Rural health care is an important and oftentimes overlooked topic in discussions of health policy. It is also a sorely neglected topic within the education of health professions students. Since all the major academic medical centers in the U.S. are by necessity located in larger urban areas, the course content and clinical rotations for health science students focus on the urban or suburban health care contexts. Also, as a colleague of mine pointed out recently, any health researcher/academic wanting to focus on rural health would be committing career suicide. That reminded me of what an academic advisor told me early in my career–that focusing on the health of people experiencing homelessness was a dead-end career move. News alert: no one in positions of power and privilege (including NIH grant reviewers) really care about health issues of marginalized people. Perhaps my advisor was right, but I’m glad I didn’t listen to her.
Ignore your roots at your own peril! I grew up in rural Virginia, in a house on a dirt road that was connected to a dirt ‘rural route’ road with no name. In a house with no curtains on the windows since the nearest neighbor lived several miles away. In a house surrounded by woods and corn fields. I got my occasional health care from a country doctor in his country clinic with its 1940s-era medical equipment. Not unlike many young people who grow up in more isolated rural areas, I could not wait for the day I could ‘legally’ move to a city and never look back at what I saw as the stiflingly -limited scope of rural living. Backwards and bucolic. ‘Watching the corn grow,’ as my city friends used to tease me. Rural areas anywhere in the world are, to me, both of these because they are typically socially and politically conservative, as well as being in lovely and peaceful settings.
Imagine my surprise yesterday when I accompanied an interprofessional health sciences rural health course student field trip to the rural hinterlands of Eastern Washington. I try to challenge myself to go outside my comfort zone on occasion, and yesterday was one of those times. In the twenty or so years I have lived and worked in Seattle, I have only ventured east of the Cascades (within my state) once before, and that was just barely over ‘the Pass’ in Ellensburg for a public health Medical Spanish intensive course. Yesterday we visited several community health clinics, a public health clinic, and a community ‘critical access’ hospital in the tiny crossroads towns of Mattawa (supposedly an Indian word for “where is it?” population: 4,437 ) and Othello (population: 7,364). These were both dusty, semi-arid, almost desert places where I expected tumbleweeds to blow through town along with Wild-West shootouts.
But here, in the middle of this dusty, no-stoplight, tiny town of Mattawa, was this gorgeous state-of-the-art, wrap-around, one-stop shopping, culturally-relevant clinic, Wahluke Family Clinic, part of the Columbia Basin Health Association. The Association’s motto is “Keeping healthy those who feed the world.” The outside/front entrance of the Wahluke Family Clinic:
And the front desk/lobby/check-in area of the clinic: 
A tour of the clinic, which has an amazing array of primary health care services including family medicine (physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, RNs), dental/orthodontics, vision care, behavioral health (mental health and chemical dependency services), diabetic footcare/shoes, pharmacy services (including delivery and a drive-through pharmacy), all under one gorgeous roof, with clean, lovely-decorated facilities throughout, a rooftop, sunny staff lunch/break-room and outdoor patio, a fully-equipped indoor gym for all staff members, and original artwork throughout. It all felt unreal, like, really? is this how primary healthcare can be? and wait! this is part of our safety-net health care system, since they are a community health clinic with federal funding, and serving primarily a Spanish-speaking migrant farm worker and lower-income rural population. Plus, it is out in the middle of nowhere.
Besides the dizzying array of health care services, what most impressed me about this clinic (and its linked clinics in nearby Othello), was the attention to the aesthetics of the patient areas, with use of original artwork, seemingly by Hispanic/Latino artists–such as the one in the first photo included in this post.
In stark contrast, were these patient care hallways (mental health services at the Adams County/Othello Public Health Department–why does public health have to be so perpetually, well, frumpy and unappealing?): 
and this (is it really even artwork?) hanging on the walls of the small community hospital in Othello (with 90% of its patients being Latina women giving birth):
Although I realize I do not know enough about the health care in these small towns/rural areas, I wonder if the quality/cultural appropriateness of a clinic or hospital’s artwork is a good indicator of the facility’s overall healthcare quality. Perhaps in addition to Dr. Paul Farmer’s two indicators of healthcare quality–gardens and bathrooms–could be added artwork/general aesthetics.
I’m not planning to move back to a rural area anytime soon, but after yesterday’s field trip with health science students, I have a greater appreciation of what well-run community-based primary care services in rural areas can look like.