems that there are some lobbying efforts from big companies and business enterprises. So how do you see the chances that the government will listen to you and it will not put forward the business interest? Personally, I think that government will make some kind of agreement with us and with business sectors. Yes, it's true there is some people from USA who invest money in the country for they produce cannabis, but really I don't know what kind of the relationships they have with the government. Probably they push the government for these new planning changes of the law to be allowed for them to export cannabis outside of the country. So, okay, for us, this is good, but our issue is to put effort and to decriminalize cannabis and to open for personal use. And as I said before, it's very important to allow to people who use cannabis not to go to jail for any possession of cannabis for personal use. So that is our crucial aim. Natasha. Yes, if I may add, in the last month beside the prime minister, we had the minister of health, the minister of justice on the conference that we had two weeks ago. And they also explicitly said that they are willing to sit and discuss the possibility of decriminalization of possession of any kind of drug, including cannabis. And they supported the statement of the prime minister for legalization. So I think that this is a good start to open the discussion and see where we stand and which arguments are more good to be accepted by the government. But we should not forget the aspect of the Ministry of Interior, which continues to arrest people for possession even of small amount of cannabis. So we see that there is not comprehensive stance even within the government. So we should have this in mind that we should have all relevant institutions or relevant ministries on the table when we discuss decriminalization and legalization. But what we have for now is a good start that we have interest from the highest position to sit and discuss possible ways of legalization. I'm glad you mentioned this conference and the statement of the house minister because we prepared a short video from this conference. So now we can watch it together. Please allow me to say that personally I support decriminalization. And above all, I think that a policy can be successfully implemented as long as the process of applying the violation of that policy was inclusive and included absolutely all the officials on which it is carried out. And it is not resistant to the implementation because even the ideal solution if it is not implemented, it is only partially good. There is no need to apply it from the effect. In addition, we need to look at how to change the treatment in order to find a drug for personal use and determine what is the personal use and what is the criminal part. And that is to be quite clear so that there is no different type of treatment that would repeat the meaning of criminalization even if it was decriminalized. Please allow me to say that the law should determine what amount of psychoactive substance is necessary for personal use through a certain legal solution. In this sense, it should be followed by the education of the organ of the trial and the help in the form of legal and medical advice for the survivors. And on the average, a long-term policy without any doubt leads to a reduction in the use of psychoactive substances without the use of the trial users. But it is also a responsible help for them when it is estimated that it is necessary. It is not like the attitude of a politician but the process of supporting the non-governmental sector. We need to divide these stereotypes and talk about it so that every person is the same. We need to talk about the concept of a community for everyone so that I can give myself a chance to see who is responsible for the process. Please allow me. So this was the short video excerpt from the conference. Yeah, I think it looks amazing and kind of... Can we say that it's a historic statement from your Minister of Health that it is in support of decriminalizing drug use? What are the next steps now? What is the timeline? Because I suppose you will just kind of follow up with the decision or make accountable these officials with their statements. Let me firstly just to explain a little bit about the conference, which I think is interesting. It was two weeks ago and in this conference some of speakers except our Ministers of Health, Minister of Justice and Minister of Social Policy were Portugal Drug Coordinator, Dr. João Aguilal, one of the architects of Portugal Drug Policy Model. Also, Thomas Branski, University Professor from Czech Republic who speaks about the decriminalization in Czech Republic, representative from Ministry of Justice from Netherlands who speak about the cannabis policy in Netherlands and representative of police from Frankfurt who explain about the Frankfurt Way Model who is also a model of decriminalization. And also we have speakers from community representatives from our country and other experts, let's say public prosecutor, representative of Office of Public Prosecutor. She also was a very strong statement about decriminalization of all drugs for possession of drugs for personal use. Also, I present the new publication, it is a comparative study calling Decriminalization of Drugs as a basis for human and effective drug policy. It is analysis of Portuguese and Dutch models for decriminalization. And actually idea for this conference was to share different model of decriminalization of all drugs as a starting point of discussion with this government because we, before we have other conferences, other events when we discuss with this similar issue. So really it was very nice to listen that our ministers support decriminalization. Even some of them like minister of justice share very concrete idea for clear difference of possession of drugs for personal use from possession of drugs for saying, let's say. So for our point of view, it was a successful conference and what is the next steps? So one of the, some of the conclusion of the conference which is our request to the government, the next one. So we are going to discuss with the government concretely, concrete amendments. So this is the amendments to the criminal code that will clearly make differentiation of possession of drugs and other psychotropic substances for personal use and will prevent the punishment of people who use drugs. In meantime, we urge the ministry of interior public prosecutor office and courts to consistently respect the current criminal code and the provision of criminal code that do not prohibit possession of drugs for personal use. Also, we want to start up some process of wider consultation to reform of the national drug policy with the government and to evolve in this process, competent institutions, experts, associations, representative of the people who use drugs. And we hope that this will result in changes to the law policies, but even in the practice because we speak already that the practice currently the practice is the major problem regarding the possession of drugs for personal use. So this process should be based of national research, scientific evidence and best practice in the world. So it doesn't mean that we should copy some model but we should create the model which is more appropriate for our country. And of course, we would like also to raise the question which we already raised. This is the question about to establish the appropriate structure to manage the national drug policy because till now this structure almost doesn't exist. There is the National Interministeral Committee but this committee doesn't work well. So this is some of our idea for the next steps after the conference. You're right, so refreshing to listen to you guys because in our region it's quite unusual now that you hear good news from countries because in most countries there is stagnation or even some pushback in drug policy. So it's really amazing to hear that the decision maker seems to be much more open than in most other countries. What about the public opinion? Do you have any polls that show what the people think about this reform? No, there is no polls for this issue. We made the last one, it was six, seven years ago but it was in completely different context. So and the result was not very positive, only 15% of the percentage of the population. And I must say that this was very representative research doing by all standards. So only 15% percentage of the citizen of Macedonia was in favor of the criminalization. But now probably the results will be much, much more positive for this issue. Natasha, when you speak to people and to professionals or police because I suppose you speak with a lot of different kinds of people, how do you see that are there any positive changes? Yes, beside these activities on advocating for policy changes, we also provide trainings to police officers on treatment of marginalized communities including treatment of people who use drugs. And I must say that at the beginning of the training, it's a two-day training official program of the Center for Training of Police Officers. So at the beginning of the training, they are very not supportive to the people who use drugs. They consider that it's a crime that should be prosecuted as they do. But when we start analyzing the results of their work, like they are working so many hours, they spend so many resources and at the end of the day, they catch for example, two grams of cannabis. They see the nonsense of the existence policy and practice of the police. So at the end, we all conclude that the current policy and practice of the police is not giving the results. It's not the real war on drugs. So we need a different approach and that's what we heard on the conference as well. We had the police officers there and he not explicitly, but he was also in favor of some kind of reform because the current practice does not provide the expected results. And I believe that as I mentioned previously that these strong statements on the highest political level is an excellent start to negotiate a good model. As I mentioned, we cannot copy paste models from Netherlands or Portugal or wherever, but we should take into consideration the local context and see what's applicable here for us, for other people and use the ongoing process of amendment of the criminal code and propose changes of the provision that actually criminalizes possession for personal use. Well, there are many processes opened. The current COVID situation slows down the processes a bit, but we will do our best to use the momentum and have the best possible result. We got a question from one of the people who are watching us online. And I think that's a very relevant question. Like have you heard about EU reactions from the European Union? So are there any kind of comments from European Union officials or do you have any idea how it will affect the relationship between Macedonia, North Macedonia and the EU? On this matter specifically, I haven't heard any comment or I read the official results that are coming from the EU commission on the progress of North Macedonia. That was the question, but I haven't read any official comment or statement related to drug policy to Macedonia and to the current developments on the drug policy that was the question. So North Macedonia just clarify that North Macedonia now is a candidate country, right? So that's the status of the country. Yes. And it is now in the discussions or negotiations of... Yes. If these laws go into a procedure as that they will be evaluated whether it is laws means alignment of this law with the EU law. So probably when the process of adoption will start, then the law will be evaluated from this aspect as well. So it will be definitely very interesting situation that one country which enters the EU will have the most progressive cannabis policy if this law will... We'll see on the first and on the second. Yeah. Okay, Natasha and Blatko, thank you so much for being with us today and explain us what is happening in North Macedonia. We will follow up the events in your country. And I hope that our next discussion will be about celebrating the adoption of decriminalization and dark policy reform laws. So thank you very much for being with us. Thank you for having us. And thank you for those who were watching us online or who are watching now with us. And please follow us on Facebook and Twitter and support Dragreporter. So thank you very much and goodbye.


Very good afternoon to all. Everyone is listening or not? OK. So welcome to this whole Android session. Myself Ajay Babar working with team Akash. So I'll OK. The main goal of this whole Android workshop is to give you a small exposure to an Android so that you can quickly learn and start developing our application as fast as possible. And that is from the day one only, without wasting any time. So I'll quickly go through the overview of the whole Android session. So these minute topics we are going to cover in the next three hours. So first one is introduction to Android. So that is what I am going to take right now. Then how to build your first Android application? That is Hello World application. And what folder structure or what different folders are present in each Android project? That will be explained by Mithali. Then third one is the Android component. These are the basic building blocks, which includes the activities, services, broadcast receiver, and et cetera. So that will be explained by Arun. Different layouts we have in Android. And how to design your user interface or front end development. So that will be explained by Raya. And then fifth one is the SQLite database. In that, we will tell you how to store and retrieve the data from the database. So that will be explained by Tushar. In that, we will also have one good example using the SQLite database. And at the end, we have Android media. In that, we will tell you how to deal with the images. Basically, multimedia data. So how to play the audio files, video files. So that will be explained by Ninad. So let's start to the introduction to Android. Yeah, basically, this will be a theory kind of lecture. So yeah, I just wanted to ask that how many of you have developed the Android applications? Good. That means you know Java very well. OK. So let's start to the introduction to Android. OK, can anyone tell what is Android? So these many topics I am going to cover. So first one is introduction. Then brief history about the Android. Then Android version and the API level. So this is a very important topic as a developer to know. Otherwise, his application won't run on his device. OK. Then comparison of Dalvik Virtual Machine and Java Virtual Machine. So this is the reason why the Android is so much fast. That is because of Dalvik Virtual Machine. Then what out of the features Android provides us. And at the end, we have an application fundamental. In that, we'll have .apk file. What is it? What is the purpose of it? So all these topics I am going to cover. So let's see one by one. Is a Linux-based operating system specially designed for touchscreen devices, like smartphones, tablets, and et cetera. Initially, it was developed by the Android INC and later purchased by the Google in 2005. So Google started working on Android in 2005. And after three years, they came up with the first Android power device that is in 2008. Android is an open source. Now see, why Android is so much popular? Because of this reason, Android is open source. And Google releases its code under the Apache 2 license. Now what Apache 2 license says is that you derive your code from the original one, modify it according to your requirement, and redistribute it. So whatever this hardware manufacturer, what they do, like HTC, Micromax, Samsung, what they do, they just customize the Android according to their requirement and then redistribute it. So no licensing, no paying of royalty, nothing. So it involves zero cost. And because of this, the Android is so much popular. Then last one is the Google Play Store. You must have heard about this. So this is very nice place. You can download anything. Like if I want the games, business applications, school applications, you just need to think and you will have a app for it. Next. Yeah, this is just a brief history about the Android. So what different version came in which year? So in 2009, we had a cupcake to Eclair. Then in 2010, we had a Froyo gingerbread. And this is just a picture, a representation of Android versions. So if you have noticed that these are the alphabetical ordered names, ordered desert names. So C for cupcake, D for donor, D for Eclair. So I don't know what they made to keep these desert names. And that is also alphabetical order. Then in 2011, we had Honeycomb Ice Cream Sandwich. Then in 2012, Jelly Bean. In 2013, the latest current update. That is Android KitKat. So again, these are the picture representation. What is API? API in normal terms, API is an application programming interface that consists of lots of classes, lots of methods that you can actually use in your code. But why they need API level means why they need the revisions of API level. So definitely, whenever the new API comes into the market, there always be an additive change on existing one. So old won't be removed. It will be deprecated. So whenever you try it in an Eclipse editor and suddenly comes something like a strike-through on a class name or on a method name, that means that class or that method has been deprecated and you have something new available into the market that you can use. So I just wanted to emphasize on this because whenever the new API level comes into the market, that means you have something new available that you can use. Old won't be removed. So these API levels have been categorized into the three main groups. That is API level from 3 to 10, especially made for smartphones. Then API level 11 to 13 made for tablets. And after four onwards, Android is everywhere. Either it will be a tablet or it will be a smartphone. This is just for your reference. You can have a look later. So this shows the platform versions, their corresponding API levels, and the version name. So things marked in red. So Akash tablet uses these two versions. So some Akash tablet has Jelly Bean. Some Akash tablet has Ice Cream Sandwich. So that is Android 4.0.3 has API level 15. And its version name is Ice Cream Sandwich. So I have mentioned all the API levels, their corresponding version. So choosing an API level. So this is very important topic as a developer to know. So basically every developer must know which API level his device supports. So it totally depends on his device. Then what is application forward compatibility and application backward compatibility? So it's pretty logical. Suppose for example, I have a device with Android version 4.4, that is KitKat. And I compile my program using the Ice Cream Sandwich version. So definitely my program will run, right? Because I am working on a lower level version and I am running that program onto the higher level version. So definitely my program will run. But vice versa may not true. For example, I have a device with Android version 4.0, that is Ice Cream Sandwich. And I'm compiling my application using the Jelly Bean. So it may be possible that my application won't run. Because whenever I'm using that new API level, that is whenever I'm using the new thing, and I'm trying to running on old API level, definitely my application won't run. So this is about the application forward compatibility and backward compatibility. Understand which version Ice Cream Sandwich and Jelly Bean. And this can be found at main menu setting about tablet. Everyone, I think, know. Android is totally based on Java. But there are subtle difference between the Java and Android. So in Java, we have AWT and swing for a user interface. You know, right? But in Android, Android doesn't support the AWT and swing because we are talking about the touchscreen devices. It needs extensive touch functionality, right? So Android has its own library for user interface. In Java, we have a Java byte code and Java virtual machine. But in Android, we have a Dalvik byte code and Dalvik virtual machine. So I'll come to this point in the next slide. And what is Android Java? So what the Android people, what they did, they just removed the AWT and swing from the Java standard edition because we are talking about the touchscreen devices, right? So they removed the AWT and swing components from this Java standard edition. And then they added their own Android API and which forms the Android Java. So yeah, this slide shows the comparison between the Java program execution and Android program execution. So let's concentrate on the left-hand side diagram. So we have Java source code. Then Java compiler compiles this Java source code and we get the Java byte code. And then this executable code runs on the Java virtual machine. Clear? OK, let's look at the right-hand side diagram. What happens at the Android side? We have a Java source code. We have a Java compiler. We get the Java byte code. Now what happens? Dex compiler comes into the picture. Dex compiler again compiles this Java byte code into the Dalvik byte code. And this Dalvik byte code runs on the Dalvik virtual machine. Now the things that are marked in red, it's a new thing introduced by the Android people. So why they need Dex compiler, DVM, and all? So basically the Java byte code is very heavy code. If you try to decompile it, you will get everything right from your Java files, your resources, everything as it is. But we are talking about what the screen devices, that is smartphones, tablets. So what Dex compiler do? Dex compiler optimize this Java byte code into the several layers. And we get the optimized Dalvik byte code, which is a lightweight code. And that can run on Android devices. Because Android devices has limitations, like memory issues, power issues. So what Dex compiler does? Dex compiler optimizes this Java byte code into the several layers. And then we get the Dalvik byte code. So this is the reason why the Android is so much fast. So because of DVM. Understood? Now the differences between the JVM and DVM. So DVM is a register base, JVM is a stack base. So being an engineering student, you must know what is register base and stack base. So I am assuming this, OK. Then also I have one example for you. What is register base and stack base? So here I have a two figure. So upper one is the stack. Upper one is the stack based. And the lower one is the register base. So here I have my stack. And my stack pointer is on the top of the stack. And I wanted to add these two numbers. That is 20 and 7. So what happens here? I need four lines of instruction for adding just two numbers. That is pop 20, pop 7, add 27, store the result into the result, and push the result back to the stack. So I required four lines of instruction. But what about in register? In register base, I need only one line of instruction. That is add R3, R1, R2. R1 and R2 are my source. R3 is my destination. So you can see the figure that operand 5, operand 30, and I store the result 35 in R3. So I required only one line of instruction. Though my instruction length has been increased, but my number of instruction has been decreased. So in stack base, we require more instructions as compared to register base. So I'll come to the back slide. So this point is get cleared. Number of operation in DVM is fewer because it is register base. And for JVM, the number of instructions are more because it's stack base. Then file format. So we are talking about the Android. So it has a Dalvik bytecode that is .dx file. But in JVM, that is in Java. We have a Java bytecode and it has a .class file. You know that .class file is there after compiling the source code. So similarly, we have a .dx file in Android because we are using the Dalvik virtual machine. So it converts the Java bytecode into the Dalvik bytecode. So what Android features we have? So first one is application framework enabling reuse and replacement of component. What is it? See, in Android, the extensive reusability is possible. For example, suppose my application needs to open the camera, then click the picture, and that picture needs to save in gallery. So I don't need to write every line of code for accessing the camera, then clicking the picture, and then again saving back to my gallery. I don't need to write any single line of code because camera application will handle all that functionality. I just need to reuse that functionality and run it. So extensive reusability is possible in Android. So that was about enabling the reuse. Then Dalvik virtual machine, as I said, it is optimized for mobile devices. Then SQLite for structured data storage. So we will have a dedicated session on this. That is the permanent data storage. Then Android also supports the multimedia data like mp3 files, that is audio files, images, like GPG, PNG. And the remaining three are the hardware dependent. If your hardware manufacturer provides this functionality, then you can have this. Like GSM telephony, Bluetooth, 3G, Wi-Fi, camera, GPS, everything. What Akash Tablet has features. So Akash Tablet supports Jelly Bean, as well as some of Akash Tablet supports Jelly Bean, some of Akash Tablet supports Ice Cream Sandwich. Then optimized graphic support, Wi-Fi, camera, accelerometer, application fundamental. So what is APK file? APK is an application package file. It's a zip package format based on the JAR file format. So it's technically incorrect to relate the .exe file in Windows, like you have .exe file, which installs something on your machine. So similarly, in Android, we have a .apk file. But it's technically incorrect to relate .apk with .exe. So for just, for example, I said this. So it's a zip package format based on a JAR file format. So what APK holds? So it's a Java source file, means your Java code. Then resources. So what are the resources?  Similarly, with the assets. And then what is manifest file? Manifest file, I'll ask you again. What is it? Bus. Correct. Manifest file defines your application properties. For example, if I wanted, I said that suppose my application requires to open the camera. So I need to give the permission. Then only that kernel will understand, yeah, this application requires to open the camera. And he has given the permission into that manifest file. So one more example, yeah, suppose if I wanted to use the internet, then also I need to give the permission into the manifest file. So manifest file is a very important file in every Android project. So this is just for your reference. Yeah, I just wanted to tell you that these two links. Yeah, these two links. If you wanted to have Android video lectures, you can just go to these links and watch it. Okay, so you just take it down or laterally I will give you. Yeah, you can just note down, not a problem. Okay, now I'll call Mithali. She will tell you about how to build your first Android application and what different folders are present in Android project. Okay, thank you. These are the topics I am going to cover in my talk. That is what are the packages that are needed for developing an Android application. How to configure and how to create an Android project and what are the folder structure within a project. You need to have JDK 6 and above. You can get it from wrackle.com, the site. This is the site. You can download your package based on your bits of the operating system and what type of operating system you are using. Next, the Android SDK. You can get the Android SDK. This is the site. The operating system and the bit of the operating system you are using. You can download the SDK, the GIF file. After downloading, you will get GIF file, just unzip it. Unzip it, you will find a folder something like this. When you double click on it, you will find two folders. One will be the Eclipse folder and another one will be the SDK folder. When you double click on the Eclipse folder, you will find an Eclipse icon. When you double click on the Eclipse icon, its flash player will come up and the pop-up will come, will ask you to set the workspace. Just select the workspace you want to place your files and folders of your project. Otherwise, the Eclipse can by default set the path. Otherwise, you can browse according to your need and according to which folder you want to place your file. Just click on OK. So, here is the Eclipse editor where the actual development starts. Next, I will tell you how to configure the AVD. AD and AVD. Android SDK package by default provides AD that is an Android device simulator which is used to run an Android virtual device which emulates a real Android phone. AVD allows you to test your Android application on different Android versions and configuration without assist to the real world. In configuring AVD, you need to keep in mind the main factor that is speed optimization. You can do it in two ways by the use of Intel system image. That is, I will tell you practically. Go to window menu then Android SDK manager. It will take few seconds to start up. There is a package called Intel x86 atom system image. So, it is mentioned that here it is not installed. So, just check it. And Google APIs if you want to include any Google APIs in your project just check it and install the packages. It will take some time. If you are a window user, you need to install another package that is Intel x86 emulator oscillator. It is only for windows operating system. So, after some time it will get installed. The second way to optimize the spread is by the use of snapshot option or use host GPU option. To know this, we need to know how to create an Android virtual device. That is, you just go to window menu then Android virtual device manager. Then you just create a new AVD one. Suppose I write that is N10. Then the file size. Size of the SD card. Then here is the option to optimize the spread that is emulation option. There are two options. That is one is snapshot and another one is use host GPU. If I check the snapshot option, what it will happen that when you start the AVD for second or subsequent next time, it will resume the previous state. So, rendering becomes very fast. If I check the use host GPU option, it will use the graphics card of the host system and for which the rendering becomes very fast. At the time, I cannot check both of them. It will show a message. So, now I am starting the AVD. So, click on the launch. It will take few. Time to start. Yeah, it got start. Application. That is basically the hello world. So, go to the file menu. Just click on new option. Then others. Then click on Android application project. Click on next. You need to give an application name you want to create. I suppose give hello. Click on next. Then check the create costume launcher icon and create activity icon and check the create project in workspace. Then click on next. Then browse the image icon you want to keep as launcher icon. Suppose I browse it to hello world of PNG. Then you can set the background color you want. Click on OK. Next, just check the create activity. Then suppose I select the blank activity. Then click on next. The name of the activity will come. You can give your activity name any name you can want. Then click on finish. So, here is the project we have created. It is hello world of intense. So, coming to the next. That is what are the folder structure in a project, android project. That is src folder is there. GEN folder is there. Then assets folder is there. BIN folder is there. LIBS is there. RES folder is there. So, coming to the slide I will tell you. Src folder contains the Java source code file which a program need to write the application, the code he wants for the application. Then GEN file contains the auto generated file that is android Java file inside this folder which contains references for the resources that are being used in your project. RES file contains the resources that you want to use in your project like images, the XML configuration files. It contains also folders to keep resources based on the type. Like it differentiate the images file then differentiate the string values that you want to keep. The sub folder there is a folder, sub folder inside RES folder that is value folder. It is used to define string colors, dimension, style, static arrays of the integer string or integer. By convention each type is stored in different files. Like string files are stored in string dot XML file. There is another folder. V like values hyphen V11 or values hyphen V14. V11 means that it is using API version 11 and 14 means it is using API version 14. Then the animator folder contains animations, this folder contains animations in XML for the property animation API which allow you to animate arbitrary properties over time. Layout folder, sub folder contains layout that are being used in your applications. It contains various based on your screen size basically. That is if you choose default size it will be sub folder it will be layout. For small screen size you can choose there will be layout hyphen small. For large screen size there will be layout hyphen, layout hyphen large. Layout hyphen X large. Then for landscape orientation you can use extra large hyphen landscape land. Then for 7 inch tablet or for any tablet it is 600 DP. And for 10 inch that is 720 DP and for multi-pen it is 600 DP. There is another sub folder menu. This folder contains menu resources to be used in an application that is option menu, context menu, sub menu. Then there is another sub folder that is raw. It contains raw resources that are looked up by the resource IDs. Every object assigned with IDs that are stored in various resource files. For areas drawable there is another folder that is drawable. Drawable folder resources directories in an application that provides different bitmap drawable for medium, high and extra high density screens. For medium density you can choose there is MDPI. For high density it is HDPI and for extra high density it is XHDPI. And for no pre scaling it is no DPI. There is a folder that is a folder. All these are sub folders under RES file. And this is there is a folder LIBS. If you want to include any extra library file you want to place in your use in your project you can place that folder in this by default. If you browse it, browse through it and keep the XAR file in it. So it will be available in LIBS folder. Files and directories with no other capabilities. It is just an unstructured hierarchy of file allowing you to put anything you want there. And latter review as raw by stream. The main difference between RES and asset is that in asset you can have unstructured data stored. It is not viewed or accessible by android build system directly. But RES folder contains structured data which is directly accessible by android build system. In bin directory you will be having your apk files. Then android manifest.xml. This is a very important file in every application. You need to have this android manifest.xml file in the root directory. It contains essential information about the application to the android system. It contains information the system needs before running an application. It is just like a control file which describes the application permissions and the component about the components and nature of the components as well. It determines also which process will host the application component. It also describes the permission that other component needs in order to interact with other components of an android or within a component. It is like an intercommunication between component. So the permission is set over here. It declares the minimum label of android api that application requires. That's all. Thank you. Let's talk about android application components. So components of android what comes to your mind? A 5 megapixel camera, 8 megapixel camera, V5, a 5 inch display. Components. Come on, we all use smartphones, right? Everyone has an android phone. So these things come to our mind, right? That the android components can be everything basically. You guys are familiar with Hindi or South people are there. It's alright, I'm from South. It's pretty fine. Yeah, so basically from a developer's point of view. We are thinking, I'm an android developer. From a developer point of view, android application components means the small components and basically building blocks which we use to construct each and every application in android. So if we just name them, there are major four categories of them. One of us already told you activity services and stuff, so you might be familiar with these. So yeah, activities, services, broadcast receivers and content providers. These are like four major types of components in android. And there are a few more also, but we won't be like jumping into stuff. As I said, this will be just a brief about things. So yeah, these are like big names, right? Like content providers, broadcast receivers, oh my God, what are these?  We all use applications in your touch screen devices these days. So let's jump into the first one and you'll be knowing what these are basically. So the first thing is activity and this is like the most important component in android. So activity is simply a user interface. So in any application, each and every UI that you see, every screen that you interact with is an activity. So let's take some examples like if I'm playing a game and I'm like interacting with the screen, it's an activity. I'm using my browser or viewing a map, using a chat app. All this is activity. So since I said every screen is an activity, you won't argue if I say that each and every application can have multiple activities. So let's imagine that we are creating an application. Like she just created a hello world of intern 2014. Okay, some application. So in that application, I want to create a UI basically, my first screen, let's say. So I want to create an activity. So the first thing I need to do is like jump into my manifest file. By the way, what is manifest file? Exactly, I can't hear what you're saying, but yeah, okay. You guys remember something at least. So basically in manifest file, we need to like mention what all things are there. Do we have activity services, permissions and everything. So since here we are interested in like creating an activity. So let's, I guess you can see the like these tags. So this is my simple XML file together. So there is an application tag over here, which is specific to my so-called app. So inside that I'll just go ahead and add a new tag named activity. That means I'm adding a new activity and there's a attribute name. So basically I'm specifying like I'm just giving some name for my activity. Let's call it example activity. So now my manifest knows that this app contains one activity named example activity. So once this is done, what I can do is I can go ahead and actually write an activity. So in my Java file, like she told you that there's a SRC folder. You have a Java file and stuff. So in my Java file, I'll create a class having the same name, which I had mentioned in my manifest. And now we'll extend this as activity. So basically there's a super class in Android named activity. So this tells Android, he boss, this example activity is a UI. It's an activity. It will have like click listeners and stuff onto it. So since we are like extending a super class, it's obvious that we can like override many of its... You guys are familiar with Java, right? So we need to override them. So most of them are optional basically, but few of them are important. Like you can see on create method over here. There is like on resume, on pause, on start destroy and lots of stuff. So basically these methods, which are like overrided like from the, what do you say, the activity super class can be like summarized as life cycle method. So each activity basically from its birth to its death goes through a life cycle. So basically states, okay? When it gets started, it is running, it is paused. You guys must be familiar with these things already. We basically have this activity life cycle. So basically it's basically, it's just showing how an app starts and how it completes its journey to its end basically. It feels like a movie. But yeah, let's take an example. Suppose I have a movie app. I like watching movies. So I start a movie. So basically I am seeing a movie. There's a interface, right? So it's an activity. So I'm watching my movie. So as in when I'll open it when the activity is launched, the on create, it is being created, right? So there is a method called on create. So inside that I'll write each and every initialization code and stuff like that, which I need to do at the startup basically. Then we have on start and stuff like that. Then imagine my app is running smoothly. I am watching a movie. I am enjoying it. And there is a really nice investing scene going on. I mean fighting scene obviously. But and that moment my friend just called me. For example. So what will happen? My phone will ring. Come on. Call is coming to me. Pause. Okay. By the way, it's right. So my movie will pause obviously. And why is it happening? Because there's a more important activity. Like it is coming in between. And it is like dude just get away. And there's a screen.  And there's an image of your friend. Okay. So what happens to our movie activity? It is getting paused or in the background. So usually what happens if I'm playing a game and abruptly, it stops. So it might happen that I'm on the last level. And if I start again, it will start. So in that case, obviously I'll go and kill my friend. And I'll end up in a jail. Right. So thanks to on pause method. We can write specific code in that. So let's say there is another activity coming in between. While I'm playing a game. Then I can save the levels, save the score. So I'll do all these things in the on pause method. And then I'll tell the, the call activity, basically. Okay. And when the call is done, we'll move out. And my game will resume or the movie will resume, basically. To resume that, obviously we have on resume method also. So these are like basically simple stuff. If you look at it, you will understand it. Pure English. And obviously if my game ends or I'm bored or anything, I'll stop my apps on stop method on destroy method. And finally the activity shuts down. So one interesting thing happening here is the two activities, basically they are interacting with each other. So these can be activities from a single application or activities from different applications. Basically they are interacting with each other. This calling activity is coming in between. Emergency. It comes in and it tells, I'm leaving, you can come back in. So how is this interaction going on in Android? So an interesting thing comes into the picture called intents. Now intents are basically a message passing mechanism kind of stuff in Android. Using which an activity can request a particular action from another activity. So I'll show you a simple code snippet of how easily you can like interact. So imagine we are in the first activity which we just created, the example activity. So I'll create an object, my intent of type intent is equal to new intent. And there are two parameters. The first one is the context, so this. And the second is the name of the activity to which we are like aiming, all right. Which we want to start or we want to request anything. So let's say a second activity.class, because it's a class. So finally I'll write start activity, my intent. So this will just go on and pause my app and start the other activity. Similarly, to start a service, you'll write start service and stuff. So it says other deep me jannika zarath neya phila. So I'll wind up here for activity. So moving on to the services. Now, unlike activity, services are a bit different. So services are basically things like they say long running operations which we would like to run them in the background. We don't need a UI, we don't need to like interact with them directly. So we use services at places like that. Like simple examples would be like you're downloading some stuff from your internet. You're installing some game from the Play Store. You click install, you don't need to worry that my Play Store is open or not. You can close it, you can lock your phone, you can throw it away. You'll be assured that your app will be installed. Because there's a service running which is taking care of all these things. So it does not have a user interface. And yes, there are a few more examples here. Listening music obviously. You're chatting with your friends and you're listening music. The music is behind you, you can't see it but you can hear it. So services obviously. And similar to activities in Android. In the manifest if I'm adding a service, I'll put a tag for the service with some name. Let's say hello service. And I'll create a class with the same name hello service. But this time I'll be having, I'll be extending service rather than activity. Because we don't need a UI, we don't need any kind of interaction. So I want this to run in the background. Third one is broadcast receivers. Now these are like pretty interesting stuff. Like these are receivers for like broadcast announcements being made in Android. This is like huge statement. Break it down. So in Android there are specific events which happens. Like alert there's a phone call coming. Alert there's a SMS like received. Your battery is running low. So there might be some activities or applications who must be interested in certain types of like these announcements. Okay. For example, let's say I have a camera application. So it's clicking a picture. Pick Lelia. There might be few applications like gallery, Instagram, let's say Facebook. These might be interested in like getting the image which is captured and like doing something. Like editing. You have to share it on your wall. Something like that. And there might be other applications like the music app or the weather app. They have like nothing to do with the image being captured. So only the applications which are interested in like receiving certain types of what do you say announcements. They register themselves to receive those announcements. And obviously these components can help you to get notified whenever such events occur. Like there's a battery low. So there is a pop up. What are you doing? So stuff like that. And the fourth one is content providers. Now these are interesting because this is the only way using which two applications in Android can share data. There is no shared file. There is no shared memory thing in this. So simple example to take with is phone contacts. So we have a phone contact application in our phone. We save all our friends name and details in it. But you would like you would have noticed that applications like WhatsApp, Viber, they fetch number from the contact. You don't need to like go into WhatsApp and like feed in the numbers again, right? So this is because the phone contact application, it provides its content to the interested applications. So other apps like Viber and stuff, they use the provider which is like which is made by the contact app. They register themselves that by Mirko contacts to you. So they register themselves and they pull out the data from other apps. So for this we use content providers. Now there are few more things like few more types of components like app widgets and stuff. They are like, we won't be like talking about them right now. Even the four we talked about now like activities, services, content providers and broadcast receivers. It is not mandatory that like every app of yours should have all of these. Like my app can have only activities. It can have like five activities, two services and no content providers. It's okay. So basically these are like blocks. We can use them as in how you require and you can build your app. So just to wind up things. Let's take an example and I want you guys to like speak up and tell me. So let's talk about WhatsApp. Everyone know WhatsApp? No? I can't hear you. Is there anyone who does not have an idea what WhatsApp is? It's okay. No one? Okay, nice. I'm blessed. So in WhatsApp, just because we all are WhatsApp users. Is there an activity? Which one? One by one. Anyone from this side? May I see Vila? Clap for me also. Okay. So yeah, so we have a lot of activities in it. So are there any like services running? This side now. I feel like sitting in a concert right? Okay, this side. Okay, anything else? Downloading music and videos. So anyone has a different opinion in what he said. He said notifications. So there's a service for that. Can't hear you. Server? Okay. Sorry. So basically what I am asking is, what she said was absolutely right. We are downloading a video. Okay. I'll click download. I don't need to be like staring at the chat screen.  So basically what I'll do is I'll just stop my app. I mean, press my home key. I'll do my useful work apart from WhatsApp. And I'll come back and watch the music or video later on. So that's service. Now what you said, I don't remember your name. You just met me here. What he said was notifications. So exactly. So that was I wanted to add. So basically those are events. There is like you're receiving an SMS or you're receiving a message in WhatsApp. So there is some kind of events being triggered. So broadcast receivers come into picture at that point. So messaging basically. And content providers? Contacts obviously. So yeah, I guess this session was interesting. I hope so. And yeah, I'll announce a tea break.


for the people. I'm your host, Manara Mordecai. The show is dedicated to unveiling pressing issues that are facing Hawai'i today, attempting to identify policies that will provide effective solutions. Today on the show, we are discussing the growing aging population in Hawai'i and its impact on the nursing profession. My guests are Ina Chang, who has practiced as a nurse in Honolulu for over a decade, and Sam Fulmer, a nursing student at UH Honola. Welcome, Sam and Ina. Let's begin with you, Ina.  Could you tell us about your work and what type of care do you provide right now? Currently, I am a hospice nurse, so I provide nursing care to most of my patients who are at home, allowing them the comfort to be at home and treating them to be comfortable at home pretty much. Previously, I was working in long-term care, skilled nursing, slightly different, but still taking care of our kupuna and their aging needs and just their health care, though. Yeah, so that was really one. Thank you. So tell me, how does working with kupuna and specifically geriatric care, how does it differ for nurses from that? Does it require special training? We don't really have like a special, like say like for labor and delivery or PDA. If you don't really have, I would say in general, it is very different than what nurses would want, would think of doing like stay in a hospital or an ER. We have to think about a lot of issues that are surrounding the patient. So beginning with their health, of course, they have a lot of comorbidities, meaning they have a lot of other illnesses that surround them. It's not only one issue. Some people go to the ER for one issue, like they hurt their head and they need staples.  This one you might have like people with diabetes and then like COPD or some heart failure all together.  And also they could have psychosocial issues. A lot of times they have Alzheimer's dementia. And there's another interesting aspect that I don't feel like they really tell you in nursing school is the family, their support systems. So they also have the support systems that you have to help support and guide because in the end, they're going to be the ones to take care of them. And then it all is kind of that pretty much all-encompassing. And it's a lot just talking about it in action. It's even more. But it's a really rewarding, it's a very rewarding scope of nursing, I think. And it really teaches, it really teaches a caregiver how to really think of health and healthcare in a different perspective, in my opinion, as a nurse. I think every new nurse should be a geriatric nurse at least once, even if they don't really want to be one. You'll probably end up being one anyway. That actually is a good transition to my next question is, do you think there are enough nurses in Hawaii who are trained to provide geriatric care or who are working in geriatric care? You know, so again, like I left nursing school for a while. When I first started nursing school, I didn't know anyone. I really wanted to be a geriatric nurse in my school. And there was a class of, I think, about 80. All of them just were set to go somewhere. None of them were geriatric. So no, I don't think there's enough emphasis on it, the need and the benefits and also the training. I think it should be highlighted more, not only in Hawaii, but all over probably. But I feel like we don't have enough nurses in general. I feel like that are locally working, I think. I think a lot of our nurses are transported here for many reasons. But I think that we have enough nurses who work in the geriatric that just couldn't maybe find their dream job, whatnot. And then, you know, they stay for a while until they, it's basically, geriatric nursing is mostly a stepping stone for a lot of nurses. So would you say the salaries and the benefits for geriatric care for nurses is comparable to other fields? So I have always been a geriatric nurse. So as far as benefits, I'm pretty sure it's really just based on what company you go with. As far as salary, I've always known that we get paid significantly less than the main nurses. And that significance could be like $20 less an hour, which is very significant. And I'm not talking about just my profession. I'm talking about like in, like, every scope of nursing, like 10 to like 20. I can, I noticed that, like, when I was curious to look up stats before, and I was like, think about like half a year when I was like, wow, we're still there. And actually, I think, because this is me, but he had been voted to be one of the worst states to work as a nurse before. Like what I saw, it was hardest, not worse, but hard to work. Because it's just a lot less paid than I mean for a nurse if you're not attached. We see a lot of nurses leaving for the mainland because of that. I do have a lot of nurses in my class that have less. A lot of them, but they're not necessarily nursing reasons. They're more likely like, like, like kind of financial reasons, which I guess kind of ties with their nursing because that's their career. But there's just more opportunities out there in some ways. And they, again, they strive for different things.  They have especially want to pursue, they need to go in the mainland. So. So how do the facilities are dealing with the shortage of nurses specifically in geriatric care? Are they recruiting from other places? Or what do you see happening? If anything, or are you just overworked? I think all nurses are overworked in general, not only for geriatrics, just an opinion of mine. But from past, I know that we have contacted agency nurses a lot. We either, but we don't always like to contact agency nurses because I think it's an uncertainly amount of money that is just hurt the company a lot to try to hire a nurse from outside the company come in. They would rather have their own calls, pick it up, or yeah, like, someone wants to do an extra shift or, you know, more money because it's going to be over time, then they'll probably do that. Or where it comes that is you just kind of end up finding people covering half shifts to half shifts or, you know, just maybe just kind of like that just pulled together somehow, but it's never something that's likely planned in my dream.  What does that look like? Is it too many hours, too many patients? Tell me, describe it day to day. How do you feel like you could have more support or resources to help you do your job well? I think the nature of geriatric nursing is that it is not very predictable and acute things can emerge and acute instances kind of emerge. Therefore, it makes it hard to plan out your day. A typical nurse in geriatrics will have about 16 to 18 patients. So that's skilled and long-term mix. So if nothing happens, that's great. If everything happens, then, you know, then you get really burnt out. You have to stay longer in a facility. It just means that you would just spend more time at the end of your shift following up on the care.  For me as a hospice nurse, that just means I would spend a lot of time, you know, adjunctly like documenting and helping with care. I have gone over time at the patient's house before very long just as a situation. And it just means that you just have to have a longer day. You are just very compounded with a lot of documentation. No one really mentioned that in nursing school for me. Maybe if they did, it would have changed my life a little bit. But good amount of your day spent doing paper charting and paperwork. Yeah. And I believe that's because that's how we get reimbursed in this system is we have to be very careful and we have to be very mindful of how we document. And we still have to do the patient care, which a lot of times I feel the patient care takes, you know, it should take forth. But when you have the pressure of your own life to, I haven't even started talking about people, nurses having a life, but we do. And then having to document a day of work and happening and having to balance just being care of your patient, it becomes a lot. It becomes, you know, somehow it becomes a marathon every day. Yeah. Well, thank you for that. Sam, let's transition to you. I know you've done some work with the elderly as well. Tell us about your experience caring for kupuna in Hawaii. Yeah. So before I started my nursing program, I was working as a certified nursing assistant in a skilled nursing facility. So that's not, it's not an acute hospital, but like a subacute is what they would call that. So I would take care around like a patient's a day. A majority of them are geriatric. And I would be assisting nurses like Ina helping her with her care. And she's, the nurses are basically like seeing either like our boss. And so we're kind of their extension for the patient. So we're helping them with their, yeah, what we call like active daily living skills, bathing, getting ready for therapy, helping them throughout their day, whatever those needs may be. So yeah, it's a really hands-on job. It's rewarding. It's very difficult. It's not easy work, very physically demanding job. But it's immensely rewarding. And I think that's the draw to nursing is that you get such an award from the work that you're doing, such meaning instantly. So yeah, it's definitely I think one of my goals to pursue, advance myself in a nursing degree too. So when you were doing that kind of work, did you see, did you find that there was a short or the nurses were overworked or they're the shortage of nurses? What was your experience looking at as an assistant? I think for me, it depends on kind of how you know, saying different days, you might have where we talk about like acuity, where they might have some, something might progress and might need a little bit more attention. And so you can't go and reach another patient that might need your demands, you know, you have two patients asking for your help simultaneously at the same time. And so that can kind of get difficult to manage. Safety wise, you know, in nursing, we're always about quality, effective care, safety, like those are really horrible hallmark principles that we try to guide whatever action that we're doing. I think, I think this narrative about nursing shortages, I think it's kind of, it's kind of hard because I know a lot of when I'm looking at the job market right now as a prospective nursing graduate, I'll be graduating this August and I get a sit for my end collect this fall. A lot of the jobs that are being offered are, you need a couple years of experience under your belt before you can even apply. So there's kind of this gap between once I got my degree, now where can I get training on hand, like at the hospital in the clinic setting to make myself more competent. So I think that's where there's some issues in, I guess, in that transition from nursing education to being a nurse. Okay. So it has been, the transition hasn't been streamlined at least. So this actually, what I'm hearing is that the training or the type of care that you're going to provide to geriatric patients, it does require some specialization. As Inna mentioned, there are multiple issues that can come up. Inna said in her class, there wasn't a lot of specialized training. So this was over 10 years ago.  Do you see that there's increased focus on providing specialized training in geriatric care in the nursing program? I would say yes. We got to participate in this really cool program this spring semester, where I was called the Geriatric Interprofessional Panel. And we actually got a case study and we met with students from the medical school, pharmacy students, students in dietetics. We all got together and we got to collaborate together because a lot of nursing care is in interprofessionals. So you're working with PT and OT, physical therapy, occupational therapists, dietitians, medical doctors, nurse practitioners, physician assistants, all of these different professionals that have certain skill sets. And then we have to like synthesize together and create effective care plans for Kapuna. And then we kind of had that opportunity to work it out as students. And that was great because I kind of got to see different expertise like listening to a social worker talk about at-home care programs, coordinating those things that me as a nurse, I don't have a lot of training in that, but that's her expertise. So I think overall the dealing with our aging population is that we have to be coming together and then strategizing together because we all have different points of view and expertise to deliver like effective care to them. Are you learning about the increase in the growing aging population in Hawaii as well and what type of demands there will be coming forward in the next two decades or so? Not. I didn't learn forecasting for that population yet. We talk about it in class, but it's not specific per se. It's more because you have to like learn the theory of nursing and then we kind of discuss aspects of different disease processes and how those will present in different populations. So we always are talking about like, okay, what is the geriatric patient different versus a pediatric patient with heart disease? Those are two different patients, right? Or then you have a patient with hypertension and is pregnant as well. So how do you deal with that patient? Each one of those are going to be dealing with something different, even though the disease may be the same. We also understand to most of my courses that I've been taking, I've been fortunate that a lot of our professors always highlight geriatric population when you're dealing with them. Here's some unique features that you have to kind of take into consideration and then kind of deal with those dignity aspects like trying to empower them to make correct choices. Kind of those challenges of geriatric populations when they get a hip replacement or something and then it starts limiting their mobility. Psychologically, how tough is that?  And then how do you be compassionate as nurse providers? And I think when nurses are stressed and they're not feeling like they're being supported by their employers or the institutions that they are working for, we can see that correlates with like not as effective of care that is being provided. And so then it's kind of talking about, okay, how can we make this, how do we improve this? You know, can we do it at the state level? Can we do it at, you know, or can we create incentives within the state for employers to employ more nurses or to allow them to do it as like a tax benefit or something? I mean, we have to start coming up with more creative ways instead of just letting it build up because it is going to become more and more of an issue. You know, like they talk about the nursing age, I think right now is 49. A few years ago, that average age was 54. So it is going down for a nurse, but that's a high age. So in the next 20 years, a large percentage of the nursing staff is going to retire. It'll be interesting what next year, because of COVID, how many nurses were still working, got maxed out from that COVID dealing with the pandemic, you know, that stress and then being like, okay, I'm done. I'm gonna, I can retire now. So it will be an interesting adjustment, I think in this upcoming year is what we'll determine what where our outlook will be going in the nursing field. So do you feel like one, there's definitely a need to maintain the type of data and kind of evidence to help us plan ahead, right? Like seeing how many nurses are retiring in any given year and how do we feel that you feel like in the nursing profession, this is a question for both of you that the data that we're keeping to make sure that we are not finding ourselves in a critical shortage, is it sufficient? Do you feel like the state is up to date in maintaining good numbers, good statistics and what the nursing profession looks like in Hawaii? Either one. Yeah. I mean, I've been using this a lot this whole year. It's like, we just been through a pandemic. So I really feel like, no, not because of, you know, that we don't care, but it's just we, we have gone through a lot this year. And I think it's a good and it's not to be over optimistic, but it's it caused attention to a lot of things that needed to be called upon. So my hope is, as Sam said, like in the future, we do, like from here on, then we do think of that. We do think of considering more of the statistics of what we need for a component, because I think there was, I believe, at least here, I feel that they do realize our geriatrics are the ones that would hit the hardest here. And the care that was needed to coordinate, definitely needed some fine tuning, I think, probably. So I think it's good to be mindful, but I wouldn't, I don't think we have that much of a focus on statistics right now. I think everything is very COVID geared, very prevention geared, very population kind of a pandemic viewed geared. So in essence, it could, I think it just take the right person to like introduce it. And then like, oh, yeah, that's a great idea. We'll do that too. So I think I'm hopeful about that. So yeah. Sam, do you have any comments? Yeah, I think for the like specifically, we're talking about the state of Hawaii in different states and their departments of health, I think overall, they do have a pulse on it. You know, I think a lot of the time when we think about shortcomings or shortfalls within the health care system, we kind of pinpoint it onto people or maybe even a profession. You know, at the time, it's a function of the system itself. So when errors or shortfallings happens, it's the system that is at fault. So meaning structurally how we built it up to allow certain events to happen or to not happen. So structurally, what is unique to Hawaii? We have a really high cost of living, you know, land space is super limited. Do we have enough housing facilities for a kapuna to go into? Do we have enough long term care facilities for them to go into? Do people have to retire and go to the mainland?  You know, native wines are being pushed out of their homelands here. They're not able to survive in this very expensive state and it's going to become even more expensive. It's not going down. So can the state come together with other health care institutions, major hospitals and health care teams work together to try to resolve that? You know, those are some of the more interesting aspects of care that we need to consider, you know, and then it's going to be start pushing for the cheaper, you know, right now it's kind of like the race to the bottom, where's the cheapest labor is going to be, you know, the nursing profession makes up 90% of health care, you know, where the foundation of health care at the end of the day, the nursing profession is that so how are we empowering our local community and nursing profession to meet the need of our capuna? Great question. I'm going to bounce that right back to you. You have the experience, you are a student, you experience both the educational aspect of it and the profession itself. Let's say you are the decision makers table, what policies would you put into place or would you recommend to encourage more people to join the nursing profession and to enable them to be successful on their job? So how do you create that culture? Let's start with you, Sam. Okay, I have a few ideas. Okay, so in 2019, no, I looked this up. So in 2019, there was 624 nursing degrees awarded in the state of Hawaii in one year. That's a huge population. There's not 624 job openings in the last year. I don't think so. It could be wrong. What? Right? So can we incentivize, like, what if they didn't get tax or tax exemption program for training new grad nurses at your facility, you know, give them that 12-month program hands-on, kind of like your preceptorship you get in your last year of your nursing program, they continued on with that to get you really get you on the ground running and then to incentivize businesses and healthcare institutions to employ them to become part of their staff, you know, and if it's not there then somewhere else or it can be like loan forgiveness programs that the state can start implementing, you know, there are available at the federal level but we are we're considered rural medicine. We can tap into resources here that bridges those gaps and then our care institutions like, you know, UH Manoa, you have an entire faculty staff that are trained professionals in the nursing teaching discipline, right? How can they be employed by the long-term care facilities that need nursing? They need nurse staff. So how can they join together and build a program? I think for me that's what I would love to see is them teaming up together, creating these programs for the new grads that are coming out. We're local individuals or graduating in nursing degrees and we don't know the exact next step. There's only so many new grad programs available to us right now and I would be to expand that in every type of nursing career. Great. This is exactly why I have the show is so we can hear about policy recommendations from people who are on the ground. So, Ana and I, you and I have had conversations about empowering families to care for their kupuna. Tell me more about that. I want to hear your ideas of how we can do that and being innovative in that kind of care. Yeah, so I really like FAMS. I agree with that 100%. By the way, I also feel that there is need of more people to be more programs to involve family caregivers to be a part of and not just when things happen. Just throughout, just I wish like, you know, their family hospitals or, you know, public health would just be like, hold events like, hey, you know, like, this is how you take a blood pressure, you know, like, and this is when you not that you need to know everything, but just know enough to feel confident to know when it is to contact a healthcare profession and when it is to not run to the ER or, you know, just and they don't feel supported and in turn, their patients, which is their loved ones, my patients will feel that as well. I also feel that they because I'm a mother, think they need to give just a little bit support to family nurses who have families because I feel like that's where nurses feel the burnout when, you know, it's rewarding and we love it. We wouldn't be doing it. We wouldn't be working if we didn't. But the truth is, we also have, you know, a family and I don't see that. I really would like to see companies come on. That's not only a nursing profession thing. I know it's an all over America kind of needs to think about, you know, kind of like mother kind of maternity leave kind of a thing or if they just need, I think that's a good incentive to have for keeping nurses, you know, engage education nurses. I've known a lot of nurses who are seniors, which are my helpers, as Sam said, rise up because they have the support and thought enough encouraging nurses around them to become a nurse themselves. I source that nurses become nurse practitioners. I've trained a lot of nurses become nurse practitioners right now. So it's very, it's just a bit, it can be very thriving, but it really needs to grow and support. So I love it. Thank you so much for both of your ideas. This has been a great conversation. I'm so happy we got to do this. Thank you. I hope somebody takes to heart all the suggestions that you've made because you are on the ground doing this important work. Thank you. And Aloha, take care. Thank you, Benara. Thank you, Sam. Thank you. Thank you.