Jim Beam column:Medical trailer will save lives

Some 4,600 residents in 10 counties and parishes in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi are going to be tested for heart disease — testing that will save many of their lives.

I say that because similar testing I had in the 1990s has helped me reach age 90. It was my wife’s cardiologist’s suggestion that I get a pet scan, and he said it showed I was headed for a major heart attack. He put me on the same diet, exercise and medication program my wife was on and it did the job.

The Associated Press reported that public health experts from some of the nation’s leading research institutions have deployed a massive medical trailer to rural parts of the South that will test the 4,600 individuals..

The South was selected because that is where heart disease is rampant. The goal of the testing is to understand why the rates of heart and lung disease are dramatically higher in the South than in other parts of the U.S.

Dr. Vasan Ramachandran, a leader of the testing project, said, “This rural health disadvantage, it doesn’t matter whether you’re White or Black, it hurts you. No race is spared, although people of color fare worse.”

In addition to testing, researchers will collect information about their environments, health history and lifestyles. They are also giving them a fitness tracker and plan to survey them repeatedly for years to check for any major medical events.

Ramachandran, now dean of the University of Texas School of Public Health in San Antonio, said rural populations in the U.S. rarely receive such personal, long-term attention from epidemiologists. More than a dozen institutions are helping with the study, including Johns Hopkins University, the University of California, Berkeley, and Duke University.

The 52-foot-long, 27-ton trailer is outfitted with instruments that examine calcium in the arteries, the structure of the heart, lung capacity and other, more common health indicators such as blood pressure and weight. The initial exam can take more than three hours.

Lynn Spruill, the mayor of Starkville, Mississippi, in Oktibbeha County, said, “They’re reaching out and going out into the community in ways that I have not seen before.”

The trailer arrived there in 2022 and medical staff tested more than 700 people.

The AP said mortality rates from heart disease — the leading cause of death in the U.S. — for people 35 and older are more than twice the national average in some rural communities. Lung conditions such as chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD, which the study is also examining, are also more prevalent in the South.

Researchers say hospital closures and physician shortages have left many rural residents with limited access to care. Healthy food, fitness opportunities and public transit are often scarcer. Poverty rates are higher, and fewer people receive health coverage through their employers.

Smoking is another problem. A 2019 study by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention shows at least 20% of adults smoked in Alabama, Kentucky, Louisiana and Mississippi. In 2022, self-reported height and weight put between 38% and 40% of adults in the four states in the obese body mass index category.

The AP said the trailer is now in Louisiana’s northeastern Franklin Parish, where the death rate from heart disease between 2019 and 2021 was a whopping 859 per 100,000 people for those 35 and over, according to CDC data. About 200 miles south in New Orleans it was 340 per 100,000.

The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute plans to extend the study to 2031, and researchers hope to examine all the participants in person again.

Lindsay Pool, an epidemiologist with the institute, said, “The longer you can follow people, the more you can understand disease development and progression.”

Regular medical checkups, vaccinations, medications, exercise and a proper diet are all keys to good health. The health tests being conducted in four southern states will serve those states well.

I know I live in a state where many people have lost respect for medical institutions and immunizations, some of that thanks to actions of the Louisiana Legislature, but both have served me well for many years.

For the health and safety of our children and all Louisiana citizens, we can only hope attitudes change before too long.

Jim Beam , the retired editor of the American Press , has covered people and politics for more than six decades. Contact him at 337-515-8871 or jim.beam.press@gmail.com.