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Show RURAL HEALTH Health Councils Bring Better Medical Care to Rural Areas One of the brightest indications of progress in securing more doctors doc-tors and better health facilities for rural areas in this country is the recent announcement by the American Ameri-can Medical Association that community com-munity health councils in the nation have increased from 82 to nearly 300 in the last two years. These figures are based on a survey sur-vey of the association's council on medical service in which county medical societies were queried, Thomas A. Hendricks of Chicago, secretary of the council, reported. Local achievements of the community com-munity health councils in the last five years include construction of hospitals with the aid of the hospital hos-pital survey and construction act (Hill-Burton act); increasing available avail-able hospital beds; developing clinics; clin-ics; securing more doctors, dentists, den-tists, nurses and other needed personnel; per-sonnel; development of fulltime local lo-cal public health services; health examination ex-amination of children of school and pre-school age and correction of their remediable health defects; promotion of voluntary prepayment medical care and hospitalization; provision of medical care for the aged and chronically ill, and meeting meet-ing costs of medical service to families fami-lies unable to pay for hospitalization hospitaliza-tion and doetors' bills, according to Hendricks. In some instances community councils have been extremely helpful help-ful in cooperating with the national mental health program. Councils have matched government funds to pay mental health clinic personnel and conducted educational campaigns cam-paigns to acquaint communities with the value and manner of operation op-eration of the clinics. And although health councils have been organized in urban as well as in rural areas, they have been especially es-pecially important in bringing bet- ter medical care to the people in rural communities, Hendricks said. THE A.M.A.'s efforts to promote organization of community health councils to improve medical care for long neglected rural communities communi-ties date back to the organization of the association's committee on rural health five years ago. Since that time it has been actively engaged en-gaged in coordinating the efforts of farm groups and state and local medical societies in 'rural health. The committee is set up so that its representatives can be reached locally in any area. Doctors selected select-ed by state medical societies serve as directors in nine regions and as state rural health chairmen in 45 states. Any organization wanting information in-formation on setting up a local health council or solving rural health problems may contact one of these representatives or write directly to the A.M. A. rural health committee' in Chicago. AS AN EXAMPLE of how the council plan works, suppose members mem-bers of an Ohio farm bureau wrote the A.M.A. that a community needs a doctor and does not have the facilities facili-ties to attract him. The community wants to build and staff a health clinic with aid from the hospital survey and construction act What happens? The information is referred to the regional director who takes the matter up with the state rural health chairman and the state medical med-ical society. The state chairman and the medical society contact the farm bureau, a meeting is called, and the state chairman and representatives repre-sentatives of the state and local medical societies, farm organizations organiza-tions and civic groups get together at the community level to work out the problem. That the rural health problem is steadily being solved through cooperative coop-erative community efforts was generally gen-erally agreed at a conference on rural health in Kansas City, Mo. The conference brought together more than 500 medical and lay leaders lead-ers concerned with providing medical medi-cal care to small communities. |
