Public Health Issues in Southern Oregon

Ben Wright

Public Health

Fugal

Five Issues in Public Health in Jackson County, Oregon

To do some research for this assignment I had the chance to speak with Belle Sheperd who is the Public Health Division Manager for Jackson County, Oregon, which is where I am from. She has a BA from the University of Oregon in Psychology and a Masters in Public Health from the University of Washington. She has worked int he Public Health field for 18 years and told me that she absolutely loves it. She said that because of working in administration she sometimes has to deal with bureaucracy issues within the city government she works with, but she said that it’s part of the job and she has to get creative sometimes. I asked her about her degree in Psychology and if she’s been able to use that in her job and she said that because of that background she can go from working with the population at large to working on a more personal level when needed. I thought that was pretty interesting.

The five issues in Public Health for Southern Oregon that she told me about were the following:

  She told me that the education standards that the state has set are not being met in the schools in Jackson County. Because of this there is an increasing number of high school drop outs who don’t get a very good education, and who go to work somewhere without ever being properly educated about how to take care of their health.  In attempting to solve the problem the county is focusing on getting the kids that have dropped out, or will drop out, a GED so that they can get a better job. How does this affect Public Health? As kids increasingly neglect a good education they neglect the chance to educate themselves about their own health, their ignorance becomes their enemy and it can literally kill them because they don’t know what they’re doing.

Another issue Belle told me about was a concern for public safety and security that the public has. People have begun to ask themselves if the routes to school for their kids are safe and so should they just take them to school in their car? They have begun to ask themselves if it is safe for their kids to be playing outside. Domestic violence is a HUGE problem in Medford and it is always in the news, so that in itself is a Public Health issue, but because it is public knowledge the public begins to do things or not do things that are not good for them. If kids don’t get outside enough to play their possibility of being obese can greatly increase. One reason for the fear of going outside is that the greenways and paths where people would be exercising are not adequately lit and so people do not feel safe going there. 

Drug and alcohol abuse is also a huge problem in my home county. I was raised there and as kids we heard many a story about drug busts happening frequently around our middle school and high school. One of the reasons for this is that the I-5 highway runs right through the middle of Jackson County and that is a large transportation tool for drug dealers. All along the I-5 corridor there are drugs being sold, especially heroine and marijuana. Methamphetamines are easily and frequently made in houses all over Southern Oregon. There is large campaign against “meth” in Medford that has been going on for quite some time and there are D.A.R.E. programs in elementary schools that try to nip the problem in the bud before it becomes a disaster.

Belle mentioned teen pregnancy as being an ever-growing and concerning problem in Jackson County, particularly among Latino girls. Jackson County has the highest Hispanic population in Oregon, and there is beginning to exist a major culture difference between the parents who generally come here late in life and their kids who come here very young or who are even born here. Studies in Medford alone have shown that Hispanic kids don’t feel a strong connection with their parents because they are forced to straddle two cultures at the same time. They don’t feel like they have the support they need to combat the problems they face. Jackson County has 10th highest teen pregnancy rate in the state and of those teenage girls the Latino percentage is double the caucasian percentage at a staggering 13%. They are trying to come up with solutions for this problem. 

The only environmental factor in Jackson County’s public health that Belle mentioned was the air quality. When I was younger it was really bad but is now better, and I believe that is due to a few mills being shut down along with other environmentally-friendly steps that have been taken. There is, however, still an inversion layer which causes fairly high asthma rates in Jackson County, along with other respiratory issues. What else can be done to improve the air quality? They continue to wrestle with ideas constantly but are trying to figure out what will be the most effective. 

I’m very glad that I had this opportunity to look into the public health side of my home town. I had never done it before, but looking back into my memories I see things differently now than how I used to see them. I remember seeing many more Hispanic girls that were pregnant in middle school and high school than white or black girls, but I never asked myself why. Now I understand a little better how much health disparities really can affect the health and overall well being of everyone.