McGraw: “… we have a great opportunity …”
MONTICELLO – Sullivan County officials are seeing success in digging out of a deep hole – their long-standing ranking of 61st out of 62 New York counties for health outcomes.
During an upbeat presentation by several county officials, at the county government center in Monticello on Wednesday, County Public Health Director Nancy McGraw said the only way to go is up.
“In terms of the rankings, we have great opportunity to really focus on moving the needle because of health factors have improved,” McGraw said. “We’re now 47th, from 58th, and I think we need to really focus on what underlies those and continues that hard work.”
One downside is the growing problem of opioid abuse and deaths, but County Legislator Nadia Rajsz, who chairs the Health and Family Services Committee, said there are many factors moving in the right direction. They include an unemployment rate that is significantly down, to 4.8 percent, a decrease in adult smoking rates, down to 18 percent from more than 23 percent, a decrease in alcohol driving deaths, a decrease in preventable hospital stays and an increase in the percentage of people with health insurance coverage.
And, there’s natural benefit of living in Sullivan County.
“As we all know in Sullivan, we have clean and healthy physical environment, with good air and water quality and we need to protect that,” Rajsz said.
The logistics came from Catskill Regional Medical Center CEO Jonathan Schiller, who said they have a plan to grow the presence of health professionals in Sullivan County.
“People either want to live in a rural community or they don’t. Physicians are no different, and what we’ve identified is that the best thing that we can do to help our community is to start our own training program. So, we’re doing the application process for an accredited rural family medicine training program that will help us produce, if you will, three primary care physicians every year after the program is up and running and the first graduating class would be 2023.”
Schiller said there are many new components in place at CRMC, including the new primary care facility which opened last year in Kiamesha Lake. That office is caring for over 1,000 patients per month. Also in place, or in the pipeline, Schiller said, an outreach to local employers to implement wellness programs and working with the county to provide training for emergency personnel on how to deal with opioid victims.
Among the other organizations detailing their roles during the news conference were Sullivan 180, Sullivan Renaissance and Cornell Cooperative Extension.
