on the cover / By Ryan Burns

With a Rural Yell

Steinberg says the CCRP wouldn’t have happened without Richmond’s vision and commitment. “He stepped up to the plate and said, ‘We’ll house it at HSU; we’ll make some space; we’ll donate some resources for it; and my office will be committed to supporting it.’ And I’ll tell you,” Steinberg says, “if he hadn’t done that, it wouldn’t have happened.”

In the fall of 2006, the CCRP began gathering information with a four-page survey sent to randomly selected post office boxes throughout the Redwood Coast region (Humboldt, Del Norte, Trinity and Mendocino counties). The Rural Health Information Study (RHIS), as it was called, was designed to explore how poverty and place impact health. “This is the largest study of this type that has ever been conducted in this rural region of California,” wrote study author and CCRP Director of Health Research Dr. Jessica Van Arsdale. The results were illuminating. Thirty-five percent of low-income respondents between the ages of 18 and 64 were without health insurance (compared to 10.8 percent above the low-income mark). People living in poverty (less than $20,444 per year for a family of four) were 4.6 times more likely to report poor or fair health compared to those making three times that amount.

“There’s a lot more hunger out there in our community than the national or state average, which was pretty shocking,” says Stewart. The Redwood Coast Region’s poverty rate in 2000 was 18.3 percent, compared to 14.2 percent for California and 12.4 percent nationwide. While that particular information was available through the U.S. Census, the CCRP mapped the data using GIS and added new levels of information with their survey results, allowing them to identify, for example, where poverty was most concentrated. (Hoopa had the highest rate, followed by the remote areas of Humboldt, Trinity and Mendocino counties and, surprising many, Arcata and Eureka.)

“When we first created those [maps] and put them up three years ago, people kind of went crazy for them,” says Steinberg. Stewart remembers taking the poverty maps to an Arcata City Council meeting during the fluoride debate. “I’ll never forget it,” she says. “One of the council members, one of the anti-fluoride advocates, got up and said, ‘There are no poor kids in Arcata.’ I was like, ‘Maybe in your neighborhood.’”

That’s the value of the CCRP’s maps: By packaging lots of information into simple, visually arresting graphics they have the power to destroy assumptions and convince decision-makers to rethink their priorities. The CCRP uses a technique known as community-based participatory research, which essentially forms an equal partnership between the community and the experts (or “people with letters behind their names,” as Steinberg calls them). With help from various HSU professors, as well as student research assistants and members of the communities they study, the CCRP has completed numerous reports in recent years, managing to effectively change policies in a number of cases.

The Rural Latino Project, completed in 2008, investigated the health issues facing the fastest-growing minority group in the region. The goal was to explore both the challenges and strengths of the local Latino community in order to provide some baseline information and a place-based understanding for those hoping to serve them. Two thirds of interviewees who work closely with local Latinos said the group’s health needs are not being met. “We need to be able to effectively serve the Latino population because they’re contributing to [the region’s] growing birthrate,” said Wendy Rowan, executive director of First Five! Humboldt. According to Rowan, the CCRP’s Rural Latino Project provided key information about Latino-focused programs like St. Joseph Hospital’s parenting and prenatal program Paso a Paso (Step by Step). “The report reaffirmed the value of the program and helped us think more about how we can enhance what we do,” she said. “Until we have reports like this, we’re kind of guessing.”

The McLean Foundation, a nonprofit formed 10 years ago following the death of Eel River Sawmills owner Mel McLean, commissioned a report on the needs of people in the Eel River Valley. “People saw a need for a multi-generation community center,” said McLean Foundation Executive Director Leigh Oetker, “a place for not only teens but seniors.” Plans for the center remain in motion, though Oetker said the economic meltdown has slowed things down a bit. Still, she said, the work of the CCRP was invaluable. “The expertise they have there is pretty fantastic,” she said. “I think they’re at the beginning of seeing the work they’re doing have a real impact.”

That work has not been limited to the North Coast. Last year, the CCRP published a report on pesticide use in Monterey and Tulare counties. Titled “People, Place and Health: A Socio-spatial Perspective of Agricultural Workers and Their Environment,” the 94-page report was accompanied by a 143-page atlas filled with bright GIS maps and quotes from community leaders and agricultural workers. Following the report’s completion, Radio Bilingüe reporter Alma Martinez helped present the information to farmworkers in three Tulare County communities. The workers were told about the short-term and long-term health effects of pesticides and about laws governing their use. Most of these workers were at least somewhat familiar with the material, but when they saw GIS maps showing pesticide drifts near elementary schools, their attitude changed.

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