The Kansas University Medical Center (KUMC), School of Medicine, will design and implement a statewide health education and prevention program for low-income Kansans under a contract agreed to with the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services (SRS). The contract calls for KUMC to use $500,000 in federal Medicaid funds for the program, which will be matched by the medical center through the use of faculty time and other resources.

KUMC will work with Medicaid and HealthWave populations along with local providers of health services to increase prevention practices and health education. Medicaid is the health insurance program for low-income people, while HealthWave provides health insurance for children in families with incomes at or below 200 percent of the federal poverty level.

The prevention program will begin in southwest Kansas, later will be expanded into Wyandotte County, and eventually go statewide.

The medical center’s Area Health Education Centers, Medical Education Network, and its family practice residency clinics will serve as primary sites for program services. But health educational and prevention material and education services will also be provided in local sites across the state, including schools, health care providers’ offices, community organizations such as churches and community centers, and SRS offices.

In 1998, the Governor’s Public Health Improvement Commission issued a negative report concerning the amount of prevention in the field of health care in Kansas. The report concluded that prevention and health education are under-funded and loosely coordinated in the state.

Edwin Fonner Jr., DrPH, Director of Outreach with the School of Medicine, served as executive director of the Governor’s commission. He said the conclusions of the commission helped lead him to design the prevention program. Fonner also said KUMC has an ‘executive level charge’ from Executive Vice Chancellor Dr. Donald Hagan and Executive Dean of the School of Medicine Dr. Deborah Powell to better serve Kansans, especially rural communities, the medically underserved, and minority populations.

"Our objective is a statewide collaboration that promotes prevention, early detection, health education, and chronic disease case managment," said Fonner. "This is bridge-building and taking advantage of resources already out there. We are trying to create collaboration and focus information about prevention toward consumers, providers and community leaders. We want community-based solutions to improve health."

SRS Secretary Janet Schalansky said providing health education information and prevention services will benefit consumers and taxpayers alike. For example, she said providing information about proper nutrition or stress reduction, or increasing immunization and physical examination rates, will improve consumers health and require fewer expensive treatments or hospital stays.

"The program’s aim is provide health education to promote healthy behaviors, increase prevention programs to reduce diseases, improve continuity of care, and provide effective use of technology to reach more people," Secretary Schalansky said.

In Garden City, Penney Schwab, executive director of United Methodist Mexican American Ministries, looked forward to the prevention and education program. Her agency runs clinics and care centers in Garden City, Liberal, Dodge City, and Ulysses, along with part-time clinics in Johnson and Satanta.

"Just to fill in the gaps and get prevention information into the community on a much more coordinated and comprehensive basis is important," she said.

Dr. Ann Polich, medical education director for the KU School of Medicine in Southwest Kansas helped set up some initial meetings between Fonner and community health care specialists in Garden City. She said coming up with strategies to increase health care prevention in Southwest Kansas is critical.

"People are so underserved in Garden City and surrounding locations," she said. "A prevention program has got to help a lot with things like diabetes, high blood pressure, and smoking (cessation). Without intervention, you will get multiple medical problems later. We need to see if we can improve on the front end instead of scrambling on the back end.

"People don’t come to the doctor’s office because they can’t afford it or they work long hours," Dr. Polich said. "Yet they are trading in the long term for the short term. We need to work on getting people interested in changing behavior and seeking medical care early."

The federal Health Care Financing Administration has agreed to provide federal funding to finance the program’s beginning, and agreed to allow the work done in the program as the state-level match. In the future, the program will seek local and state level funding to use as match for more federal funding. Following the first year of the program, an evaluation of the impact will include a look at the economic benefits of prevention, screening and health education. Also evaluated will be improvements in client health status, the effectiveness of outreach strategies, and the satisfaction of those receiving services.

Page Last Updated: May 29, 2001