State Health Officer, Director, Arkansas Department of Health 

 

State health officer Paul K. Halverson remains focused on the Arkansas Department of Health’s main strategic objectives—improving access to care, decreasing injury mortality and morbidity, decreasing infant mortality, increasing physical activity, and improving oral health. In the second of a two-part series, Medical News of Arkansas discussed with him the various ways the medical community can help bolster public health.

With school in full swing again, tell us about the ACT 1220 Program to establish health emphasis in schools. 

First of all, we’re so proud of our partnership with the Arkansas Department of Education and our collaboration with teachers, superintendents and principals at schools around our state on this important initiative. With their help, we’re measuring the BMI of our children. We’re also very pleased that through the work of the Arkansas Center for Health Improvement—Dr. Joe Thompson, and his group—we’ve been able to demonstrate that Arkansas has halted the increase in childhood obesity.

 

It’s important to note that we haven’t reversed the trend, but we’ve halted it. That’s largely due to the emphasis being placed on getting good data while also limiting low nutritional value foods and beverages like soda pops and snacks in vending machines. Another factor has been establishing school-level health committees that truly focus on trying to make sure our kids have the best opportunity to live a healthful life by focusing at an early age on eating nutritionally and increasing physical activity.

 

First Lady Ginger Beebe, is leading a statewide effort to decrease childhood obesity, and through her leadership it’s been great to see parents becoming involved and excited about it. I was recently honored to attend a meeting with her and the nation’s first lady, Michelle Obama, who has likewise launched a national campaign focusing on reducing childhood obesity, increasing physical activity and eating better nutritionally. Obviously, we’re strong supporters of these initiatives.

Quite frankly, some of the greatest advances in our life expectancy come from reduction in infectious disease. That will always be an important part of what we do. Chronic disease is now in epidemic proportion and will have the greatest effect on the nation’s general population. As a consequence, we have to focus on improving our ability to fight against diseases like diabetes, high cholesterol and high blood pressure. We encourage Arkansas physicians to look carefully at their patients as it relates to those issues. We’ve been working with our colleagues at the CDC to reduce tobacco use, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and overall to focus on reducing the incidence of chronic disease. I think we can all do better.

 

Our state has been funded by the CDC to have one of the most terrific databases of health interview studies with trained personnel, gathering information for a robust dataset of people in the South. By doing this, we’ve observed a high number of people who didn’t know they have high blood pressure, and a majority that didn’t have their blood pressure within the prescribed limit. Our clinical colleagues across the state need to continue to focus on making sure their patients’ blood pressures are adequately controlled, tobacco use is decreased or stopped and physical activity is increased. This is where physicians can make a huge difference looking at chronic disease throughout the state.

 

Good oral health is vital to good overall health, yet it’s viewed almost as if the body stops at the neck! Some insurance companies don’t want to pay for oral health, hearing aids, eyeglasses or mental health expenses, yet they’re all so very important.

 

Oral health is basic, and it’s not out of the realm of possibility that a child doesn’t need to ever have a cavity in today’s environment with the fluoridation of water and dental sealants. As a consequence, we can improve oral health and therefore quality of life with very simple, inexpensive interventions.

 

Unfortunately, Arkansas doesn’t have the level of fluoridation in the public water supply that we’d like to have. It’s certainly lower than the national average. The benefits of fluoridation are well established. It’s cost effective and safe. Dental sealants are also very important.

 

A number of children don’t learn well because they’re suffering during the school day with a toothache. We still have more than 200,000 adults in Arkansas who have no teeth at all! We’ve seen people line up for days ahead of time at free dental clinics just to have the opportunity to have someone pull their teeth. It’s a tragedy in this day and age that we haven’t paid enough attention to dental issues for the people of our state.

 

Good oral health is such an important aspect of being a productive citizen. If you have poor oral health and no teeth, and you try to apply for a job or interact with people, it will affect how others view you. Some will shy away from social situations because they’re ashamed of their oral health status.

 

We need to work with local citizens and leaders to see if we can increase the percentage of public water supplies that have fluoridation available and work with dentists to help encourage dental sealants. We know how to deal with these issues. We just need to deal with them.