Officials Look at Women’s Life Spans

By Donna Alvis-Banks donna.banks@roanoke.com 381-1661″These are issues that we’ve been addressing for a long, long time.” Dr. Jody Hershey of the New River Health District

Are women in Pulaski County and Radford just fatter than other women?

Lazier? Do they smoke like chimneys? Have more stress than the average American female?

Leaders of the New River Health District were still puzzling Thursday over a national study published Tuesday by researchers who found that women’s life expectancy dropped from 1983 to 1999 in nearly 1,000 counties across America. The scientists from Harvard University, the University of California and the University of Washington noted that Pulaski County and Radford, which were combined for the study, showed one of the most dramatic decreases with women there believed to have shaved five years off their lives, presumably because of an increase in chronic diseases related to smoking, obesity and high blood pressure.

Dr. Jody Hershey, district health director for Radford, Montgomery, Floyd, Giles and Pulaski counties, said the issue isn’t new. But whether Pulaski County and Radford are worse than other areas of Southwest Virginia is something Hershey and his colleagues aren’t buying yet.

The national study found a gap in longevity between residents of “best-off” and “worst-off” areas. The worst-off areas included the Deep South, the Appalachian region, the lower Midwest and one Maine county.

Hershey said statistics have long shown that rural areas overall have higher rates of chronic diseases such as diabetes, lung disease and hypertension. Coupled with lack of medical resources in some rural areas and lack of health insurance among many in rural populations, he said it’s no surprise that life expectancy seems to be falling, as Tuesday’s study suggests.

The data used in the study released Tuesday stopped in 1999, Hershey pointed out.

“Part of it is how you group stuff and part of it is how you do the analysis,” he said.

“We’re getting people right now to look at the 2001 to 2005 age- adjusted rates and leading causes of death in the New River Valley by county,” he said. “We will divide the information by gender.”

While Hershey said it’s general knowledge that women are now having higher death rates because of smoking, he said that’s not the only factor involved.

Brenda Burruss, nurse manager senior for the district, agreed.

“You add weight, smoking, stress, poor nutrition, lack of medical care — it’s all related. It’s a web,” she said. “If you have limited resources, you put your resources in shelter, in food. If you’re not sick, you’re not going to seek medical attention.”

By pointing to preventable diseases as a cause for decreased life expectancy, the study released Tuesday pretty much confirmed what doctors have been saying for years. People should eat right, quit smoking and exercise.

But Hershey knows it’s not as simple as that.

“How can you talk to somebody who’s struggling to put food on the table about prevention?” he asked, noting that job losses in the New River district cannot be ignored.

Southwest Virginians, he added, make up the highest percentage of uninsured people in the state. People on limited incomes don’t buy healthy, organically grown foods. They buy filling foods that stretch the budget — and the waistline.

For years, Hershey said, the New River Health District has worked to address health issues by addressing economic issues. After forming the Partnership for Access to Health Care in 1995, transportation issues were tackled through a Med-Ride program that helps get people to doctor appointments.

“These are issues that we’ve been addressing for a long, long time, and we’re going to continue to address them,” Hershey said. “We’ve never had the money to solve them all.”

Recently, Hershey’s office sent out a behavioral risk needs assessment survey to 2,500 residents of the New River Valley.

The results are now being analyzed, and Hershey said they will help the district determine how to move forward with advancing health care and meeting needs.

The one good thing that already has come from Tuesday’s report, he acknowledged, is that it brought some national attention to the New River district.

He said he hopes policymakers will pay attention, too.

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