Two months ago the Общественные граждане для детей и молодежи issued a report card about the status of children’s health in Delaware County. The 34-year-old non-profit advocacy organization noted that while the teen birth rate has decreased 16 percent in the last five years, Delaware County has the highest teen birth rate among the four suburban counties.

It also noted that while asthma hospitalizations have decreased 14 percent, Delaware County has the highest asthma hospitalization rate among the four suburban counties and while the infant mortality rate decreased 8 percent, Delaware County has the highest rate among the four suburban counties.

It is one of many health status “report cards” Delaware County has received over the years. The latest was issued last week by the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation that concluded out of Pennsylvania’s 67 counties, Delaware County ranked only 41st for health outcomes such as premature deaths .

The good news is that Delaware County is among the top five counties for ratio of primary physicians, dentists and mental health providers to population and ninth in the state for availability of clinical care. The 10 percent of Delaware County adults without health insurance – a percentage that hopefully declined with recent enrollment in the federal Health Insurance Marketplace – is below the state average of 12 percent.

Delaware County ranked 14th for “health factors”, such as adult obesity and high school graduation rates, the same ranking it had in 2010.

Nevertheless, the 41st ranking for health outcomes is very poor – and that’s down from 36th place determined in 2010 by the same health researchers who have examined health factors and health outcomes in almost every county in the United States annually for the last five years.

What has not changed is that Delaware County, the fifth most populated county in Pennsylvania, remains the only county in suburban Philadelphia without a health department.

The surrounding suburban counties that all have health departments, have consistently fared far better for health outcomes and factors in the annual County Health Rankings report including the most recent.

Chester County ranked first for health factors and second for outcomes, Montgomery County ranked second for health factors and fifth for health outcomes and Bucks County ranked fifth for health factors and 10th for health outcomes.

Philadelphia finished last despite having a health department, but its urban environment is vastly different than a suburban one although one health statistics analyst noted that Delaware County’s varied demographics are similar to Philadelphia’s.

For decades the members of the all-Republican Delaware County Council have offered a plethora of excuses as to why, after being incorporated for nearly 225 years, Delaware County still does not have a health department to advocate, investigate or remediate health issues for its more than half a million citizens. They say a county health department would be too costly. They insist that private health care providers and state health officials fill the gap just fine. In response to a state-funded Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study of Delaware County health services, they hired an Upper Darby family practitioner at $50,000-a-year to be “county senior medical adviser”. He promotes press releases issued by state health officials and helps raise awareness via a “wellness van” in conjunction with Independence Blue Cross, but he does not provide the services of a health department.

Despite some council members’ assertions, the Delaware County’s “department of intercommunity health” does not fill the role of a health department. The intercommunity health staff 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 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 such a consistently bleak standing for health outcomes.

How many more “reports” will it take for Delaware County’s government leaders to grasp this now 20th century concept of protecting their constituents’ health?

Delaware County Times – April 1, 2014 – Читать статью онлайн