Culture
Athens Healthcare Support Network Provides Healthcare Focused Mutual Aid For Athens County
By: Emily Votaw
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Healthcare in the United States is notoriously complex for patients to navigate, often plagued by unexpected and oftentimes debilitating costs, and according to data compiled by the Commonwealth Fund in 2019, it’s not terribly effective at keeping Americans healthy. The 2019 study in question found that in comparison to other “high-income peer nations” such as the United Kingdom and Sweden, the U.S. spends by far the largest portion of its GDP on healthcare. Even so, Americans visit the doctor less than any comparable population, are the most likely to die from preventable causes, and have the lowest life expectancy.
The Athens Healthcare Support Network (AHSN) was formed earlier this month by a group of volunteers seeking to make it possible for Athens County residents to “access the quality healthcare they need and deserve, through financial assistance, resource sharing, and community conversation.”
“Marginalized communities have been engaged in mutual aid for centuries because they’ve never been taken care of by the systems that are supposed to take care of us. (Mutual aid) is essentially our community looking out for one another,” said AHSN co-founder Emma Schultz. “I think that we all know that our healthcare system is leaving people behind. How many of us have put off going to the doctor or the emergency room because it would be too expensive or we didn’t know if our insurance was going to cover (treatment) with a specific doctor or whatnot?”
WOUB’s Emily Votaw interviewed AHSN co-founders Emma Schultz and Emersynn McGuire about the creation of the AHSN, how community members can get involved with the network’s efforts, and their hopes for the network, in the audio feature embedded above. Visit this link for more information on the network.