Last week Public Citizens for Children and Youth issued a report card about the status of children’s health in Delaware County. Some of the news was encouraging — sort of.

With each point of progress noted by the 34-year-old non-profit advocacy organization, there was an equally unsettling observation. The teen birth rate has decreased 16 percent in the last five years. However, Delaware County has the highest teen birth rate among the four suburban counties.

Asthma hospitalizations have decreased 14 percent, yet Delaware County has the highest asthma hospitalization rate among the four suburban counties. Infant mortality rate decreased 8 percent, yet Delaware County has the highest rate among the four suburban counties.

While it isn’t highlighted in the report, there is another way Delaware County stands out from neighboring Bucks, Chester and Montgomery counties. It is the only suburban Philadelphia county that lacks a health department.

Despite being incorporated for nearly 225 years, Delaware County does not have a health department to advocate, investigate or remediate health issues for its more than half a million citizens. Excuses offered by the all-Republican Delaware County Council over the decades have ranged from declaring a county health department would be too costly, to insisting that private health care providers and state health officials fill the gap just fine. We suspect it has more to do with the politically connected paid position of “health officer” in each of the 49 municipalities. Some serve more than one municipality and many are not health care professionals.

Some county council members have maintained that the county’s Department of Intercommunity Health fills a health department’s role when, in fact, its mission is not that of a health department. The intercommunity health department coordinates emergency services and disseminates information about and implements some state and federal health mandates such as securing contractors to spray for mosquitoes or helping to stage state-funded flu shot clinics. A county health department’s focus is essentially epidemiology – dealing with the incidence, distribution and control of disease. It would be the avenue, for example, through which studies would be done on the impact of industrial emissions or low-flying planes on Delaware County citizens’ health or finding out just why Delaware County has the highest rates of infant mortality, teen pregnancy and asthma hospitalizations in suburban Philadelphia.

Obviously a county health department would also provide an immediate line of defense in reacting to public health crises. There have been many over the years. Among them were epidemics of sexually transmitted diseases in Chester, a tuberculosis death of a staff member at Cardinal O’Hara High School in Marple, a mysterious flu-like illness at Villanova University in Radnor and various meningitis deaths throughout the county.

Every few years, county council members have launched studies into the “feasibility” of this 20th century concept of a health department but have not acted on them. About four years ago, in response to the state-funded Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study of Delaware County health services, they hired an Upper Darby family practitioner, Dr. George Avetian, at $50,000-a-year to be “county senior medical adviser.” He promotes press releases issued by state health officials and helps raise awareness of basic health issues via a “wellness van” in conjunction with Independence Blue Cross, but he does not provide the services of a health department.

Colleen McCauley, health director for Public Citizens for Children and Youth, has commended Delaware County for making “great strides in improving the health of its children” in the last five years, but noted, “more work still needs to be done to make sure all Delaware County children grow up healthy.”

Among her recommendations are that a county-wide campaign be launched to get every eligible child health insurance; improve county reporting on children without dental insurance and the number of children diagnosed and receiving treatment for behavioral health conditions; test and remediate homes to eliminate childhood lead poisoning; and encourage state welfare officials to increase the quality of provider networks.

In short, she is urging Delaware County officials to advocate for the good health of their constituents. That goes beyond just distributing literature or taking blood pressures. It is the job of a county-level health department.

Daily Times – February 9, 2014 – اقرأ المقال على الإنترنت