It’s going to be a conference unlike any others – because participants won’t just be sitting in hard-backed chairs all day listening to speakers.
Instead, participants will spend part of the day touring north and northeast Portland neighborhoods, listening to people who suffer from health disparities such as single mothers who live in bug-infested apartments, and traffic engineers who’ll point out the unsafe conditions kids face when they try walking to school or a park because of the intrusion of highways in their neighborhood, said John Hummel, state and federal policy director for the Oregon Primary Care Association which is sponsoring this all-day conference in collaboration with Community Health Advocates of Oregon.
The “Show Us The Way” conference on Sept. 18 isn’t being held in a fancy hotel or convention center but at a community art center, Disjecta, in north Portland.
“We’re taking a deep dive into health equity work so we can hear from people who live in these neighborhoods, not just talk to one another,” Hummel told The Lund Report.
Also, by walking through the neighborhoods, participants will gain insights about the real people living and working in these areas, said Victoria Demchak, the association’s policy coordinator who’s spearheading the conference, which is geared toward primary care providers, health policy leaders, legislators, city officials, community activists and foundation officials
When facing health disparities, “we’ve come a long way but have miles to go,” she said. For example, primary care providers need to begin engaging with community members to improve health outcomes, while communities that have developed coping strategies for dealing with health disparities can benefit by influencing health policy at the state and federal level.
Health outcomes go far beyond the clinic walls, said Martin Taylor, director of public policy and member centricity at CareOregon, which is lending its expertise and financial resources to the conference. “Health equity is not just a medical problem but a social problem. Visiting these communities helps the people in the clinic role get outside their walls.”
More than 60 percent of health outcomes are determined by environmental factors that go beyond healthcare, which makes it more essential for primary care providers and communities to partner, according to Demchak.
“Equally essential,” she said, “is an understanding that the wisdom of community members about how to improve community health should be paramount in these relationships. Our health policy systems need to be refined so that the true experts – those who live and cope with disparities on a daily basis – have a more influential voice in incorporating realistic and welcomed solutions into state and national policies. This type of policy making takes more time than top down policy making, but it’s more lasting and effective.”
Beyond touring neighborhoods, conference participants will hear from James Smith, the closing plenary speaker, who owns the Lancaster Kiest Barbership in Dallas, Texas.
Smith, who’s been cutting hair in Dallas for 41 years, gained national prominence after teaming up with Dr. Ronald Victor, the director of Cedars-Sinai Center for Hypertension in Los Angeles, on a study that involved training barbers to take their patients' blood pressure. His customers are like family. "I'm always the one asking about, 'How's your wife, how's your children, how's your mom?'” he said. “So it was easy for me to do that and say, 'Well, look, brother, how's your blood pressure? How's your health?”
Other speakers include Dr. George Flores, senior program officer for the Healthy Communities/Eliminating Disparities Program with the California Endowment. His research analyzed how long people would live based on their zip codes, showing lifespan differences of more than 10 years in adjacent zip codes correlated with income, inequality, education, chronic stress and social capital.
The California Endowment has invested $1 billion in 14 California communities to work on upstream factors by changing beliefs, policies and places to improve health outcomes.
Dr. Mohammad Shahbazi, professor of public health at Jackson State University in Mississippi, which has some of the worst health statistics in the country. In his talk, Shahbazi will focus on the community health work model adapted from Iran, which began training health workers in the 1980s to work in the rural areas and promote health by giving advice on nutrition, family planning, taking blood pressure, keeping track of who needs prenatal care, providing immunizations and monitoring environmental conditions like water quality. Since then, the Iranians have narrowed the gap in health disparities between people living in rural and urban areas, reduced infant mortality by 75 percent and lowered the birthrate.
These examples show that many solutions to health disparities have been developed by the very people who suffer from such disparities, according to Demchak. “Our health policy systems need to be refined so that the true experts – those who live and cope with disparities on a daily basis have a more influential voice in incorporating realistic and welcomed solutions into state and national policies. This type of policy making takes more time than top down policy making but it’s more lasting and effective.”
To register or become a sponsor, please contact Demchak at [email protected].
Diane can be reached at [email protected].
