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PREVIOUSLY: TODAY in SUPES: Arroyo Delivers Presentation on Local Medical Provider Challenges

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Dear Supervisors:

We commend Supervisor Arroyo for taking a lead role in heightening attention to the health care crisis facing many of our residents, and the Board of Supervisors for paying early attention.

Each of you represents a district within a county that is among the most geographically isolated  in the State of California. All districts represent a county with the 52nd lowest per capita income of the State of California! 

This County is critically underserved on many levels when it comes to adequate health care. There is a crisis unfolding before our very eyes, a crisis that we must confront sooner rather than later. Health care is a human right in a civilized society, yet the health care crisis Humboldt County is experiencing disproportionately places at risk, at times with devastating consequences, low-income individuals and families just above the medicare income cap, fragile elders, those without adequate social support systems and those with private or no insurance who cannot access medical care locally.

Your Human Rights Commission urges action immediately to address the decreasing number of doctors and healthcare services within our area. Experts have noted that since 2005, [there has been] a 28% reduction in primary care physicians and a more than 33% loss of surgical and medical specialists. Our population is aging, continues to be low in income, and is far removed from population centers where these needs could be better met.

The Human Rights Commission urges the Humboldt County Board of Supervisors, as leaders with the interest of the entire county as your portfolio, to join with interested institutions such as Cal Poly Humboldt, College of the Redwoods, our chambers of commerce and others in convening a public process to identify public solutions and generate action to confront the crisis. Such action is not to criticize or doubt our health care institutions, but to recognize that the public interest is larger, is not exactly the same, and may likely have other assets available to complement their activity. 

This isn’t so much a matter of throwing money at a problem as it is thinking “outside the box.”

Our economic, educational, and health futures depend on decisive steps being taken. Recent conferences such as Supporting Healthy Aging and Surveying our Medical Landscape have drawn a bleak picture of a critical component of our infrastructure if we do not begin taking action now.

The Human Rights Commission stands ready to assist in whatever way is useful. We are not health experts either, but we recognize the future of our county is dependent as much on healthy communities as it is on prosperous ones.

Respectfully,

Jim Glover, Chair
Humboldt County Human Rights Commission