Several hundred residents heard firsthand of UMB’s plans to provide educational opportunities and improve health care on Maryland’s Eastern Shore at a town hall in Easton.
Photo: The Bill and Joanne Conway Dean of the School of Nursing Yolanda Ogbolu and School of Medicine Dean Mark Gladwin.
On a warm November evening, Easton’s historic Avalon Theatre was host to more than 150 Eastern Shore residents who, along with another 250 watching via livestream, were eager to learn about and help shape a new vision for community health care. As master of ceremonies, University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB) President Bruce E. Jarrell, MD, FACS, seemed right at home. And why not? Jarrell hails from the tiny town of Goldsboro, just 25 miles away in neighboring Caroline County, and has a deep understanding of the Eastern Shore community.
“I left Maryland for some time in my [medical] training, and when I came back in 1997, my mom was sitting there waiting for me,” he recalled. “‘Bruce. What are you going to do about health care and on the Eastern Shore? Since my friends can’t get access, they can’t get what they consider to be the best care, they have to go across that …’ She didn't say it this way, but it was ‘darn bridge.’ That’s not quite what she said. ‘You have to go across the bridge and you’ve got to fix this.’”
The audience laughed but understood the seriousness of the situation all too well. The vast majority of the Shore’s 450,000 residents live in what the federal government designates as Medically Underserved Areas. For example, in Jarrell’s home county, Caroline, there is just one health provider for every 2,500 residents, compared with one for every 1,000 residents in suburban Baltimore County on the Western Shore.
Not only that, but Eastern Shore residents also are at greater risk of serious health issues, like heart attacks and kidney disease, and have higher infant mortality rates and shorter life expectancy than residents of the rest of Maryland.
“What would I say back to my mom today?” Jarrell asked the audience. “First of all, it takes a good medical facility. It takes a community of physicians and nurses and nurse practitioners and pharmacists and dentists. It takes a community who wants to see change, a community who realizes that there’s a problem and realizing that the solution is not going to be simple.”