August 3, 2008

As I read through the articles and readings for class I am shocked by some of the facts and statistics, things that I would not have imagined. So far the most shocking is the fact sheet by Kaiser that talks about health indicators by race/ethnicity and state. The data on Washington D.C. is not only amazing but really sad too. That is our nations capitol, where the politicians live day in and day out, yet it is one of the areas with the most problems, with % on that fact sheet in top or highest of all the ares of the US. How sad is it that our government keeps turning their back on public health programs and funding, when the problems are at their own back door? They see these things everyday, but yet don't realize the scope of problems in the US? That should be an eye-opener to many of them, but as they say "ignorance is bliss" to a number of people. I feel that some of the biggest problems with health care in government and a change in policy comes down to the fact that no one ones to take responsibility. It is a formidable task and would be a lot of work, but we need someone to go full force to make changes or nothing will ever happen. There is a lot more to making it work, of course, but taking the initiative is part of the challenge.

I have limited exposure to health care in the Native American population, but from a laboratory perspective I found that I could correlate what I have experience through what the physician discussed in his personal practice. It seemed that every time a Native American came in through the ER I received a sample for ETOH testing, no matter what part of the country I was working in. The sad truth is that of all those samples I received, I don't ever remember one of them being lower that that of a chronic alcoholic, levels at or above .3 were common. That is scary to think this is how they live their lives. They have sacrificed a lot as a community and seem to be losing more as the years go by, but we as a public health community need to help them work through these issues and find the positive aspects and programs in life that will turn these statistics around. Turning aggressions for the previous wrong doins of past generations is hard in any setting (i.e. with Native Americans or African Americans) but we have to make the efforts to change or the puble health issues will never go away and we run the risk of making them worse.