Need to Eliminate Health Disparities in Rural and Underserved Minority Communities

Floor Speech

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Ms. SEWELL of Alabama. Mr. Speaker, in light of the myriad of issues facing Americans living in poverty, I am disappointed that my Republican colleagues chose a drug treatment center as the location to unveil their anti-poverty proposal last week. Assuming the poor are more prone to impulsivity and addiction ignores the reality that poverty is often the result of a constellation of compounding difficulties that are exacerbated by poor access to healthcare and our nation's historic dis-investment in public health. Today, I am here to highlight the impact these complications have on my most vulnerable constituents and the role we all play in addressing them. The harsh disparities faced by my constituents in Alabama's Black Belt intersect at the nexus of poverty, demographics, and geographic access. Women in certain parts of my district have to drive to distant counties, sometimes two hours, to give birth to their babies. Folks in Choctaw County, Alabama have to travel over 100 miles to the closest full-service urban hospital or to see a specialist. In 6 of the 14 counties I represent, there are fewer than 5 primary care physicians, county-wide. The prostate cancer death rate in Alabama for black men was triple that of white men from 2000 to 2010. For all cancers, the mortality rate among blacks was more than double that of the white population during the same time period. There are many settings that would have better told the story of struggling Americans than an addiction treatment center. An emergency room in a rural hospital in my district would have been a great place to start. In this setting, the group would meet the working Alabamians who fall into our state's Medicaid gap. With the lowest Medicaid eligibility cap in the country, the working poor are left with no option for affordable health coverage. Because of financial constraints, these individuals ignore small health care concerns until they compound to make for an emergency situation, which can only be addressed in the expensive setting of an emergency room. There are many who leave the emergency room less able to work and provide for their families because of the long-term impact of allowing untreated health issues to compound. In addition to severe access issues, generations of men and women in Alabama's 7th District have been negatively impacted by the tortured legacy of the Tuskegee Syphilis Study. While I applaud decisions to provide medical benefits to the family members infected, and the apology issued by President Clinton in 1997, these actions only began to address the damage this 40 year experiment had on our most vulnerable communities. There are decades of research that show that minorities often do not seek treatment for conditions because of distrust of health care providers regarding diagnosis, prognosis, and treatment. The mistrust the Tuskegee study generated interferes with attempts to combat HIV/ AIDS, sickle cell anemia, uterine fibroids, prostate cancer and a myriad of other conditions that disproportionately impact minority groups. If we are serious about addressing health disparities in rural and underserved communities, we must start by working to restore the faith all of our constituents have in the medical establishment, particularly public health programs, vaccinations, and clinical trials. We should view this as an issue needing as much intervention as drug abuse and inner-city violence. I was sent to Congress by one of the most underserved constituencies in the country to build upon programs that work and craft new proposals to reverse this cursed course. I look forward to working with my colleagues to strengthen the Medicare and Medicaid programs, invest in health education and medical research, and incentivize providers to practice in rural and underserved communities.

BREAK IN TRANSCRIPT

Source