Dr. Kristi Wick, left, and Christin McWhorter (photo by Angela Foster).
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A version of this story first appeared in On Call, a publication of the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing.
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According to a June 2023 Tennessee Rural Health Care Task Force report, 22 Tennessee counties do not have local hospitals and 13 rural hospitals have closed since 2010.
Meanwhile, Tennessee placed 40th in a ranking of healthiest states for older adults in the United Health Foundation’s 2023 Senior Report, which provides a portrait of the health and well-being of older adults across the U.S.
Christin McWhorter has spent her professional career working in community outreach capacities in southeast Tennessee, so she has seen first-hand how dire access to health care is for aging members of the population living in rural and underserved areas.
“We have communities in southeast Tennessee where there is no hospital; for example, in Polk County, there is no hospital system there, so people have to drive upwards of two hours to access health care,” says McWhorter, rural health clinic network director with the Rural Health Association of Tennessee.
“It’s not just older adults. For those who don’t drive or transportation is an issue, getting to primary medical care appointments is a challenge.”
A recent grant awarded to the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga School of Nursing aims to remedy those challenges.
The $2.6-million grant from the Tennessee Department of Health is for a project titled ROAD MAP, an acronym for Rural Health and Older ADult Interprofessional Mobile HeAlth Program. ROAD MAP funding will enable purchasing a mobile health vehicle to regularly visit and bring health care and social services professionals to older adults in rural Southern Tennessee communities.
The mission: Road trips offering education, health promotion, health screening, primary care and social services to those who don’t have easy access.
Dr. Kristi Wick, UC Foundation assistant professor and Vicky B. Gregg Chair in Gerontology, and UTC Vice Provost and Professor Shewanee Howard-Baptiste are co-principal investigators on the project—leading an interdisciplinary ROAD MAP team that includes School of Nursing assistant professors Latisha Toney and Sarah Treat and members of the UTC Master of Public Health, Occupational Therapy and Social Work departments.
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“For me, the most innovative part is that it’s bringing multidisciplinary groups together,” McWhorter says. “Not only are they sending nurses doing blood pressure checks or talking about medication reconciliation, but they’ll be bringing all of the different disciplines to provide a holistic viewpoint to older adults’ health and wellbeing.”
After the mobile health vehicle is acquired, it will serve older adults and caregivers in the Southeast Tennessee Area Agency on Aging and Disability (STAAAD) district, comprised of Bledsoe, Bradley, Grundy, Hamilton, Marion, McMinn, Meigs, Polk, Rhea and Sequatchie counties.
“We do have community health centers inside of our rural counties—and I don’t want to minimize what those health centers do and the services they provide—but for older adults who have special needs as they age, it will be very beneficial to have experts and specialists who understand the health conditions of older adults,” says McWhorter, who received a bachelor’s degree in psychology from UTC in 2005.
Before moving into her current role with the Rural Health Association of Tennessee, McWhorter spent 18 years at STAAAD.
“This mobile health unit is going to make a huge difference,” she says. “It’s going to remove some of the barriers for people to be able to access health care services and it will help people to have a more regular touchpoint in regards to their health care—such as not having to rely on family members who work to take them to medical appointments. Having something that comes right to their communities will be huge.”
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