H.C.
Calesaric
NIOSH Education and Information Division
The
mission of the Office of Primary Care and Rural Health at
the Ohio Department of Health is to work towards assuring
access to affordable, quality health care for all of the state's
residents. Ohio's State Office of Rural Health helps to achieve
this goal by focusing on the specifics needs and problems
of rural areas.
With
regard to statewide rural policy coordination, the State Office
of Rural Health in January of 1993 conducted twelve regional
rural health meetings throughout the state in order to identify
the priority health care needs within our rural communities.
A number of agencies and organizations assisted the office
in planning these meetings, and continue to be integrally
involved in State Office of Rural Health activities. Those
organizations include: The Area Health Education Center (AHEC)
Pr gram, Ohio Farm Bureau, Ohio Hospital Association (OHA),
Ohio Primary Care Association (OPCA), and the Ohio State University
Rural Health Consortium.
Participants
generated 124 separate issues and concerns at these regional
meetings, and were then asked to respond to a questionnaire
whereby they indicated the importance of each of the 124 issues
on a scale of one to ten. The results of this questionnaire
were then used as a basis for a statewide rural health conference
held in November of 1993.
The
statewide rural health conference, Ohio's Rural Health: A
Vision for the Future, brought together over 100 rural health
care providers and consumers from throughout the state to
share information and ideas and brainstorm future directions
and initiatives to better serve Ohio's rural constituents.
Topics addressed at the conference included the following:
decreasing the incidence and severity of agricultural hazards
and accidents; addressing the emergency medical needs of our
rural population; curbing and epidemic: HIV/AIDS in rural
areas; rural school health education: future directions; rural
teen pregnancy; rural physician recruitment and retention;
rural hospitals: challenge and change; and increasing the
utilization of advanced practice nurses and physician assistants
in rural area. Initial recommendations as to how to address
each of these issues were formulated in work group sessions
at the conference.
The
role of the Ohio Department of Health, and specifically the
State Office of Rural Health, in this initiative was conceived
as three-fold: to provide the leadership needs to keep this
process moving; to help our rural constituents come up with
viable recommendations for solutions to identified problems;
and to work through existing systems for the changes that
will allow solutions to be enacted. We are continuing in this
endeavor.
Disclaimer
and Reproduction Information: Information in NASD does not represent
NIOSH policy. Information included in NASD appears by permission
of the author and/or copyright holder. More
NASD Review: 04/2002
This
research abstract was extracted from a portion of the proceedings
of "Agricultural Safety and Health: Detection, Prevention and
Intervention," a conference presented by the Ohio State University
and the Ohio Department of Health, sponsored by the Centers
for Disease Control/National Institute for Occupational Safety
and Health.
H.C.
Calesaric, The Ohio Department of Health, Columbus, OH.
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