Environmentally Overburdened Gulf State Residents Lack Access to Environmental Specialty Care.
Residents in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama have experienced repeated natural and man-made environmental exposures. As frequency and intensity of exposures increase, the need for environmental specialty care rises in environmentally overburdened communities. We evaluated access to environmental health expertise in these states. We determined if providers accepted private health insurance and/or self-pay mapping their location using ArcGIS. Of sixty-four physicians meeting inclusion criteria, only eleven (17%) accepted private health insurance and thirty-four (53%) accepted self-pay. The ratio of physicians with environmental expertise who accept private health insurance and/or self-pay, to the population is < 1:1,000,000. Occupational clinics employ specialty physicians to provide care to industry employees but generally not patients with non-work-related exposure. We discuss the implications of limited access to environmental specialty care. To improve the availability of specialty expertise in this region, we recommend increased funding for training physicians in environmental exposure assessment in underserved communities, especially environmental justice communities.
['Meirs|Kaitlyn W|KW|', 'Howarth|Marilyn V|MV|']
D054597:Disaster Medicine D004781:Environmental Exposure D004782:Environmental Health D060851:Gulf of Mexico D006297:Health Services Accessibility D006801:Humans D019458:Insurance Coverage D007348:Insurance, Health D008511:Medicine D016272:Occupational Health D059392:Petroleum Pollution D014481:United States
environmental specialty care environmental expertise environmental exposure assessment environmental justice access to care postdisaster medical care