In two parts tonight, part disease and the obesity epidemic. No disease
kills more Americans annually than heart disease. At least half of
all Americans are at risk because of factors such as obesity, elevated
blood pressure, high cholesterol or smoking, and that's projected
to get even worse in the coming decades. Stephanie Sai reports from
Mississippi, the state with the highest rate of heart disease on
how access to care is affecting residents in the rural Delta.
How does that feel, Terry?
Is it hard in a small room talked away at Greenwood, Leflore hospitals,
physical rehab center nurse Lee Roaches, putting her patients through
their paces
that close to the front is easier.
Okay, dragging behind. You're gonna be back over here in this chair.
Each patient here is recovering from a serious cardiac event like
a heart attack or heart surgery and as they go through their circuit
of exercises, each patient's heart rate and blood pressure are closely
monitored Exercise, though walking will actually make it go down,
so and then we got to watch the sugars that you eat while they're
here, roach peppers and counseling around medication and wellness.
Small changes, and my very big differences in lifestyle is what I
like to say. You know, we can change a little bit 66 year old Leslie
rounds travels here from a small rural town almost an hour away.
She recently had a stent put in her heart
whole lot since
You know, I didn't come in
75 year old James Wellborn is recovering from open heart surgery
in November. You can't do this three days a week without feeling
different, the one that help you sleep. Education is a big part of
it and try to make sure that while they're here that we get everything
that they need to know to decrease the likelihood of having to come
back.
After another cardiac event, so it's very rewarding for me to see
people actually.
Change.
It's changed that's desperately needed in the Mississippi Delta,
a swath of fertile farmland bound by two rivers northwest of Jackson.
The region has among the highest poverty and heart disease rates
in the country.
The Mississippi Delta is the canary in the coal mine.
Dr. Daniel Edney is Mississippi's top health officer and a practicing
physician for more than 30 years in the state. You have to understand,
and Mississippi poverty drives most everything.
And with poverty comes obesity.
Because there are fewer choices for healthy food, and there are fewer
opportunities for exercise and increased activity. BCD drives diabetes,
which drives in coordination with hypertension, drives, heart disease
and stroke. Overlaying all of that is access to access to care.
Access that Edney says, is made more limited by the fact that Mississippi
is one of 11 states that has not expanded Medicaid change that has
been resisted by Republican leaders in the state
to advocate one way or the other, but point out where the resources
are and you know, in 2023 part of federal funding of health care
is the affordable care act. It just is.
And we have a very big danger in Mississippi, especially Mississippi
Delta of hospitals, closing or downgrading services. Greenwood LeFlore
Hospital has been open for more than a century, but it's now on borrowed
time. Hospital officials say they only have enough money to stay
solvent through June.
Not just pain. Anything like that. Dr Abbas to Kure is Greenwood
Leflore, only cardiologist. The hospital has closed its maternity
ward and intensive care unit and has 40% fewer employees than it
had in 2021. You are eating good, not not bad stuff, right?
In love in his own unit. Doctor took or had a nurse practitioner
laid off as well. People can get sick and can die from this kind
of disease where we can help if we can catch it early.
It's preventable deaths, right?
Hey, ho. How are you doing? Fine. 50 year old Hope Cooper has an
elevated heart rate and a leaky heart valve. She has been seeing
Dr Takur for almost three years. Not feeling well today, So if I
had to drive myself somewhere else, besides, I don't think I couldn't
would have been able to make that drive. So we need him here at Green
Wood Floor Hospital.
You know, it's not just Oh, I want to go here. No, we need him here.
The crisis in rural healthcare access comes as rates of heart disease
are expected to surge across the country. A study released last August
projected that heart disease and risk factors like diabetes, hypertension
and obesity would rise steeply over the next 35 years, especially
among black and Hispanic Americans.
Even as they decrease for whites. How do you even begin to prepare
for that? Given that you're already so busy now?
You do your best. You fired the war the army you have. So that's
what my principal list. So you know that you do your best. You keep
doing it even one life at the time. One patient at a time.
And those patients come from all over the region about 25 miles south
of Greenwood. Leflore is the small town of Chula, surrounded by farmland.
Its population of 1652 is more than 97% black.
Actually kind of like a graveyard where they put all the people they
can't work anymore. Aaron Denton have lived around Chula, their whole
lives. Both were born to sharecroppers who worked on the same plantations
where their great grandparents were once enslaved. Coming up. You
went to the doctor, you was in bad shape. You know you were lean
and hurting and everything else you wouldn't know Checkups.
You didn't have any preventative care. No grandmama, go in the kitchen
and do some homebrewing and
Kept it going. Aaron was hospitalized at Greenwood Leflore for an
irregular heartbeat in 2021. Queenie was diagnosed with congestive
heart failure there in 2020. That house bill is very important because
not many people can make it to Jackson DFB, quite frankly, not running
in this area.
Because they don't have the transportation so
If they close the closest thing to us down
Then it's gonna be back to whereas
Like living on the plantation. I didn't can't get in the healthcare.
Mississippi has a history of chattel slavery. Of course, Health disparities
also are result of this racial and economic injustices of this system.
That was that was four sponsors. Julian Miller is a professor at
Tougaloo College in Jackson, historically Black College. He's also
1/5 Generation Delton with a family history of heart disease. Miller
is helping lead a $6 million National Institutes of Health funded
study.
Examining how access to healthy food can improve health disparities
over this five year study to recruit 300 patients actually provide
them access to locally grown fresh produce and studied their health
outcomes. Additionally, this project has the benefit of also building
a sustainable food system in the delta with the investment it's making
in building production on the ground, so our health would drive our
economic security.
Miller hopes this is the first step in making food as important as
medicine. We want to be able to have a system where Medicare and
Medicaid dollars are used to purchase locally grown fresh food the
same way it's used to purchase prescription drugs. But the reality
today for patients in the delta is very different.
Greenwood LeFlore Hospital Administrators are taking action to get
more funding, but it's not clear it will save the hospital.
What is the worst case scenario? If this place has to close and have
you thought about your plans, one patient told me
We will collect money.
And open a clinic. Warrior
patient told you they would open a clinic for you doctors so they
could keep you in this community.
That's how much you mean to them. And I don't think she has him in
$100 spare. So she still the world go and community will collect
it. Would you stay? I will try.
Over at the cardiac rehab center. Nurse Lee Roach also keeps trying.
It's disheartening.
My parents still live here, you know.
If the hospital close I just
It would just not be good.
People would die.
People need care.
In fact, they need it more than ever.