Rural Pediatrics (S3:E37)

There are many great things about living in rural communities. But across a broad range of healthcare indicators our children in rural America are doing more poorly than kids in more urban settings — higher all-cause mortality rates, disability rates, rates of obesity and risk for suicide and unintentional injury.

More than 50% of rural counties in the United States do not have a pediatrician and the number of patients per physician in healthcare professional shortage areas is twice that of a traditional urban area. What is it like to practice and take care of kids in a more rural setting? Our guest discusses.

Listen to a pediatrician discuss rural pediatrics

In this episode, we discuss rural and tertiary care bridges with Bird Gilmartin, MD.

Dr. Gilmartin is the Pediatric Medical Director at Uinta Medical Group in Evanston, Wyoming. She is a member of the American Academy of Pediatrics’ (AAP) Section on Early Career Physicians and was the recipient of the AAP's 2019 Award for Outstanding Service to Maltreated Children.

In this episode, our experts discuss:

• What it’s like to be the only pediatrician in Evanston, Wyoming
• How Dr. Gilmartin has leveraged the value of her input in all aspects of kids’ health in Evanston
• Surprising challenges for kids’ health in the rural setting
• What she did to equip the local hospital to care for kids
• Her role with the city and county in the child maltreatment space and how it’s changed her perspective on caring for kids in her office and the hospital
• The intersection between household poverty, job insecurity, drug dependence and abuse and child maltreatment
• The health outcome priorities that Dr. Gilmartin has focused on when there are health disparities or challenges
• How her medical approach has evolved from when she was in a more urban practice to now