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Students host health care forum
Thursday, 12 November 2009
Director of Community Outreach Alice Salthouse (l) and Community Care Clinic Executive Director Rebecca Moore (r) discuss leading causes of death in Watauga County and the United States Tuesday. Photo by Holt Menzies
by EDWARD SZTUKOWSKI
News Editor
The Appalachian State University Student Association of Social Work hosted a Health Care Forum Tuesday, focusing mostly on health care as it pertains to the Boone community.
Alice Salthouse, director of Community Outreach at Watauga Medical Center, spoke about how the poverty rate and obesity are the two main issues that factor greatly into health care in Watauga County.
Salthouse said though the unemployment rate in Watauga County was less than the North Carolina average, the poverty level is higher due to a lower median income than the state average.
“We have jobs that
don’t pay very much, and we have jobs that don’t have benefits,”
Salthouse said. “Our people are proud, they work, but they still don’t
have enough money to live.”
Salthouse said rising health care costs are linked to rising obesity in the United States.
In 1985,
less than 10 percent of North Carolinians were 30 pounds overweight,
according to the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. In 2006,
25 to 29 percent of North Carolinians were 30 pounds overweight.
Salthouse
said three things contribute to the leading causes of preventative
deaths in North Carolina: physical inactivity, poor nutrition and
tobacco use.
“We have
a responsibility as individuals to take care of our health but we also
have a responsibility as a community to make our communities be places
where you can have a healthy lifestyle,” Salthouse said.
Appalachian
District Health Director Danny Staley said people need to take greater
care of themselves to prevent health issues and avoid overloading the
system.
“We
should be thinking of it as health care instead of sick care,” Staley
said. “A lot of times we are providing sick care one patient at a time.
We have to have a paradigm shift to where we focus on obesity…and try
to focus on getting the right medical services at an early enough state
that you can prevent the chronic issues.”
Staley
said social issues factor greatly into health. Giving children more
opportunity for physical activity, giving them healthy foods and
encouraging walking could solve health issues before they happen.
Speakers also chimed in on health care reform, but were unsure as to the best solution of reform.
“There’s
been so much proposed, but in the end it needs to be something the most
vulnerable populations can benefit from,” Director of Watauga County
Department of Social Services Jim Atkinson said.
Director
of the Watauga Medical Center Emergency Department Cindy Hinshaw said
reform will start with a change in the way people think about health
care.
“We as a
society are going to have to change our way of thinking,” Hinshaw said.
“There is not a cure all for every disease out there. It’s the
responsibility of all of us who consume health care resources to try
and do what is right for us.”
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