West Virginians from nine denominations will make a push next month to sign up hundreds of people in their campaign to improve people’s health.
The religious groups are working with Try This West Virginia, a statewide healthy community program. The WV Healthy Bodies Healthy Spirits network will launch the month of activity on Tuesday in the secretary of state’s conference room.
At the group’s request, Gov. Earl Ray Tomblin declared March “Healthy Bodies Healthy Spirits Month.”
Catholic Charities West Virginia Director Mark Sliter said in a news release from the campaign that churches can work together to help change unhealthy habits and behaviors.
The Rev. Lynn Keener, a Nazarene pastor from Morgantown, said many problems in today’s world can’t be changed, but something can be done about the health of West Virginians.
The Executive Council for the West Virginia Association of Local Health Departments met Wednesday to discuss the effects of the proposed $4 million in funding cuts to local public health services for fiscal year 2017 as outlined in Governor Tomblin’s budget proposal to the legislature last week.
Council members fear this 25 percent reduction in funding will not only have huge consequences for daily operations, but also much more serious ones for the citizen who rely on public health services.
Michael Kilkenny, physician director at the Cabell-Huntington Health Department, said part of the responsibilities of local health departments is to monitor the general population for threats to public health.
“The proposed cuts would really cripple our surveillance efforts,” Kilkenny said. “We are mandated to watch for specific diseases and some of these diseases are a nuisance but some of these diseases are deadly. If we stop watching for those diseases, those diseases will spread, people will get sick and some of those people will die.”
Kilkenny believes these cut will end up costing the state money in the long run.
“I think everyone is well-aware that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure,” Kilkenny said. “If we stop watching, if we delay our response to any disease outbreak, we’re going to pay the price on the other side by treating more people.”
Wednesday’s meeting brought health administrators and practitioners from around the region to discuss a contingency plan if the cuts are sustained.
Many voiced concerns that there is a misconception about what public health services do. These services are not individual-based services, but services designed to protect and promote the health of a community as a whole, such as managing an infectious disease outbreak, which Monongalia County’s Executive Health Director, Lee Smith, said are on the rise in West Virginia.
“Sexually transmitted infections are certainly on the up-tick in West Virginia, and some are related and co-infected with HIV,” Smith said. “Ebola, MERS, Dengue, Chicken Gunya, and now Zika are all part of our vocabulary. All of these are diseases that we have to deal with and you don’t get these services anywhere else. They are not at the hospital. They’re going to treat the active patient, but no one is going to surveillance, no one is going to do the monitoring other than public health.”
While many county administrators are pleading with Governor Tomblin to prevent the cuts, ultimately it is state lawmakers that will decide whether to follow through with his proposal.
One member of the Legislature, Republican Senator Chris Walters, is proposing a bill that will help the state pay for local health department services. His proposal calls for a reduction in the number of county health department administrators to save the state money and help continue to pay for the much needed services.
“The bill is a regionalization bill,” Walters said. “It does not regionalize the health departments, per se, it leaves the departments in their localities. It regionalizes the administration. Currently we have 49 administers for health departments across the state. I feel that if we did a regionalization of the administrators, we could start pulling these resources together have these departments start billing insurance. Currently, they’re just living off line-item tax-payer dollars and not actually billing the insurance companies, where they’d be able to bring in money as well.”
This bill also has another provision that create needle exchanges at rural health departments across the state.
Walters says he expects the bill to be introduced to the Senate tomorrow.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.
Marshall and West Virginia universities have partnered to support health-related research projects through a new grant program. Each university has pledged $250,000 a year for three years, which will eventually total $1.5 million.
The grant program, which was announced in August, is designed to support research to “better serve West Virginians,” and to attract future funding from outside sources, according to a Wednesday press release.
Nine projects have been selected from the two schools to receive funds. Research topics include early memory loss, long-term effects of e-cigarette vapor, and lung cancer drug resistance. Each of the projects boasts faculty from both universities. The largest amount any one project received from the program was $50,000.
The grant recipients were notified in late December; projects will begin as early as next month.
Appalachia Health News is a project of West Virginia Public Broadcasting, with support from the Benedum Foundation.
In 2013, the West Virginia Center for Children’s Justice launched a program called Handle With Care. The collaborative program is meant to help children who’ve experienced abuse, neglect or other types of trauma succeed in school. The program that started on the West Side of Charleston is now expanding across the state and in other communities across the nation.
Mary C. Snow Elementary School is located in a neighborhood where it can be stressful to be a child. The West Side of Charleston has gained a bad reputation for drug crimes and violence, and in 2014 the city of Charleston as a whole saw an increase in both criminal activity and violent crimes.
Credit courtesy of West Virginia Center for Children’s Justice
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W.Va. police officer visits a classroom at Mary C. Snow Elementary
While these crimes are usually committed by adults, that doesn’t mean children aren’t affected by them. And that’s where the Handle With Care Program comes into play. If a child is exposed to crime, violence or abuse, police notify the principal and school counselor by the start of the next school day.
Credit courtesy of West Virginia Center for Children’s Justice
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Janet Allio, school nurse at Mary C. Snow Elementary School
“When I first heard about the Handle with Care Program, I thought, that’s the program for us because 75% of our children are in some form on traumatised environment on a day to day situation,” said Janet Allio, the school nurse at Mary C. Snow Elementary School
It’s not always clear when something traumatic has occurred in a student’s life. The first step in the Handle with Care program is when police officers send schools a form after they respond to traumatic events with children present.
The second step is when the school’s staff figure out out what resources a child may need if they have experienced a traumatic event. Sometimes, it’s talking with the school counselor- or going to the health center for extra sleep, or spending time in the library with the school’s therapy dog, Paca.
Credit Roxy Todd
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Therapy dog Paca
Or, if the parent gives permission, the child might also be matched up with a counselor who travels to the school.
For children who are left to deal with trauma all on their own, there can be fatal consequences.
A report called the Adverse Childhood Experiences study found that children who experienced trauma early in life were more likely to abuse substances, smoke, overeat. Children who experience abusive and stressful situations could lose as much as 20 years off their life, compared with children who grow up in stable, loving families.
Credit Daniel Walker/ WVPB
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Ethan Napier and his mother Lynitrah Woodson are blowing bubbles and working with a therapist inside the mental health clinic at Mary C. Snow Elementary School.
But teachers and other adults in a child’s life can help, if they know what to look out for.
“Life does happen. And it’s teaching them how to handle things when life does happen,” says Katrina Helm, a special education teacher at Mary C. Snow Elementary.
“That we can still function, we can get the love, we can get the support the nurture that we need. Basically when they come here and we get the Handle with Care we look at what do they need and how can we fill in from there.”
Helm recently visited a meeting with other teachers from across West Virginia.
“And one of those teachers brought up that there’s so much trauma going on in their schools and they don’t know how to handle it. And they don’t know what resources do we tap into. This is an ongoing problem, it’s a growing problem, and one thing they were emphasizing there is they’re seeing it more and more in their younger kids. And that’s what we’re seeing here is we’re seeing it in our younger kids.”
Thus far, the Handle With Care Program has been supported without any extra funding- except for the resources already available to schools and children who need mental care.
The program is part of a collaboration between the state Department of Health and Human Resources, U.S Attorney Booth Goodwin’s office and the West Virginia State Police.
These groups are now working to help bring Handle With Care to communities throughout West Virginia. There are also similar programs that have sprouted in other states. When president Obama visited West Virginia last year to talk about drug abuse across the nation, he took note of the Handle with Care Program.
“I’d really like to see us advertise this more across the country and adopt this as a best practice,” said President Obama.
With drug overdose rates in West Virginia the highest in the country, Katrina Helm says more and more teachers are noticing children who are dealing with abuse and neglect. “So it’s definitely more prominent now than before. I think before we always thought it was just isolated to West Side Elementary.”
Credit Daniel Walker/ WVPB
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Katrina Helm is a special education teacher involved in the Handle With Care Program
But as drug abuse and domestic violence continue to barrage families across West Virginia, there simply aren’t enough resources to help children deal with trauma. Harmony Health Services, which provides mental health therapy to the students at Mary C. Snow Elementary, is working to get a mobile mental health care facility for some of the remote areas in West Virginia.
An advocacy group says declines in uncompensated care have saved West Virginia hospitals millions of dollars.
State data compiled by West Virginians for Affordable Health Care show more than two dozen hospitals saved a total of more than $265 million from 2013 to 2014.
The group’s founder and former director, Perry Bryant, told The Charleston Gazette-Mail that hospitals should use these savings to improve the health of their communities.
Bryant says Charleston Area Medical Center’s charity care and bad debt dropped by 47 percent, from $137 million to $72.6 million. West Virginia University Hospitals’ uncompensated care fell by 54 percent, from $94 million to $43 million.
Since 2013, more than 200,000 West Virginians have obtained health insurance through Medicaid or the health insurance marketplace.
Symptoms include uncontrollable, violent coughing which often makes it hard to breathe. After fits of many coughs, someone with pertussis often needs to take deep breaths which result in a “whooping” sound. Pertussis can affect people of all ages, but can be very serious, even deadly, for babies less than a year old.
Dr. Rahul Gupta, the state health commissioner, says outbreaks of the contagious respiratory disease tend to occur in three- to five-year cycles. There were 168 cases in 2010.
The DHHR has sent an advisory to health-care providers across the state alerting them to look for symptoms of pertussis and coordinate with local health officials in testing for suspected cases.
