by Mary Rupert
Wyandotte County is on the right path to improving its health ranking, according to a local health official.
Wyandotte County’s health outcomes ranking, announced last week at 94th in the state of Kansas, improved a little from 2014, when it was 96, and from 2013, when it was 99th out of 105 Kansas counties.
While there have not been major changes in the health ranking these five years, there have been some small changes and some activity in addressing the problems.
“I think these county health rankings are very important for stimulating activity, and they certainly have in Wyandotte County over the past five years, and over the country,” said Dr. K. Allen Greiner, professor and associate chair of research in the Department of Family Medicine at the University of Kansas Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan. He is the medical adviser to the Unified Government Health Department.
While the ranking itself may not be a good one, the rankings contribute to the new movements that try to have an impact on factors that make up the ranking, he said.
The factors in these rankings are hard to move and will take years and years of effort, he believes. Some of the health factors used in the rankings are related to poverty, education and social features of the community.
“As we know, the social features can take decades and generations to change,” he said.
“It’s going to take quite some time to see significant change,” Dr. Greiner said. “But things like economic development, change in the educational outcomes in the school districts, things like new initiatives in the community that get more people signed up for health insurance can make an impact. Wyandotte County in the last two years has done really well in signing people up through the health exchanges,” he said.
From those changes, in five to 10 years from now, Wyandotte County may see some improvements in the health ranking numbers, he believes.
The health rankings showed some areas where Wyandotte County is still lagging pretty far behind the state averages and may need some work.
Smoking is one of those areas, and showed 25 percent of the adults in Wyandotte County smoke, compared to 18 percent in the state of Kansas, he said.
Dr. Greiner said Wyandotte County needs to work really hard to try to reduce smoking, perhaps by implementing workplace smoking bans, indoor air quality improvements, offering help lines to quit smoking, media campaigns and other things that over time can contribute to the reduction of smoking.
“Smoking has a huge impact on health,” he said.
Wyandotte County also has high rates of sexually transmitted infections, compared to the state, he said. This may be related to other family and social levels, with behaviors that need to be addressed, he said. The county needs to keep working on all these things, whether through education, employment or changing people’s ideas about what is healthy and what is not healthy, he said.
Wyandotte County also needs to work on changing people’s levels of hope for the future, he said.
“Adolescents and adults, if they feel hopeless, are more likely to take risks with behavior, whether smoking or other risky behavior,” he said.
Replacing that with hope for the future, along with providing developments such as the new healthy campus downtown, and such improvements as bike pathways, may help people change what they do day-to-day in their own environment, he said.
Dr. Greiner has worked with the Healthy Communities Wyandotte program through the UG Health Department and also has worked with the Community Health Council.
There are now a couple of clinics in the Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools that try to bring health care from KU out into the community, he said. Students are able to see physicians and medical students at their high schools, in some cases receive medical care, and importantly, see young adult role models who may inspire them to pursue careers in health. A few years ago a clinic was started at Wyandotte High School which has been a success, he said.
Dr. Greiner said even little programs may contribute to better overall health in the community, and he would encourage more people to work toward better health.
One of the many factors considered in overall health of the community is access to fresh food. Dr. Greiner said that throughout the United States, a diet of less fresh vegetables, higher calories, and higher sugar has had an impact on health. In Wyandotte County, there have been movements with local farmers’ markets to bring more fresh food to residents, he added.
New grocery stores have been built in Wyandotte County in the past several years to serve areas that didn’t have much access to fresh fruits and vegetables. There are plans for another grocery store to be built near downtown Kansas City, Kan., to serve that general area.
“I really do think the county is on the right track, involved in over a decade,” Dr. Greiner said. “There seems to be so much more of this hope factor there. People are trying to do the right things.”
Throughout history, medicine has focused its efforts on various topics, and effected changes. One example was tuberculosis about 100 years ago, he said. With a lot of different approaches, education, changes in social norms and medical attention, some medical problems have been solved in society.
“We need the same thing with these kinds of issues,” he said.
Already, there have been a lot of efforts with the tobacco campaign, including smoking bans, and changes in social norms.
“We need the same approach, lots of different initiatives, whether big or small, we just need to stay positive and encourage each other to healthy change,” Dr. Greiner said.