Portland Oregon Public Health trends

Hanna Harris
I finally talked to to Laurie Smith who works for the Oregon Public Health Division as a public health nurse. Her title is Liaison to Local Health Departments. She told me four trends she has noticed in the Portland area.

1. Laurie said that on of the issues they are looking into how healthy communities are built on their environment. Health is built on more then just individual lifestyle, where an individual lives also has an effect on health. A few examples she gave are sidewalks so people can walk, availability of healthy food in poor neighborhoods, and tobacco-free policies that limit smoking in public. So what they are working on is improving the health of a neighborhood, so that the people have better health. I volunteered for a organization that built neighborhoods that provided a clean community and helped them grow their own healthy food.

2. Like in any city, as long as there are minorities, there are health disparities. As she defined it health disparities are "different racial and ethnic groups having different levels of health." Its a goal to rid portland of these disparities so that everyone can have good health, dispit being from different racial and ethnic groups. I know that health care reform is also an issue they are looking at. And by fixing the health care system, perhaps it can help get rid of health disparities.

3. Like a lot of cities obesity is a problem in Portland. Especially with childhood obesity. The number of children that are obese has increased over the years. Kids are less active and eat more. With obesity there is an increased risk for chronic heart disease, so as the number obese individuals go up, the number of individuals that develop chronic heart diseases will increase.

4. Laure said, "health care reform in Oregon is huge right now." This is true for the whole country with Obamacare. Health care is very expensive and good health care is not available for everyone. I guess the trend we can take from this, is that the health care in Oregon has worsened and has increase incredibly in price.