TO YOUR HEALTH
COUNTY COUNCIL OKS NEW STUDY TO PROBE DELCO’S HEALTH NEEDS
MEDIA » Delaware County Council voted unanimously Wednesday to conduct a study of the county’s health needs — including what services are available and where there are gaps.
“We feel that the public health and safety of Delaware County is of the upmost priority,” Council Vice Chairman Colleen Morrone said. “And this study will help to engage our community (and) also give us updated information on the status of health in Delaware County.”
This move comes after a Robert Wood Johnson Foundation report ranked Delaware County 12th out of 67 Pennsylvania counties in terms of its health factors and 49th for health outcomes. This compared to a study conducted by the Aetna Foundation that ranked Delaware County as one of the top 500 healthiest counties in the nation.
“If you’re having two studies, one says we’re doing good and one says we’re doing bad, there’s got to be something that we can do to figure out what if anything we need to do better for our Delaware County residents,” Councilman Michael Culp said.
Rosemarie Halt of the Maternity Care Coalition explained some of the changing factors facing Delaware County, such as the opioid death rate at 36.9 per 100,000, which she said was higher than surrounding counties, as well as incidences of gun violence.
In addition, she said the rate of sexually transmitted disease was increasing and that there is racial differences with health outcomes in that black residents face greater barriers to health, such as rates of child poverty, low birth rates and infant mortality.
The county senior medical advisor, Dr. George Avetian, said Delaware County also has a $20,000 less average income than Chester County, which was identified as the top county for health outcomes in the Robert Wood Johnson report and has a denser population.
He added that the Robert Wood Johnson report is considered the gold standard in this type of evaluation.
“If the Robert Wood Johnson is the gold standard and it is saying that we are 49 out of 67, I think that ... should be a siren that we all hear that need to study what we are doing in Delaware County,” Councilman Brian Zidek said. “It absolutely does call for us to take a step back and figure out what we are doing in Delaware County and for those things that we can control, we should try to control them and do what we can to improve the health outcome for all Delaware County citizens.”
One thing Zidek said should be evaluated as part of this report is the possibility of a county health department.
“And I heard loud and clear a request that we study the wisdom of developing a countywide health department here in Delaware County – not necessarily a conclusion that we should or shouldn’t but that we should at least study the issue,” he said.
Council Chairman John McBlain said simply establishing a health department wouldn’t solve all of the county’s health problems.
“I get the impression from some people that if I added a wing onto this building and hired 100 people and called it a health department, people would think that children would be cured, there would be no more opioid problem, there would be no more gun violence,” he said.
He cautioned about the decades-old topic.
“I think everybody is going into this process, I hope, with an open mind,” McBlain said. “I wish people would put aside the partisan nature of what has been in the past an issue between one party and another about a department ... I hope this issue is studied and looked at as something that we look at the delivery of health services and how do we best improve that in Delaware County.”
A request for proposals may come before council as early as next Wednesday.
“We feel that the public health and safety of Delaware County is of the upmost priority. And this study will help to engage our community (and) also give us updated information on the status of health in Delaware County.”
— Council Vice Chairman Colleen Morrone