SOPH holds Inaugural Research Day
Published on Monday, April 17, 2023
By: Andrea Wright Dilworth, awdilworth@umc.edu
Photos By: Melanie Thortis/ UMMC Communications
At its Inaugural Research Day on April 14, the John D. Bower School of Population Health at the University of Mississippi Medical Center implored students, faculty, staff, alumni and supporters to think about how they can leverage resources and apply evidence to improve health outcomes in the state.
Sharing their vision for a healthier Mississippi in a dual keynote address, Dr. Thomas Dobbs, dean, and Dr. Daniel Edney, state health officer for the Mississippi State Department of Health, highlighted the state’s biggest challenges and asserted they are fixable if we invest in and become champions of health care.
“We have designed a system to fail people,” said Dobbs. “Does health care equal health? It’s important. But if we look at the factors that make someone healthy, only about 20 percent is attributed to clinical care. There are a host of other things that make someone healthy.”
Those other factors include transportation and access to healthy foods and good schools to secure a good job, so no amount of money spent on health care in itself will fix health, said Dobbs.
Instead, he said, the state must invest in health. “We’re OK with spending an unrealistically high amount of investment in people who are at advanced stage illness, but we do very, very little to support people to stay healthy.”
SOPH needs to collaborate with the university community to solve the state’s health-related issues, said Dr. Jennifer Reneker, associate professor and assistant dean of scholarly innovation. “We cannot do that without the application of team science and the engagement of health care professionals in implementation research. Learning about the many opportunities for collaboration was important for all of us today if we are going to be part of a solution for a healthier Mississippi.”
That includes training the next generation of researchers to help address the state’s ills. Four Jackson Heart Study Graduate Training and Education Center scholars – who are pursuing doctoral degrees in medicine, social work and pharmacy – presented their research on topics including heart failure patients’ access to health care and the correlation between sleep and type 2 diabetes.
“The growth of the GTEC scholars over their two-year training program is remarkable,” said Reneker. “I could not be more proud of their dedication to learning cardiovascular epidemiology and their willingness to ‘lean in’ to the process.”
But population health isn’t just about health. Dr. Patrick Alexander, associate professor of English and African American studies at the University of Mississippi and one of five inducted into the L.C. Dorsey Honor Society, shared successes of the Mississippi Prison-to-College Pipeline Program he co-founded in which faculty teach college-level courses to imprisoned men and women. Their published research contributes to the relatively new critical prison studies field.
Mississippi ranked third in the nation for incarceration in 2018, with 626 prisoners for every 100,000 people, according to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics. This makes the imprisoned a population of concern, said Reneker.
Raising awareness and being a champion when you identify deficiencies are components of public health, said Edney. Health insurance doesn’t mean you have access, he said, adding that 87 percent of maternal deaths in the last reported year were Medicaid moms. “They all had Medicaid. They still died because of social determinants they were not able to access in the way the rest of us are.”
Another priority of the health department are rural communities, an inequity Edney identified and brought to the attention of state leaders.
“If you have the best insurance policy in Mayersville, Miss., you still don’t have access to care. We have health care deserts throughout the state.”
When he talks about the national score card, which measures factors including access to health care, Edney doesn’t sugarcoat the state’s ranking. “I tell people we’re not just 50th among other states. If we had 60 states, we’d be 60th. We’re well below the national median.
“This data represents dead babies. Dead mommas. Diabetics with one leg. Hypertensive folks on dialysis. We could go on and on and on,” Edney said.
“I’m asking you to join me and the rest of us at the health department to stop accepting it. Somebody has to be 50th, but it doesn’t have to be Mississippi.”
Mississippi had been last place in both education and health care for most of his life, said Edney, a native of Greenville, adding that the state made the decision to invest in education, elevating its ranking to 38.
“What would 38th in the nation in health mean to morbidity and mortality in Mississippi? This is fixable.”
Edney said Mississippi is last because public health costs money, and the state isn’t investing the resources required to fix it. One example: State appropriations to the health department were cut by 40 percent in 2016, around the time syphilis cases started increasing.
An addiction medicine doctor, Edney said Mississippians must tackle the state’s plight as an addict would a 12-step program: The first step is admitting there is a problem.
“All of us, first of all me, have utterly failed in this regard. Until we as individuals in this state accept responsibility for where we are, how we got here, nothing is going to change.
“At the state level, we’ve got to start taking responsibility for our brothers and sisters. Become a champion of public health. Care about it. Care about what’s going on in counties that you may never step foot in. And be willing to talk to your legislators, your supervisors, about the importance of public health. It is worthy of investment.”