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Arctic Care 2018, an Innovative Readiness Training exercise established to provide medical, dental, optometry, and veterinary services for the villages of Northwest Alaska runs from April 13-24.
This joint and multinational training opportunity is the culmination of over a year of coordination between Department of Defense officials and the Maniilaq Association to provide much needed medical care for underserved communities of the region.
Paul Hansen, Hospital Administrator with the Manillaq Association, Kotzebue Alaska, oversees the care of the citizens of the Northwest Arctic Borough and recognizes how vital the services the IRT team provides are to the health and welfare of these communities.
“The Manillaq Association oversees a region that covers an area about the size of Illinois which includes 12 communities made up of 12 different tribes and access to care is a serious issue,” Hansen said. “There are no roads that connect these communities. The primary means of travel between the villages is by light aircraft or boat in the summer months, and snow machine in the winter; so transportation is very expensive which prevents many citizens from getting proper care.”
The Manillaq Association began in the late 1970’s as an organization designed to promote the health and well-being of the citizens in the region. Through the years the organization grew into the primary source of medical care which sees an annual number of patients totaling between 20 and 25 thousand a year.
Much of the region the Association oversees operates on a low socio-economic level, relying on the local fishermen to put food on the table. The coastal, or salt water villages also rely on marine mammals and whale, while the more inland communities or freshwater villages have more access to moose and caribou.
Each year, doctors based in Kotzebue are able to visit the larger villages in the region four times a year, and the smaller villages twice a year but this is not enough to meet all of the patient’s needs, according to Hansen.
“Each village has a community clinic staffed with community health aids and practitioners. Higher level providers for eye, dental, and women’s health care are based here in Kotzebue and fly out to the local villages,” Hansen said. “The goal is for each community to provide village-based services, but we do not have the manpower.”
Serving remote areas such as the Northwest Arctic Borough, of which Kotzebue is the largest community, is the hallmark of IRT exercises. By providing medical care to rural areas of the United States, Air Force Reservists from all branches are able to accomplish annual training requirements, while staying ready for the next contingency or humanitarian operation.
Through all of the challenges its remote location brings, the Manillaq Association has made some great strides to provide quality care through technology.
“Every day the health aids in villages discuss the patient care with health providers in Kotzebue.
Everything is on internet; from patient registration to billing, and there is a lot of oversite of these village from Kotzebue,” Hansen said. “These health aids work under physician standing orders so they can provide some lower level care locally or refer the patients to doctors when there is a situation outside of their expertise.”
The Northwest Arctic Borough has hosted IRT exercises in the past, most recently in 2015, and will plan to continue to do so for years to come. Until the day comes that each village is self-sufficient, the villages of Northwest Alaska will continue to rely on the IRT program and Air Force Reserve to help fill in the gaps where the Maniilaq Association cannot.
| Date Taken: | 04.18.2018 |
| Date Posted: | 04.19.2018 00:10 |
| Story ID: | 273612 |
| Location: | KOTZEBUE, ALASKA, US |
| Web Views: | 202 |
| Downloads: | 0 |
This work, Arctic Care 2018 serves villages of Northwest Arctic Borough, by Maj. Joseph Simms, identified by DVIDS, must comply with the restrictions shown on https://www.dvidshub.net/about/copyright.
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