The Santa Barbara County Public Health Department found that South County had a 25 percent lower death rate than central or North County, according to the recently released 2018 to 2020 Leading Causes of Death Report.
The difference presents a need to improve health equity, county Senior Epidemiologist Joy Kane told the Sun.
“There are different levels of access to care across a county; in general South County has more resources than North County and central county,” Kane said. “We overall want to lower our death rates across the county, but where we see the disparities, we want a greater understanding of why this is happening.”
After seeing this data, Public Health’s next step is to release a more detailed report through its Community Needs Assessment to get a better understanding of what current community access looks like as well as assets and resources, she said.
“Anytime we see disparities between groups of people, that’s something Public Health wants to work on addressing because our ultimate goal is health equity where everyone can achieve optimal health,” Kane added.
Disparities based on geographic location is not news to Community Health Centers of the Central Coast Medical Director Steve Clarke, but something that’s been present in the county for years, he said. Clarke thinks a big factor is outside forces and their impact on health.
“We are now learning that 40 percent of our health is comprised of those social determinants, [like] community safety, income level, family and social support, job status, and level of education. Those have been the main, broad categories of social determinants of health,” he explained.
Poverty levels could be one of the main factors contributing to the difference in death rates between the geographic areas—with the northern and central parts of the county experiencing a greater impact—and improving health care access could be part of the solution to equity, Clarke added.
“What our clinics have done is a big hiring drive. Traditionally, we’ve always had access issues, and we focused a lot of our efforts, and other organizations have done the same, to hire more clinicians into the area to improve access,” Clarke explained.
Fighting Back Santa Maria Valley Executive Director Edwin Weaver agreed that poverty has a big impact on the county’s death rate inequities, and the report’s results are a logical conclusion to what he sees in the community.
“I think people forget that Santa Barbara County has the second highest poverty rate in the state behind Los Angeles, according to the Public Policy Institute of California,” Weaver said. “We’re working with our emphasis on education and supporting families who are on the lower end of the earning scale, but at the same time we still have a long way to go.”
The report allows community leaders and members to begin collaborating or engaging in conversations geared toward solutions for greater health care equity.
“We are always going to have death—that’s not the news. The news is that there seems to be discrepancy and imbalance to who’s dying early. Anything we can do for prevention and to lengthen people’s lives is a good thing,” Weaver said.
This article appears in Jul 28 – Aug 4, 2022.