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Phoebe, GSU work together

• The success of a new health care initiative hinges on Southwest Georgians' interest and dedication to living healthier lives, officials say.

Barbara Rivera Holmes

ALBANY — A community health initiative funded by Phoebe Putney Memorial Hospital aims to make Southwest Georgians healthier and reduce the health care disparities, officials with the project said.

The two-year, $500,000 grant was awarded to Georgia Southern University’s Jiann- Ping Hsu College of Public Health, a 2-year-old institution which for the first time will tackle a project such as the health initiative, said the college’s Stuart Tedders.

“The initiative is to really provide ownership in the process and for Southwest Georgia so that we can facilitate them in making a change and to improve health care and reduce disparity,” said Tedders, director of the Office of Public Health Practice, director of the Office of Rural Health and Research and an associate professor of epidemiology at Georgia Southern.

The college’s faculty and graduate students are collaborating with the Albany-based and Phoebe-affiliated Community Health Institute in identifying the project’s priorities and approaches. The institute has been active in the Southwest Georgia community for 15 years through studies, programs and partnerships that focus on the region’s health care issues.

“We now have the opportunity to work with some of the best minds in the country in the school of public health,” said Community Health Institute Director Sandra Handwerk, “so that we can combine the state-of-the-art knowledge that they (the college) have on health disparity (and other issues) ... and pair it with what we are able to do on the ground and in our communities.

“And so, it really is the best of both worlds,” said Handwerk, who serves as director of the initiative.

Handwerk, Tedders and others involved with the project met in Albany Thursday to discuss their approach to the work and to start identifying priorities.

Using data from three of the Community Health Institutes surveys, Handwerk said there are certain things — such as adolescent activities that turn into adult habits — that clearly are of importance.

According to last year’s eight-county health status survey (the most recent of the three studies conducted during the last 10 years):

• 43 percent of people interviewed had been told they have high blood pressure;
• 18 percent have been told they have diabetes;
• One in three said a smoker lives in the home;
• 35 percent said they have received emergency-room care at least once during the survey year.

A survey of Dougherty County middle school students revealed that:

• 45 percent of seventh- graders have tried cigarettes (more than just a few cigarettes, Handwerk said);
• 51 percent of seventh- graders have tried alcohol (more than a few sips);
• Based on their body mass index (BMI), 46 percent of students were obese, meaning their have a BMI of 30 or greater;
• 54 percent of seventh- graders said they watched three hours or more of television daily.

“If we look at children and the habits they have and how that leads to adulthood,” she said, “(those) lead us directly to the leading causes of death — heart disease, cancer, stroke and diabetes.”

Armed with such data, Handwerk said, GSU’s College of Public Health “can help us develop the targeted intervention and measure what we are doing for effectiveness as well as to lower health care costs.”

She said the initiative is developing councils that pair health care providers and leaders with the college and community members “to open dialogue.” Members of the community will be consistently probed on “the barriers they face in being healthy,” she said.

As stressed by a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention official during a seminar for community and health care leaders in Albany earlier this year, the success of any initiative of this sort hinges on a mobilized and organized community.

“The community has to take action,” Handwerk said. “It must be a priority for health care leaders and government, but it has to be a priority to the people. And when the people decide it’s the number one priority, then change can happen.”

The next meeting of the initiative’s leaders is set for January. By March, Handwerk said, GSU students should be in Southwest Georgia working to implement the project’s programs.

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