Diane Bernard
Virginia’s State Rural Health Plan was approved this week, after months of meetings with community members and analyzing data to assess the region’s health-care needs.
The five-year strategic blueprint has a new emphasis on boosting support for healthy moms and babies.
Heather Anderson, director of the State Office of Rural Health, and her team created the action plan and presented parts of it at a recent Rural Health Voice Conference sponsored by the Virginia Rural Health Association.
Anderson said helping pregnant women is a high priority, because many rural communities she met with say they do not have OB/GYN or birthing services.
“We can definitely try and do some things here at the state level that incentivize those providers to go into those areas,” Anderson asserted. “And hopefully, we’ll see some improvement in the next few years with healthy moms and babies.”
She pointed out the plan includes data and research and is a guideline for policymakers and rural Virginians to build services to make residents of these areas healthier. It hadn’t been updated since 2013. The full plan will be released in the next few weeks.
Anderson stressed community engagement was key to updating the program. In addition to maternal health, she reported people said they need better access to healthy food and drug recovery services. Improving broadband is another area in need of support.
“With the pandemic, people had used telehealth for healthcare services, and we still found that a lot of the rural communities didn’t have access to broadband, so that’s a theme as well,” Anderson recounted.
More than a million people live in rural Virginia and many areas do not have enough health-care providers, according to the Virginia Health Care Foundation. In underserved regions, people often go without treatment or travel long distances for health or behavioral health services.
Many rural Virginians turned to telehealth to address medical issues during the pandemic, since many live far away from services. In some areas, however, adequate internet service is a concern. (Adobe Stock)
