By John Vincent
On Further Review
The Joint Coalition on Health, based in Fitchburg, recently came out with its Community Health Assessment of North Central Massachusetts and it pointed out that this area once again is higher than the state average in several categories.
The assessment was sponsored in part by Heywood Healthcare in Gardner and Athol and HealthAlliance Hospital in Leominster and took a close look at the well-being of residents from Clinton to Erving.
For reasons yet to be pinpointed, this area is high in opioid drug use, suicide, self-inflicted injuries, depression, psychiatric hospitalization, child maltreatment, pregnant smokers, women smokers, lung cancer, cancer deaths, diabetes, obesity, coronary heart disease and strokes.
That’s not what we’re looking for.
That’s not what anyone is looking for.
But the assessment, which is based on area statistics plus interviews with caregivers and different specialized groups, is being touted as a way to isolate what the problems are so we can seriously address them.
Some of these problems have been known for a while and some plans are already in place to try to help people overcome them, but it is hoped the assessment will focus people’s attention on getting the job done.
Heywood Vice President for External Affairs Dawn Casavant recently gave a presentation on the assessment to a group of local clergy, explaining the results and putting their heads together on possible solutions.
“We need to know what is going on in the community. To learn what is really going on and to effect change,” said Casavant. And now that the assessment is shining a spotlight on some key problems, the hospital is reaching out to organizations and leaders — such as the clergy and local doctors — to talk about it.
She said there are many different groups that already do some things to address these problems, or which could do more.
“One of the things we’d like to do is pull everybody together … this is meant to get people’s juices flowing and thinking of ways to respond,” Casavant said.
I got to sit in on the presentation given to local clergy, and there were several Gardner ministers there,
listening, talking about the problems, and suggesting a few ways they could help.
Many of the churches offer free meals that help people’s health, and it was suggested that the churches
coordinate their efforts so there’s a free meal available every day of the week in Gardner.
Rev. James Hinds, pastor of the First Baptist Church of Gardner, noted that the only area homeless shelter is Our Father’s House in Fitchburg, and said he’d like to see if people and resources could be brought to bear so there could be a place for people to go in Gardner.
They also pointed out other problems, such as there not being any place for homeless to take a shower or even many places where they can go to the restroom.
Just the homeless in and of themselves is just one point of many in the study, but a lot of the problems trace back to the area’s poor economy. People are not working or are forced to work in low-paying, dead-end jobs. They’re depressed, stressed out, suicidal, smoking cigarettes, doing drugs, not eating properly and not exercising enough.
Yes, we need to attack these symptoms, and see what we can do in the health care industry and as a community to help people falling through these various cracks. Let’s look at the assessment, realize what the problems are and attack them.
But we should also try to attack the larger problem. This area, like a lot of former mill towns, has seen a lot of its jobs head south, head overseas or disappear. We still have the housing in place, however, to support a large workforce. So there’s a collection of people working whatever job they can, or working the system or not working at all living in these apartments.
Yes, sure, there’s a lot of businesses in the area that are still providing people with good jobs, enabling good lives for them and their families. But there’s just not enough of them.
The unemployment rate in this area has been higher than the state average for over a decade, so it’s not that surprising to see all these negative statistics about people’s health.
We need to figure out a way to put people back to work in good-paying jobs. Certainly people have tried. And some have succeeded, but we need more. We need a few more success stories or another boom, like the high-tech boom, and there have been glimmers of success with the biotech and green energy fields, but most of that has been centered around Boston.
One of the problems that jumps off the page of the health assessment was a high rate of child maltreatment, with Gardner registering a rate of 110.5 out of 1,000 being a victim of neglect, abuse or sexual abuse, according to the most-recent statistics, a 2010 study by the Massachusetts Department of Children and Families. That’s more than one out of 10 children affected.
Surprised at the numbers, and even sort of doubting them, I asked Gardner Police Chief Neil Erickson if he’d seen that level of child maltreatment, and he said he did not believe it was quite that prevalent, but that whenever any case comes up, the Gardner police takes it seriously.
“Certainly we investigate a variety of crimes involving children every year … but not all the calls we respond to move on to that next step of taking complaints,” Erickson said.
“We encourage family members or relatives or anybody that has an inkling that they feel a child is being abused to please call and we’ll look into those situations,” he said.
And Casavant said the Baby’s Breath initiative has already been started to try to help pregnant women quit smoking. Plus, talks have already begun and will continue with doctors about not prescribing too many painkillers, with thoughts in mind of keeping people from developing a habit that turns into a drug addiction.
So, some of our best people are on the case, trying to solve the problems that arise, hopefully looking at preventative measures, but maybe we can also use the assessment to spur a conversation about improving the overall health of the area in other ways.
One of the main “assets” of the area cited in the study was the beauty of the area. Yeah, I guess that is something. We can always say there’s a lot of good trees around here even if there aren’t so many good jobs.
This column originally appeared in The Gardner News.