A Model For Building Healthy Communities

There's a great read at Kaiser Health News today on how two counties in rural Kentucky are delivering health services in the "worst health care region in America" and that despite the health care reform debate, some area experts don't anticipate much changing as a result of these current proposals.  Instead citizen involvement and community initiatives are driving a bottom-up approach to building healthy communities.

A few snips:

“We’re out here dying and we’re showing up in the emergency room when we’re half dead, instead of saying, you know what, I live in this community. I want sidewalks,” she says. “I want ambulance services. I want grocery stores convenient, (so) that all of my neighbors can get there. I’d like to see some form of public transportation,” much needed by people without cars in steep mountain country.

[...]

“Currently the issues are framed as insurance or not insurance,” he says. “Having insurance gives you financial access to a system, assuming there is a system. It gives you nothing more than that. And getting into the system, if there is one, doesn’t tell you anything about the quality of care, the availability of services, the way the patients and families are treated.”

[...]

“As with so many issues,” Fox says, “we have this myopic kind of vision of what health is, or what housing is, or what drug abuse is: well, hey, they’re all utilized by the human body, and unless you deal with the whole issue, there’s going to be tons of fallout. That’s why it’s important that you get people in decent housing that they can have a refrigerator, they can have potable water, they can have decent sanitation.”

As Dr. Forest Callico, former director of the Appalachian Regional Hospitals and a rural health advisor to both the Clinton and second Bush administrations, summed it up in the article, "It’s not all about the money.  We have to transform the way we take care of people."

Comments

[mountain homes nc]

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-manny