- Wheelan Pressly Funeral Home and Crematory, a proud supporter of WQPT, has been serving Quad city families since 1889.

They now have live stream capabilities for viewing your loved ones' funeral or memorial service.

- At IHMVCU, we've always been here for you.

You are and always will be our top priority.

We care about your financial and physical health and we are here.

IHMVCU is a proud supporter of WQPT.

- A question of health.

We'll look at COVID charts for children, and in a county where the adults are avoiding the jab.

And an in-depth look at the health and wellbeing of everyone who lives in The Cities.

(soft upbeat rock music) - It's been three years since a comprehensive look at the health of the Quad Cities was last made.

In 2018, there were real concerns about health disparities throughout the Cities, and bad habits we all need to break.

Now with COVID, how healthy are we?

We look at that in a moment.

But first, kids and COVID.

With the federal government approving COVID vaccinations for children as young as five, what can we expect?

We decided to talk with a public health official who's faced an uphill battle to get the adults in her county vaccinated; Henry County.

We talked with the county's health department executive director, Angela Myers, from her office in Gladstone Illinois.

How difficult has it been to get adults vaccinated in Henderson County?

- Our senior population, it has been good.

But after that, from 50 to 18, they're very hesitant.

They don't think it's here, I guess.

- Yeah, and you know what, and I just noticed when I looked at your state's statistics.

I mean, everybody seemed to want to get a vaccine in March and April, and then it falls off significantly.

Is that what you saw?

- Yes, yes.

At first, well, most of the seniors were vaccinated right off the get go.

And we have been to the schools and got most of the teachers.

But it's that 18 to 50 year olds that don't feel the need for the vaccination.

- You have - And I think it's - Yeah, go ahead.

And you think it's what?

- I think that it's going to just follow through with the kids.

Because those are the parents of the kids that aren't being vaccinated.

So hope I'm wrong.

And we're having vaccination clinics every Wednesday, and we get a few 18 years old and up or 12 years for the Pfizer, because we have all three vaccinations.

And So I'm hoping I'm wrong.

I've had COVID myself.

I went a year and a half without getting it, and testing everybody.

And I had it in the lat month.

And I was fully vaccinated.

But as we all know, when you are vaccinated, you have have hopefully lesser symptoms, or less severe symptoms, so.

- Well, I'm glad you're here, feeling better.

I mean, did you have less severe symptoms?

- For four days, I didn't.

I didn't.

I was pretty sick.

But I'm of the older generation, and I think that sometimes, you know, we all know that at first, who was in the hospital?

It was the older people.

And so but I'm feeling better.

I still have some residual, but I am better.

So thank you.

- What do you think is the issue as far as the low vaccination rate in Henderson County?

Is it a case of it being a rural area and people are more spread out so they feel like if they're not in close contact with other people, they don't really need it?

- I think that's part of it.

And at first, because people were abiding by the hand washing and social distance, and what they were supposed to do.

And right now, people have gotten lax.

They are tired of it.

And they want to get back to their normal life.

But And they don't want to social distance.

I think that it's just gonna take.

I don't know what it's gonna take.

I really don't.

I'm hoping that in the next few months, like I said, we have our clinics, and every week we have maybe 10 or 12.

We just tick them off for the month's time.

And I think that eventually we'll, you know, get more.

But I don't think that we're gonna get that many kids.

I'm hoping I'm wrong.

- Well let's talk a little bit about the fact that you are doing public information.

You're trying to educate the public as much.

But you do know that there's this big push back right now.

That they don't wanna have the government telling them what to do.

Is that kind of - Yes - what you're running into right now?

- Yes, it is.

Yes, it is.

They don't That certain age, 18 to 50, you know, none of us like to be told what to do.

But I think that that's the biggest problem right there.

- Now we're taking - I agree with you.

- We're talking about the child vaccinations which could be coming within days.

So tell the, how important do you think that is?

Because I mean, you've talked to kids in schools.

You have treated people 15 years and older already.

How critically important do you think it is that vaccinations would reach down to kids that are 5 years and older?

- Well, I think that to get rid of our masks, and that's what they want to do, I think that it's very important that the children do get vaccinated.

And I think that that will help us to get back to normalcy fairly quickly.

- The big argument of course is that the children don't necessarily get as sick as the adults do, with COVID 19.

But I do know that public health officials often point out the spread is so easy.

That a child can pass it on to an older person, or a person who has problems with their immune system.

Is that the biggest lesson that you're trying to pass on to people when it comes to perhaps vaccinating children?

- Yes, it is.

Kids like to touch each other, and especially in a school setting.

And if you have a child comes to school with some mild symptoms and they're playing, even if they have their mask on, they pull'em down, and get'em below their nose.

So yes, I think that that's That's gonna be the key.

- You know that there's a lot of adults that were more than happy to get a COVID vaccine.

They wanted to get this in there rare view mirror as quick as possible.

And they probably want to be the first ones to get their children vaccinated as well, especially because we're kind of on this timeline, that if you vaccinated a child now, you get the second vaccination by thanksgiving, and then you're fully immune perhaps by the middle of December, in other words, get a shot for the holidays.

- That's right.

Give yourself a present.

- There you go.

So do you think that you're going to be really busy in the very first few days?

- I hope so.

We plan to go to the schools, especially when the kids vaccinations are finalized, to have clinics out there.

I'm not real sure how many of the teachers we vaccinated.

Close to 100 teachers that were West central.

And just a handful of those have had the booster.

so I'm not real sure how many of those are gonna have the booster.

But we we plan to have clinics.

we plan to got to basketball games once or twice to open up a clinic for that.

So we're trying every angle that we can.

- You have heard of the term "twindemic," which is being passed around right now, where you have both the COVID pandemic, and fears of a tougher flu season.

There is a fear among health professionals that since the flu wasn't that big last year, that we have no idea what's going to be the toughest strain this year, and thereby the flu season could be much worse.

- Yes, yes.

And we all know that, you know, they both mimic each other.

You can have the same symptoms with either either flu, or the COVID.

Other than the taste and smell that seems to be, you know, one of the separate ones.

- So do you also see in Henderson County, much of a pushback against the flu vaccine as well?

- We've just started our flu vaccines, clinics.

And it hasn't been real bad.

But here in Henderson County, we have trouble getting the word out.

And because we have no TV station, you know, other than the local TV stations or radio, and it's just hard to get information out there when you're going to have your clinics.

But we try as hard as we can hanging up flyers and things like that.

So I'm hoping our clinics for the flu will pick up.

- Because I know we visited you last year in fact, when you were just doing the testing, and that was a monumental task for your health department to get that done.

And you needed enough testing kits.

And that was a problem as well.

I mean, do you have a problem getting to all the parts of the county as far as the vaccine is concerned?

And do you have plenty of supplies?

- We do have plenty of supplies.

And course in Henderson at the health department, we don't have many staff.

So it takes us all.

And we still are doing the testing as well as the vaccine.

And we are going to go to four of the major towns to give a flu clinic.

And we will take the COVID vaccinations with us too.

So hopefully maybe we can pick up a few more with that.

- Yeah, that's kind of an interesting thing is that if you're offering the flu shot, which somebody might be less hesitant to get, to also have the COVID shot.

And you've been saying, and the health departments all around the country have been saying, getting both shots at the same time is just fine.

- Yes.

We've done that, and I have not had any reports of any problems, so.

- Henderson County, Health Department Executive Director, Angela Myers.

In a moment, how healthy are we in the Cities?

But first, Lora Adams is all set for November activities you should put on your calendar if you go out and about.

( upbeat music) - [Lora] This is out and about for November 5 through 11th.

The annual Fall Antique Spectacular Vintage market is is back November 5 through 7th at the QCCA Expo Center.

While the Spotlight Event Center hosts Winter Wonderland Craft & Vendor Fair, 7th, from 11:00 to 4:00.

While the fall premiere gone farming auction offers an unparalleled array of vintage and collectible tractors November 11 through 13th at the Bend XPO in East Moline.

visit the Figgy Art Museum for Veterans Day presentation of the Mid America Emmy nominated documentary, "Stout Hearted: George Stout and the Guardians of Art."

A Q&A with the director follows the film.

There's entertainment on tape with Tomfoolery On Tremont at the Renwick mansion, featuring comedian Brad Wenzel on 7th.

The Dead Rabbits featuring Craig Mabbott of Escape the Fate performed 9th at the Village Theater.

And the Quad City Symphony Orchestra presents their Masterworks II: Fantasies and Fables at the Adler theater.

While Alison Miller's Boom Tic Boom performs at the Orpheum Theater in Galesburg, 5th, at 7:00.

MercyMe presents a concert with special guest Micah Tyler at the TaxSlayer Center on the 11th.

And Songs and Stories with David G. Smith, Alicia McKinley and Shannon Labrie, takes place at the Redstone Room, 5th, at 8:00 PM.

On stage, Shakespeare's powerful classic, Macbeth, will be performed at the Bruner Theater, on the campus of Augustana, 11th through 13th.

For more information visit wqpt.org.

- Thank you, Lora.

Throughout the pandemic, many of us were staying home getting a little claustrophobic.

Well, that's the title of the song written by our featured musician.

Here's Marie Lee, from the Black Box Theater, with Claustrophobic.

(acoustic guitar music) ♪ I was flipping through a news article ♪ ♪ About our brains ♪ ♪ Their size and their shape are genetic ♪ ♪ Oh, what an awful trick ♪ ♪ And I was reading chapters in a people's history ♪ ♪ Of the United States ♪ ♪ Oh, what an awful place to be.

♪ ♪ And I'm too poor to leave.

♪ ♪ And I was reading in a science journal, ♪ ♪ About Mother Earth ♪ ♪ Her fever is getting worse ♪ ♪ Oh, I'm stuck in her house ♪ ♪ And I was tryna understand a Brian Greene book ♪ ♪ About space time.

♪ ♪ And how our strings are attached to it ♪ ♪ Oh, we can't leave this universe ♪ ♪ And I was skipping through a news article ♪ ♪ About our brains ♪ ♪ Their size and their shape are genetic ♪ ♪ Well, I feel so claustrophobic ♪ - Murray Lee and Claustrophobic, recorded at Moline's BlackBox Theater.

The healthcare community in the Cities comes together to find solutions to find the most pressing issues that are facing our health and well being.

The Quad City Health initiative spearheaded the latest Community Health Assessment, looking at the needs of the Cities, the successes, and the areas where our health is falling behind.

We talked with Quad City Health Initiative, Executive Director, Nicole Carkner.

So Nicole, why is the community assessment even needed?

- You know, that's a great question, Jim.

I'm happy to share with you a couple thoughts on that.

You know, the first is that the Quad City Health Initiatives mission is to create a healthy community.

So in order to do that, it's really helpful for us to understand what the current health status is of our community, and also what the health needs are of our community.

We can do a better job and meeting our mission if we have that information available to us.

- Yeah, you can't fix the problem if you don't know what the problem is, is basically what you're saying.

- Exactly, exactly.

And - Well, let's be honest the biggest problem right now is COVID.

- Well, true, true.

We certainly heard and saw that in the assessment this year.

And we were expecting that that would be a big topic when we asked community members to tell us a little bit about what they thought was important.

And you know, certainly, they mentioned COVID.

And we hd that through the survey we conducted, as well as through focus groups we held.

But I will say to you that, you know, a number of the issues that folks mentioned this time in this 2021 study, were also mentioned in prior studies.

So there are still other health issues that are very important to the community.

- Well, absolutely.

And sometimes, to be honest, I mean, you talk to public health workers, is that sometimes these other issues are put in the background, because COVID's so much, you know, monopolizing the healthcare system right now.

But let's talk about one thing in particular.

These health assessments that you've been doing are nothing new.

It's almost 20 years of it.

So I'm sure you're starting to see trends.

And I want to talk about that.

But one trend that really caught my eye is that the number of people saying their health is only fair or poor is, actually up.

- Yeah, that's true.

That's true.

So now, it is the case that most residents do say that their health is excellent, very good, or good, right.

So most people have a positive view of their health.

But we do look specifically and we do track those that say their health is fair or poor.

And we have seen that number increase overtime.

So you know, of course that's of concern, because we want to make sure that we are paying attention to those types of responses.

And aware that while maybe the majority feel like their health is good, there's still a very large portion of the respondents who are saying, "Hey, actually, I'm not sure that my health is that good."

And so we really want to pay attention to those trends too.

And we did see that I think it was about 24.8% of total area adults this time said that their health was fair or poor.

- Yeah, but that's one in four.

And that is pretty big number that would have some concern.

And also, it kind of underlines that other thing.

So we always talk about wage disparity.

But there seems to be health disparity as well.

There's the haves and the havenots.

- Yes, that's true.

So you know, one of the other things that we've seen over time in conducting this assessment is that a lot of the conditions of our health are influenced by other conditions in our community, right?

We talk about these things as the social determinants of health.

So it includes things like income and education, and where we live, the physical environment in which we live.

All of those things influence our health.

It's one of the reasons why we take a cross sector view of health improvement, because we know that all sectors of our community have a role in creating health for us as individuals and also health of our community overall.

So you know, as we as we look at these trends, and we think about those impacts, we are very aware that, you know, for sections of our community that may be experiencing challenges with employment or income, that that can over time have an impact on people's health.

And so it's important for us to be thinking about all of the ways, all the things in our community that influence our health.

- I know that also three years ago, the last time I bothered you, I asked you about the the last assessment.

We talked a lot about two different areas.

One was mental health and services that are offered to the public.

The second was healthcare for women, and that there was so much need in that area.

Well, let's start with women's health.

Are there still major concerns that women are getting the treatments that they need?

Has it improved at all and the last three years?

- Yeah, so we are able to look at a lot of indicators in our survey report, and see how health status differs for different genders as well as different age groups.

And we have other demographic characteristics that we are able to look at.

So that helps us to understand where there may be differences that people are experiencing.

One of the things that we also look at is infant health and family planning.

That's a category of the assessment.

And that was identified again in this 2021 cycle as an area of opportunity.

We did see that there were some women who were saying that they were having challenges obtaining pre or post natal care.

We also did see that there were indicators related to teen birth that we wanna look more at.

And so certainly thinking about the health of women, the health of children, is critical in planing for the future health of our community.

And we'll be looking at that issue again a little bit more this year.

- And I think there's a brighter light being shown on mental health care these days.

That it's not something to be forgotten or dismissed.

It is a major part of healthcare in the Cities.

- Yeah, I'm so glad you say that, Jim.

Because one of the things that we have been trying to do for our work is encourage community conversations about mental health, make it easier for people to feel like they can talk about mental health as part of their overall health.

We did see again in the 2021 study that there were several indicators related to our community's mental health that are, again, opportunities for us.

And so we really want to be continuing to encourage that dialogue, encourage that conversation.

Folks are experiencing symptoms of depression.

Or even symptoms of stress, which we know over there last year and a half, everyone has been feeling stress.

You know, it's important you know that folks can talk about that, share that information, and hopefully be able to find treatment if needed.

- Well, of course, we always want to know, you did the study, now what?

I mean, how do you progress from that?

But let me ask you that question a different way.

Is that you did that study in 2018, what was accomplished since then, and what can you build upon now?

- Sure.

No, that's a really important question.

So this assessment is a collaborative effort of seven organizations.

Our health systems, our health departments, our community healthcare federally qualified health center, the Quad City Health Initiative.

And so, what we do is we use this information to inform our plans as organizations and as partners.

So after the 2018 assessment was completed, we actually wrote health improvement plans that identified, actually it was nutrition, physical activity and weight, and mental health and access to health care, as three priority health issues.

And so since that time, all of the partners that are party to the health assessment process have been working through their organizations and in coalitions in the community, and various health improvement tactics.

So for the Quad City Health Initiative, for example, for the nutrition, physical activity category, we've been working for a number of years with a community colation called Be Healthy QC.

And we've been continuing over the last couple of years to share information about nutrition and physical activity resources that are available to community members to hopefully highlight and spotlight some of the programs that are available that people can participate in, to encourage people to do things like go outside for a walk on a trail.

We have a wonderful resource we developed a few years ago called qctrails.org.

And over the last couple of years, we've been continuing to grow that resource and also encourage people to access that information, and find out where they can go for a walk, and perhaps have a new view of the Quad Cities that they haven't seen before, and also get some physical activity into their day.

So this health assessment really is foundational to the planning work that we do.

And it helps to inform, then, the types of projects that we are able to create together.

- I think you do point out something interesting.

Because you say people can make access of these walking trails.

They can get exercise.

They can go see a doctor or a dentist or a mental health clinician.

It sounds really it's really the onus is on all of us as individuals, but I think in so many ways you want to point out, especially you just have such a broad band of suppliers and participants in this assessment, that there is help out there for people who need to make healthy choices or to get a check on their health.

- Yes, absolutely.

You know, one of the things that we did hear as we talked with community members in this assessment process is that folks are looking for information.

They are eager to know what sources of information of education are available.

And they sometimes just need some assistance to figure out where to connect with that information.

So we certainly are eager to try to make that information more available to the community.

Again, through the Be Health QC questionnaire, is one example.

The group has assembled a resource guide that we have a available on our Quad City Health initiative website.

That's just a starting place where people can go to get information about programs and activities related to nutrition and physical activity.

So those sorts of efforts where were trying to highlight or showcase what's available.

Or consolidate information to make it more accessible to the community.

We hope our really important and valuable to to community at the large.

- Quad City Health Initiative, executive director, Nicole Carkner.

On the air, on the radio, on the web, on your mobile device, and streaming on your computer, thanks for taking some time to join us as we talk about issues of The Cites.

(upbeat jingle music) - Wheelan Pressly Funeral Home and Crematory, a proud supporter of WQPT, has been serving Quad City families since 1889.

They no have live stream capabilities for viewing your loved ones' funeral or memorial service.

- At IHMVCU, we've always been here for you.

You are and always will be our top priority.

We care about your financial and physical health and we are here.

IHMVCU is a proud supporter of WQPT.