3132.0: Monday, October 22, 2001: 2:30 PM-4:00 PM

Oral Session

Challenges to, Resources for, and Threats facing the Health of Populations in Rural Areas

Those living in rural areas are subjected to barriers to access to healthcare, shortages in healthcare resources, and threats to the public's health which, while neither more nor less important than those which their urban and suburban counterparts experience, are different in both their nature and their potential severity. Managed care and the competition for scarce resources have caused a rural-to-urban migration of some of those resources. Innovative strategies need be, and are being, employed to overcome both economic and geographic barriers. Other environmental threats are unique to these politically-underrepresented areas and their populations. This session will set forth some of the inherent challenges to the maintenance of the public's health in rural areas as well as strategies which are working in overcoming some of those challenges.
See individual abstracts for presenting author's disclosure statement.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of this session the participant (learner) will be able to: 1.) Articulate the threat of disposing of nuclear, and by extension biological and chemical, wastes in sites within potentially unstable geological formations; 2.) Discuss the financial, societal, and public health inequities created by the concentration of toxic wastes in a single or minimal number of sites; 3.) Recognize the opportunities for community response to the threat of the creation of toxic waste "megasites"; 4.) Assess the inequitable distribution of primary care resources in rural areas and identify unaddressed public health threats as well as underserved populations; 5.) Construct community-based responses which, utilizing available funding sources, can bring the maximum potential impact to bear upon the health status of underserved rural populations.
Presider(s):Caroline Ford, MPH
Moderator(s):Caroline Ford, MPH
Organizer(s):Christopher Knowles, MPA
2:30 PMGlobal Impacts of Nuclear Waste Transport, Disposal and Storage in Frontier America: The Case for Public Health Unity
Caroline Ford, MPH, Patricia Charles, DrPH, Robert Loux
2:55 PMServing the Needs of Western Maryland: Access to Care
Marla Oros, MS, RN, Susan Antol, MS, RN, Shelia Green, MS, RN
3:20 PMGeographical distribution of primary care physicians and managed care
Kyusuk Chung, PhD, Ralph Bell, PhD, Clementine Coleman, MA
Sponsor:Medical Care
Cosponsors:Social Work; Socialist Caucus
CE Credits:CME, Health Education (CHES), Nursing, Pharmacy, Social Work

The 129th Annual Meeting of APHA