The season that began yesterday can have an impact on health and wellness. Kim Bush, director of the UT Tyler Center for Community and Rural Health Education, tells about the “Spring Into Good Health” health fair, which helps people manage blood pressure, foster cancer awareness and provide affordable vaccinations. Bush details the fair’s pivotal role in catalyzing a healthier lifestyle and its connection to a broader initiative, including year-round workshops that tackle not just physical ailments but the disparities in health care access between urban and rural communities. The fair is just one part of the UT Tyler School of Medicine’s focus on rural health.
TRANSCRIPT
LANDESS:
Spring cleaning is generally considered to be sprucing up your home, putting down mulch, perhaps some fresh paint, cleaning your windows. But spring is also a very good time to spruce up your health. I’m UT Tyler Radio News Director Mike Landess. In keeping with that thought, UT Tyler Radio Connects with the director of the Center for Community and Rural Health Education, Kim Bush. Can we spring into good health? Is that possible?
BUSH:
Yes, sir, it sure is. We are having the “Spring into Good Health” annual health fair. It’s a community-wide event that is free. And you will learn all about different things that can help you in springing into good health, such as learning how to manage your blood pressure, making sure that it is under control, not just taking medications, which you definitely need to follow the physician’s provider’s orders, getting those health screenings that you need, such as learning about breast cancer awareness, colorectal cancer, which this is actually the month of colorectal cancer awareness. And we have NetHealth, which is going to be there offering vaccines for a very small fee of $10, or, if someone has Medicaid, they can bill their Medicaid for that. A lot of opportunities to learn about all the free opportunities to help someone be healthier and to get a jumpstart in spring into a better, healthy lifestyle.
LANDESS:
This is taking place on March 23 at the UT Health East Texas Fifth Street clinic.
BUSH:
Yes, sir, it is on Saturday, March 23, and we will be there 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
LANDESS:
Sounds like it’s going to be a busy thing this spring into health event is a very good thing in itself, but it’s part of a larger four-season effort, correct?
BUSH:
Yes, we have a lot of opportunities out there around the year. We have the hypertension blood pressure management workshops. We also have an active living after cancer workshop. That’s for cancer survivors and their family, friends, caregivers — somebody that they would like to attend with them. We also have diabetes prevention. It is a CDC fully recognized program. It is a year long, but the year goes by very fast, and people don’t want to leave, so once they start building up those relationships with others and start learning about healthier lifestyles to prevent the catastrophic symptoms of Type 2 diabetes. We also have diabetes management programs, and we’re starting a new program that we haven’t offered yet, called Texercize. So there’ll be more to come about that in the near future.
LANDESS:
That sounds good. Now, in a variety of interviews we’ve done over the past couple of years, there’s one common health care take on East Texas, and that is if you get sick in Tyler or nearby, you’re likely to get the treatment that you need with a favorable outcome. If you don’t live in Tyler or very nearby, it might be a different story.
BUSH:
Sometimes that is the case because out in rural areas, there’s less opportunity to go, but we do have our different classes and workshops. We do take those in rural areas. We do serve all of Northeast Texas, and these programs are free and open to the public. They are 18 and older. We haven’t started into any adolescent or children’s programs, but we hopefully will very soon in the near future.
LANDESS:
Oh, I was just going to say I was thinking that ready access may be what they’re talking about there, not the programs that you do, which are a little broader and are supposed to help carry people through the year.
BUSH:
Yes, there are a few clinics in the very rural areas. However, a lot of people do have to drive, so connecting people with resources is something that we do try to do that as much as possible.
LANDESS:
It must be encouraging to see the new UT Tyler School of Medicine with a dedicated focus on keeping graduating docs here while promoting rural health.
BUSH:
Yes, definitely. We do have a Community Health Distinction. There’s other distinction programs, but the one that I’m involved in is Community Health Distinction. We are working on different community health projects that will be focused in rural and underserved areas. So that just started, and we’re in the process of building out those programs right now.
LANDESS:
What will those programs consist of?
BUSH:
Actually, the students will be highly involved in working with the community organization in that area, or a nonprofit, or we will actually just try to put together something that will be more beneficial to the community that it serves. So it could be anywhere from screenings; it could be providing services, it could be linking people to different areas. We are still you know, the possibilities are endless. We’re just still in the process of putting all that together.
LANDESS:
Tell us more about how your program goes about promoting community and rural health education. How do you do it?
BUSH:
Yeah, we’ve actually been doing this for over 10 years, and we do go to different community events outreaches, health fairs. We give presentations to different areas. For example, we have done presentations at local events such as the Camp County Health Fair that they’ve had. We’ve had the “Spring into Good Health” over the years since 2014, I believe is the first year. There’s the Northeast Texas CHW Coalition. We’re having our 10th annual conference this year here in Tyler. We’ve actually just finished at a health event in Marion County, which is at the Avenger Volunteer Fire Department. That was Saturday. We’ll be working with the School of Health Professions. There’ll be a Patriot Premiere event here.
BUSH:
We do go to other areas. Around Athens, we have the Cain Center, which is now the YMCA. We offer different classes there. We’ve been on the radio station in Athens. We did the B2B Expo. So if there’s an opportunity out there, we’re going to try to go to it and promote things. Then we have different opportunities at the Glass Center, the Tyler Public Library and the different Mineola Library, Lindale Library, all kinds of places. The possibilities are endless there as well.
LANDESS:
I believe Teladoc-type programs are now being used by a number of major East Texas health facilities. Does the lack of an in-person experience with a health professional matter in this day of Zoom calls? I’m also thinking about rural residents who you mentioned just a moment ago can’t just jump in a car and go for a variety of reasons.
BUSH:
Yes, sometimes that does seem informal because we do offer our classes. Especially when COVID came, we did have to pivot to — we went to conference calls, then we went to Zoom or Microsoft Teams. That’s also virtual. We still have those opportunities. We do a lot of things in hybrid mode, or we have just a face-to-face. People do have the opportunity to choose which one they want, or maybe they can’t attend one week, and so they do the virtual. But people really like the in-person. They are really tired of being virtual and remote, and they really appreciate someone communicating with them. So as much as that human contact that we can offer, sometimes that’s just good medicine itself is having that human contact and having a conversation and finding out what are the concerns or what are the needs, and we can help connect them to help meet those needs.
LANDESS:
What are your goals for the Community and Rural Health Education Center in 2024?
BUSH:
Well, we do have a lot of goals. We have our sights high. Of course, we want to reach more people, reach further counties. We serve about 28 counties in the Northeast Texas area. And some of the more rural areas, it’s harder to get to or get the information out there, such as a little town, which is a lot of people know, Frankston. We did go to a health fair there at the church, one of the local churches, and then we also worked with the clinic there to bring information. But it’s really just promoting and reaching those people in those areas who may not know or may not have the opportunity. We also do home visits when needed. For instance, one of our programs, we had a couple of people who had surgery, and so they had to stop coming to the program in the middle, and so we asked them, “Would it be possible if we came to your house we could do one-on-one?” And so they were ecstatic about that, and so just being able to reach people where they are, that’s the biggest goal.
BUSH:
We are going to be starting a new program, as I mentioned, the Texercise, which we are, everybody’s getting certified in that, and so hopefully we’ll have that out to the public this year.
BUSH:
Also a new diabetes self-management program that we’re working on to become recognized by a diabetic organization such as American Diabetes Association. There’s also another one, American Diabetic Association, which is called “ADCES,” and it’s Certified Education Specialist. So we’re working on building that program up and hiring a few additional people to help bring that out. We’re also going to be working in six additional counties this year. These are counties we haven’t really worked in before, which is Nacogdoches County, Angelina County, St. Augustine, and actually four of the counties are the ones we haven’t worked. Two of them, which are Henderson and Smith, we’ve always worked in those, but the last one is Trinity County. So those are a little bit further out, so we will need additional staff to help us with that. So getting those positions hired and expanding out to those areas and working with the different clinics and the FQHCs, which is the Federally Qualified Health Centers that work with people with less income or on Medicaid or that just don’t really have the opportunity to seek out your primary care.
LANDESS:
Thanks for listening as UT Tyler Radio Connects with the director of the Center for Community and Rural Health Education, Kim Bush. For UT Tyler Radio News, I’m Mike Landess.
(Transcripts are automatically generated and may contain phonetic spellings and other spelling and punctuation errors. Grammar errors contained in the original recording are not typically corrected.)
