HSAC Forum Report 2001 - Laserfiche WebLink

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2001 HSAC Forum minorities further out into the County combined with an inordinate proportion of rental housing. Dobelstein said that Orange County should focus on changing the structural conditions that are leading to poverty. It should institute a county plan that acknowledges, analyzes, and "Children who grow up in distributes resources to alleviate these single - parent female-headed families are almost ten times more likely to grow up in poverty than children in two - parent married families." conditions. Human services agencies should evaluate their services and outcomes tracking procedures to make sure they're meeting people's complex needs rather than just carrying on with what they've been doing for years and years. Agencies should even ask: "Should we go out of business ?," or "'Should we combine ?" He said —Dr. Andrew Dobelstein that although the trends in poverty would not change quickly, community leaders — business, University — must be brought together with local government to address the issues. Dr. Rosemary Summers opened the panel discussion with a perspective on the health needs of those in poverty. She said that poverty is no respecter of age and all people have different but similar health needs. ORANGE COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENT STATISTICS BASED ON TELEPHONE SURVEYS 17% (or 18,700) residents of Orange County have no regular source of healthcare. Private insurance Medicare Medicaid Uninsured 75% 10% 5% 13 -14% (or 14,300) 8.5% said cost prevents them from going to physicians. 4% said cost prevented physician care for a child. 4.5% said that transportation was a barrier. 7% of mothers have little or no prenatal care. Summers said that often we assign health disparities to minority groups within our populations but that we really need view the disparities as being largely factors of poverty. The inability to make healthy lifestyle 2