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WSU Study Finds Eastern-Western Washington Health Disparities

Doug Nadvornick/SPR

This week, researchers with the WSU College of Medicine released a report showing residents in eastern Washington are more likely to die early from most of the 10 major causes of mortality than people on the west side. Some of those illnesses include cancer, heart disease, Alzheimer’s, stroke and diabetes. The one cause of death where western Washington’s rates are higher is drug overdoses.

Jonathan Espenschied is the college’s associate dean for graduate medical education and continuing medical education. He says researchers gathered data from the Washington Department of Health and crunched the numbers.

“There’s not a big difference between all of those top 10 that we looked at, but there are differences in every one of those top 10," Espenschied said. "It was surprising. It was generating further hypotheses on why these are occurring, what’s happening, how do we look at these areas, how do we come together. We’re going to continue to look at some of these pockets and have some more reports to follow that are going to look into some of these areas in more detail.”

As part of this, Espenschied’s team has built an interactive map and tables that provide basic demographic information about each of Washington’s 39 counties. That includes information about mortality in those counties and where the health professionals are practicing.

Solmaz Amiri worked on that. She’s a post doctoral researcher in WSU’s nutrition and exercise physiology program.

“We looked at access to primary care physicians across the state. Instead of looking only at the number of physicians in a certain area or neighborhood, we looked at the time it takes people to get to those physicians,” Amiri said.

Jonathan Espenschied says researchers will use the basic data released this week to dig deeper and develop more specific findings. He says they’ll also be used as the college decides where to deploy faculty as it develops its medical residency program for newly-graduated doctors.

“If we put residencies and fellowships in these rural areas that have limited access, is that going to impact our mortality rates throughout or is it going to impact health as a whole? So these are exactly synchronized to where we’re going with some of these reports too," Espenschied said.

“This report will be a baseline for the College of Medicine to see how the college impacts health within eastern Washington or Washington state over time," said Ofer Amram, an assistant professor in nutrition and exercise physiology. "If we do the same reports in two or three years, five years from now, can we see a difference and then we can somewhat quantify the impact of the college on the health of the communities.”

“I think people should look at this and say ‘what’s going on and how do we help?’ Espenschied said. "The Elson S. Floyd College of Medicine, is a community-based medical school and our mission really is to help our communities. How do we work with our communities to better them? To better us as a state? And how do we drive that home with partners, with collaborators? I think that really is the message that we want to get out there.”