Rural Health Forum provides sometimes overlooked services and providers

KASSON, Minn. — Make healthcare a priority. That was the message at the Rural Health Forum & Fair sponsored by Dodge County Public Health in cooperation with Dodge and Olmsted County Farmers Unions.

Rodney Peterson, president of the Dodge County Farmers Union, said the event, which featured 14 vendors and two guest speakers, was the first of its kind.

"We believe that there's a big need for our rural people to have better health decisions and health outcomes," Peterson said. "We brought a bunch of different vendors and speakers here today to tell us how to live a healthier life here in rural Dodge County."

One of those vendors was Zumbro Valley Medical Society and its Rural Medicine Interest Group at Mayo Clinic School of Medicine, which looks to improve the health and wellness of rural communities through health screening and education.

The Mayo Clinic Otolaryngology Department was another vendor, which offered hearing screenings and information about sleep apnea, voice health, cancer detection and prevention. Other vendors included Dodge County Public Health, University of Minnesota Extension farm safety, and more.

Peterson said the biggest challenges to promoting better health in rural communities is the fact that so many residents are busy with their day-to-day duties.

"We get so busy, so active trying to succeed in whatever we're doing, that we don't take time to think about ourselves," he said. "We downplay the importance of our health in support of whatever occupation we're doing."

"We're trying to give people the opportunity to do an audiology test or skin test, or to hear about what opportunities there are for mental health or suicide prevention, but we also brought public health and environmental services, and FFA here to talk about how to protect yourself from reducing a grain bin injury," Peterson said. "

Speakers at the event were Ted Matthews, Minnesota Department of Agriculture's farm counselor and mental health practitioner with more than 30 years of experience, and Robert Jacobson, a doctor and medical consultant at Mayo Clinic.

Jacobson's presentation was on vaccines, vaccine hesitancy and current vaccine practices. He said that vaccine hesitancy, which has risen since the pandemic, are rooted in falsehoods.

"The five general categories of vaccine hesitancy are that the vaccine won't work, the vaccine isn't safe, the vaccine isn't needed, there's alternatives are just as good as the vaccines, and the authorities who recommend the vaccines don't know what they're talking about, and we deal with this regularly," Jacobson said. "You know, when you think about it, how odd it is when you're healthy to have to take a medicine? It's foreign to our thinking. Leave me alone unless I'm sick. This is the one time, though, we I recommend take something that's a medicine, inject it, to prevent getting sick."

After his presentation, a member of the audience asked how someone with vaccine hesitancy should approach the subject, when there's so much information available on the internet today. Jacobson said if someone doesn't trust medical professionals, turn to a trusted source that tracks public health, law and education like Voices for Vaccines.

"So much material on what these diseases are, how the vaccines work, what good the vaccines are, questions that parents and laypeople have about vaccines, and they address those hesitancies, and you're not dealing with the government, you're not dealing with the manufacturer, you're dealing with two Minnesota parents who decided to pull all this information together, and they have done an amazing job," Jacobson said.