DALLAS (WBAP/KLIF)- The Dallas County Health Department and Parkland Hospital are working with city and county leaders on how to fix health disparities in the city.
According to the Dallas County Community Health Needs Assessment, residents who live in the Cedars area are expected to die 23 years sooner than those living in the Uptown area. Doctor Phil Huang with the Dallas County Health Department says socioeconomic disparities play a huge factor. “Access to education, workforce, access to being able to be successful, the neighborhood environment doesn’t support people being healthy…there’s crime so people can’t walk around their neighborhood for exercise and they can’t get access to healthy foods,” said Huang. 
The groups met to discuss how to bridge that gap and fix issues. As part of the community assessment, dozens of focus groups were conducted with participants from 49 groups representing patients, community-based organizations and health care professionals. Participants wanted to see improved access to care with changes in federal and state health care policies. Data shows, those needing access to care include lack of insurance coverage, poor health literacy, access to medication, to name a few.
Education was also highlighted as top priority in the assessment. While health literacy was discussed often over the course of the focus groups, a number of participants raised the issue of reading literacy and the challenges patients have when they are unable to read treatment plans and prescriptions. Another factor was the access to transportation, to get to health facilities. District 3 County Commissioner John Wiley Price said this concerns people in his district. He said he wants to see a more strategic plans instead of more data. “The communities are deserted and we’ve known this…I’ve been saying this for over a decade in the court of commissioners and so now I expect some action,” he said.
In all, there was a consensus that a collective, community-wide approach is needed to address the barriers to better health within Dallas County. “They must have, under the Affordable Care Act, a strategic plan…from the moment they collected the data and assembled it, they have 90 days to come up with a plan,” Wiley Price said. “Where’s the money, show me the money,” he said.
Price said they need to come up with a plan by February 15th.
