Rural Oregonians suffer from more health problems than urban counterparts

By WES FLOW News Reporter

Rural Oregonians’ ability to access healthcare — a point of focus for Tina Kotek’s gubernatorial campaign — has become a topic of significant concern, experts say.

As her second month as Oregon’s governor begins, Kotek has a number of campaign promises to work on, including to “maintain and increase access to care in rural communities,” according to her campaign website.

This is important, experts say, because rural populations face more health problems and underdeveloped public health systems, when compared to their urban counterparts.

A 2019 study published in the Journal of Environmental Health Sciences found that older adults in rural parts of the United States have higher rates of chronic diseases, including diabetes and coronary heart disease, than older adults in urban areas.

The study attributes this, in part, to rural areas having higher poverty rates, larger elderly populations, lower education and a lack of transportation and healthcare services when compared to urban areas.

According to Chunhuei Chi, director of the Oregon State University Center for Global Health, Oregon is no exception to this.

According to Chi, Oregon’s public health systems are under-developed, as a result of underfunding by the state.

Chi says public health expenditure made up only 5.42% of the US national health expenditure in 2020, and before the pandemic, it was only 2.79%.

“This systematic underfunding leads to the shortage of the most important public health infrastructure, public health personnel,” Chi said. “Further, the underfunding of public health also leads to the underdevelopment of…the public health information system.”

While this is a problem statewide, Chi says that some parts of the state are particularly affected.

“The underdeveloped public health system, while it was prevalent across the board, was most pronounced in rural health,” Chi said.

A 2020 study in the Journal of Rural Health found that access to healthcare was the number one rural healthcare priority nationwide, which, according to Chi, applies to Oregon as well.

“Oregon’s rural health profile is very similar to the national one,” Chi said.

To this end, Oregon has made efforts in recent years to improve healthcare access in rural parts of the state.

The Oregon Office of Rural Health provides several incentives to encourage healthcare providers to work in rural areas. These include student loan repayment and forgiveness programs for healthcare providers practicing in rural parts of the state, as well as tax credits and subsidies for practitioners insurance.

25 rural Oregon hospitals are also designated as critical access hospitals, according to Chi, which allows them to receive support from the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program.

Additionally, Chi says, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services operates several programs nationally to increase funding in rural clinics.

“What we need for our rural community is a two-prong approach, improving rural population health, and improving health services in the rural areas,” Chi said.

% of national health expenditure from public funding for public health

5% before 2020 2020

SOURCE: CHUNHUEI CHI in Oregon are also designated as critical access hospitals which allows them to receive support from the Medicare Rural Hospital Flexibility Program.

SOURCE: CHUNHUEI CHI

By KATIE LIVERMORE News Reporter

Venturing through Corvallis means enjoying streams, creeks and other natural water features, running through town, with beavers building their dams, fish swimming in pools and birds flying overhead.

The Water Action Team of the Corvallis Sustainability Coalition is one group of volunteers that work to restore water sources around the Corvallis area to its former glory in the midst of impacts like housing development, farming and human damage.

The CSC is a nonprofit organization in Corvallis with 12 different action teams to provide sustainability co-founded in 2007 and led by Annette Mills. The teams consist of community inclusion, economic vitality, education, energy, food, health and human services, housing, land use, natural areas, transportation, waste prevention and water.

According to Dave Eckert, the leader of the water action team, the CSC has 357 partners and is a collaboration of the community. So far they’ve collaborated with Oregon State University, the city of Corvallis, local hospitals, Benton county, faith groups, businesses, nonprofits and other organizations.

“The purpose [of the CSC] is to analyze, to support and to develop sustainability practices in the community. And that revolves around social cultural sustainability, ecological sustainability, economic sustainability. Most things fall within those categories,” Eckert said.

According to Eckert, the water action team improves three municipal water systems — tap water, wastewater and stormwater — by cutting down the amount of water that flows

FEBRUARY 20 - 24 grab through pipes.

“It’s quite overwhelming: the impact our three water systems have on the environment, each very differently, and each profoundly, and if we have less water flowing through those systems, we have less of a profound impact environmentally,” Eckert said.

Another goal for the water action team is to improve the functionality of natural water systems like streams, wetlands and rivers.

“One of the neat things is recognizing the smaller streams that have kind of been neglected, farmers farm over them and housing developments channelize them and put them in culverts and forget about them, and what we realize is they’re just extremely vibrant, natural areas when you let them return,” said Peter Nelson, water action team volunteer and retired professor of environmental engineering at OSU.

Cultural relevance is a vital part of restoring natural water systems for the water action team and has three parts.

This means restoration must have cultural relevance to the community, meaning it considers the lives of community members who have connection to the water source like landowners or individuals who use the land for any activity.

The restoration must also be culturally relevant to the Kalapuya tribe, so Eckert will consult members about native plants and other changes to the water source.

Corvallis water sources are home to beavers, fish, birds, pollinating insects and other animals. The last culturally relevant part of restoration is the animals that inhabit the area.

“At the top of our higher hierarchy is the

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Continued from PAGE 9 beaver. And so we want to make sure what we’re doing is culturally relevant to the beaver communities,”

Eckert said. “We’ve got to make sure that what we’re doing provides habitat, nutrition and in the right typography for them, in the right place.” org to attend an event.

With no meetings and a simple “go out and get something done” attitude, the water action team has worked on 13 different sites for natural water systems in the past year.

OSU students can get involved with the water action team by signing up for the email list by emailing info@sustainablecorvallis.

Last year, 175 OSU students volunteered in total through Community Engagement and Leadership, classes, clubs, athletic teams and fraternity and sorority life members. However, everyone in the community is welcome to join and volunteer to help restore Corvallis’ water systems.

“It’s amazingly intergenerational from students and young people all the way up to us retirees and in between,” Nelson said. “It’s just really been an exciting group to be involved with.”