Health care from group set up to aid Third World prompts coalfield writer to urge health education

Recently, we ran an item about residents of Central Appalachia getting health care from a group that was created to provide care to the Third World. In The Coalfield Progress of Norton, Va., longtime Appalachian advocate Frank Kilgore, at attorney in St. Paul, Va., makes a similar reference in arguing for a big investment in health education to improve the region's poor health status.

"The term 'Third World' comes up often when the coalfield region’s health care system, economic see-saw and environmental degradations come into focus," Kilgore writes. "Our region’s health care statistics are still shameful, and the images of the huge crowds at annual Remote Area Medical health care events in the Virginia communities of Wise and Grundy are not acceptable in the world’s richest nation in one of the nation’s richest states."

Kilgore says there's plenty of blame to go around, but holds up a mirror for his readers: "The state of the region’s poor health statistics has many causes, most of them preventable. Coalfield residents, more than almost any other national sub-group, eat too much of the wrong foods, fail to exercise and go about abusing drugs, alcohol and tobacco at alarming rates. . . . We cannot allow another generation of coalfield youth to become national poster children for bad choices. The state governments of Virginia, Tennessee, Kentucky and West Virginia and federal agencies must make health education and preventative health care a priority in the coalfields and other under served areas. Thousands of lives and billions of taxpayer dollars in treatment expenses hang in the balance." (Read more; subscription may be required)