Katie Page leads a presentation on maternal health and midwifery at a rural health committee meeting in Farmville on June 18, 2024. (Charlotte Rene Woods/Virginia Mercury)
A rural health committee met in Farmville this week as part of ongoing efforts to hear from community members and experts on rural healthcare disparities and brainstorm ways to fix them.
Assembled earlier this year, the bipartisan cohort has been hosting meetings around the state to focus on different challenges to healthcare access in rural communities. The group is also tasked with delivering policy recommendations by the end of the year.
Some of those recommendations may include trying again on bills that didn’t cross the finish line this year or were vetoed by Gov. Glenn Youngkin.
Such was the case for a bill to reestablish a maternal health task force, which had been tabled for this year, and a bill to require unconscious bias training when renewing medical licenses, which Youngkin vetoed last month. An effort to collect data on fetal and infant mortality had also been tabled.
Katie Page, a certified nurse-midwife with Centra Health who serves as the legislative liaison for the American College of Nurse-Midwives said she considered those policies to be important.
Page was among presenters at the meeting where maternal health was a focus of discussion. As a midwife, she explained the role the medical professionals play in labor and delivery as well as prenatal and postnatal care.
Maternal health was a focal point of Tuesday’s meeting in Farmville in Virginia’s South Side. Other topics included overlapping issues with regards to access such as dental care and how free clinics have been “safety nets” for communities since Virginia expanded Medicaid several years ago.
Workforce development was a shared concern for the various industries and a suggestion that emerged during the discussion was a sales pitch to medical professionals about working in rural areas.
Polly Raible, director of Delta Dental of Virginia Foundation, said “we’re not doing enough” to ask medical professionals what would bring them to rural areas. And, she added that Virginia isn’t doing enough to “sell” what’s attractive about rural areas and working in them.
Another challenge that the different groups shared was transportation for patients — be it travel time and cost or less access to public transportation options. The matter also popped up when the committee met in Tazewell this past spring, the first of its several meetings scheduled throughout this year.
“What we’re finding out is that even if you can find a provider, so many people can’t get to them or their follow up visits,” said Del. Rodney Willett, D-Henrico, who chairs the committee.
Originally from Farmville, Willett recalled how his own family had to drive up to an hour away for dental care growing up. That’s not feasible for everyone, he said, and added that allocating state and federal funding towards transportation can help families.
“Money of course could always be part of the equation, but we’ve got to look at that,” he said. “But once you’ve got the funding, can you find a transportation company willing to provide services in a really rural area? We’ve got some figuring out to do there; this (issue) just keeps hitting us in the face.”
He suspects transportation struggles will surface in future presentations at future committee meetings. The next meeting is slated for mid-September on Virginia’s Eastern Shore. Willett said the details are still being finalized.
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