Rural health project targets disparities across South Carolina

The Joseph F. Sullivan Center has performed health outreach in rural communities on behalf of Clemson University for nearly four decades. As part of the Clemson University College of Behavioral, Social and Health Sciences (CBSHS), the center has acquired improved outreach vehicles and expanded its staff, and leadership in the college are continuing that growth in order to meet the needs of rural populations.

According to Ron Gimbel, chair of Clemson’s Department of Public Health Sciences and director of the Sullivan Center, that growth is no longer limited to what a single center can do; if anything, Gimbel envisions the Sullivan Center among many as a spoke on a wheel. The hub of that wheel is a new, comprehensive infrastructure of programs and services dubbed Clemson Rural Health, which Gimbel said acts as an organizing framework for health service delivery and clinics as well as collaborative work involving health outreach and community development projects.

“The Sullivan Center’s modernization and expansion along with the numerous outreach projects coming up and underway in the college made it clear there was a need for an ‘umbrella’ under which all of these initiatives could be organized,” Gimbel said. “We have a proven track record in the area of rural health outreach and mobile health delivery and the need is certainly there and greater than ever before; it’s time we expand to meet it.”

According to Gimbel, Clemson Rural Health aims to make a positive, measurable difference in three primary health areas. It seeks to reduce preventable hospitalizations by addressing prevalent, chronic diseases such as hypertension and uncontrolled diabetes in rural areas.

Clemson Rural Health also works to enhance healthy behaviors that include diet and exercise and the reduction of unhealthy behaviors such as excessive alcohol use. Education aimed at reducing teen births and sexually transmitted diseases falls into this work as well.

The third and final major health area the program addresses is a reduction in premature death, which it defines as deaths in people under age 75. The causes of death correlate with those health issues the program is targeting to reduce preventable hospitalizations.

Clemson Rural Health has expanded in the past few years from one large mobile health clinic to five mobile health units. The large mobile clinic still offers numerous services and can transform from one large meeting room into several individual patient rooms, but the additional, smaller units offer targeted health services such as mobile mammography. The newest mobile health units are tailored to support the lengthy COVID-19 recovery period the state will soon face.

 

In 2009, United Christian Ministries opened in Abbeville County to aid people in financial need. When talk of adding a free clinic soon followed, Normand raised her hand thinking she was volunteering to help. In actuality, she volunteered to be the clinic’s director.

The Abbeville free clinic is just one of more than 40 rural outreach clinics; which include hospitals, family practices, community centers and farms; that Clemson Rural Health currently conducts. Some areas have greater specific needs than others, but the barriers that Normand describes for the people of Abbeville County are largely the same across South Carolina.

When Gimbel and CBSHS Dean Leslie Hossfeld were busy laying out the overall plan for Clemson Rural Health, coronaviruses weren’t widely discussed outside of infectious disease circles and clinicians. However, Gimbel and Hossfeld recognize that COVID-19 has become a formidable threat to rural health, so the priorities for Clemson Rural Health have evolved to reflect it.

COVID-19 is certainly a cause of premature death. Steps to reduce its transmission have been shown to reduce preventable hospitalizations. Enhancing healthy behaviors such as good hand hygiene and social distancing have proven to be a key in reducing the spread of COVID-19. At this point, not factoring COVID-19 into Clemson Rural Health would be like trying to ignore heart disease or cancer.

Detailed studies of food insecurity completed in Pickens and Oconee Counties—as well as secured funding to study many more counties in the same way—are helping the college understand the issues as it implements solutions. These outreach programs are informed by research, and they simultaneously engage current Clemson students with practical learning experiences.