When Ohio senator and Republican vice-presidential candidate J.D. Vance claimed Haitian immigrants had caused infectious disease rates to “skyrocket” in Springfield, local Health Commissioner Chris Cook checked the records.
They showed that in 2023, for example, there were four active cases of tuberculosis in Clark County, Ohio, which includes Springfield, up from three in 2022. HIV cases had increased, but sexually transmitted diseases overall communicable diseases were decreasing.
“I wouldn’t call it a surge,” Cook said, noting there are 190 active cases in 2023 across Ohio. “You hear the rhetoric. But overall, infectious diseases reportable to the Department of Health are decreasing.”
Tensions are high in Springfield, an industrial city of about 58,000 people. Bomb threats closed schools and public buildings after Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump falsely claimed that Haitian immigrants — who he claimed were there illegally — were there. stealing and eating pets. City and county officials disputed claims the former president made during his Sept. 10 debate with Vice President Kamala Harris, his Democratic opponent.
Trump was amplifying Vance’s comments that — along with his assertions about the immigration status of this population — were widely considered false. Asked during a CNN interview about the debunked pet eating rumor, Vance acknowledged that the image that he created was not based on facts but on “first-hand accounts from my constituents.” He said he was willing to “create” stories to draw attention to how immigration can overwhelm communities.
But Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine, also a Republican, said immigrants have been an economic boon to Springfield. Many began to arrive because the businesses in the city, which had seen its population decline, needed workers.
How Springfield and the surrounding area responded to the influx of Haitian immigrants is largely lost in the political rancor. Local health institutions attempted to meet the needs of this new population, which lacked basic public health care such as immunizations and often did not understand the American health care system.
The city is a microcosm of how immigration is reshaping communities across the United States. In the Springfield area, Catholic Charities, other philanthropies, volunteers and county agencies have banded together over the past three or four years to take on the challenge and connect immigrants with needs. critical health with providers and care.
For example, a community health center added Haitian Creole interpreters. The county health department opened a refugee health testing clinic to provide vaccinations and basic health screenings, operating on such a shoestring budget that it is open only two days a week.
And a coalition of Haitian community aid groups was created about two years ago to identify and respond to the needs of the immigrant community. The group meets once a month with around 55 or 60 participants. On September 18, about a week after Trump ramped up the debate furore, a record 138 participants took part.
“We all learned the need to collaborate,” said Casey Rollins, director of St. Vincent de Paul in Springfield, a Catholic social services nonprofit that has become a lifeline for many Haitian immigrants in the city. “There are a lot of medical needs. A lot of people have high blood pressureor they frequently suffer from diabetes.
Several factors pushed Haitians to leave their Caribbean country for the United States, including a devastating earthquake in 2010, political unrest following the assassination of Haiti’s president in 2021, and ongoing gang violence. Even when the country’s health facilities are open, it may be too dangerous for Haitians to travel for treatment.
“The gangs usually leave us alone, but that’s not a guarantee,” said Paul Glover, who helps oversee the St. Vincent Center for Disabled Children in Haiti. “We had a 3,000-square-foot clinic. It was destroyed. So was the X-ray machine. People postponed health care.”
According to authorities, between 12,000 and 15,000 Haitian immigrants live in Clark County. About 700,000 Haitian immigrants lived in the United States in 2022, according to U.S. Census data.
Those who have settled in the Springfield area are generally in the country legally under a federal program that allows noncitizens to enter and temporarily stay in the United States under certain circumstances, such as for urgent humanitarian reasons, according to city officials.
The influx of immigrants has created a learning curve for Springfield’s hospitals and primary care providers, as well as the newcomers themselves. In Haiti, people often go directly to hospitals to receive care for all kinds of illnesses, and county officials and advocacy groups said many immigrants are unfamiliar with the U.S. system of seeking medical care. contact primary care physicians or make an appointment for treatment.
Many have sought care at Rocking Horse Community Health Center, a nonprofit, federally qualified health center that provides mental, primary and preventative health care to people regardless of their insurance status or ability to pay. Federally qualified health centers serve medically underserved areas and populations.
The center treated 410 Haitian patients in 2022, an increase of more than 250% from 115 in 2021, according to Nettie Carter-Smith, director of community relations at the center. Because patients needed interpreters, visits often lasted twice as long.
Rocking Horse hired patient navigators fluent in Haitian Creole, one of Haiti’s two official languages. Its traveling purple bus offers on-site health screenings, vaccinations and chronic disease management. And this school year, she’s running a $2 million health clinic at Springfield High.
Many Haitians in Springfield have threats reported from Trump and Vance made their city a central point of the campaign. Community organizations were unable to identify immigrants willing to be interviewed for this story.
Hospitals have also felt the impact. Mercy Health’s Springfield Regional Medical Center also saw a rapid influx of patients, spokeswoman Jennifer Robinson said, with high utilization of emergency, primary care and women’s health services.
This year, hospitals have also seen several readmissions of newborns with developmental difficulties, as some new mothers have difficulty breastfeeding or obtaining supplemental formula, county officials said. One reason: New Haitian immigrants must wait six to eight weeks to participate in a program that provides supplemental foods to low-income pregnant, lactating, or postpartum non-breastfeeding women, as well as children and infants.
At Kettering Health Springfield, Haitian immigrants visit the emergency department for non-urgent care. The nurses are working on two related projects, one focused on staff cultural awareness and the other exploring ways to improve communication with Haitian immigrants upon discharge and when scheduling follow-up appointments.
Many immigrants are eligible for health insurance. Haitian applicants are generally eligible for Medicaid, the state-federal program for low-income and disabled people. For hospitals, this means lower reimbursement rates than traditional insurance.
In 2023, 60,494 people in Clark County were enrolled in Medicaid, about 25% of whom were Black, according to state data. That’s up from 50,112 registrants in 2017, when 17% of registrants were Black. This increase coincides with the increase in the Haitian population.
In September, DeWine pledged $2.5 million to help health centers and the county health department meet the needs of Haitians and the broader community. The Republican governor pushed back on recent national attention to the city, saying the spread of false rumors had been harmful to the community.
Ken Gordon, a spokesman for the Ohio Department of Health, acknowledged the challenges Springfield’s health systems are facing and said the department is monitoring to prevent possible outbreaks of measles, whooping cough and even polio.
The number of people diagnosed with HIV in the county increased from 142 residents in 2018 to 178 in 2022, according to state health department data. Cook, the Clark County health commissioner, said the data is about a year and a half behind schedule.
But Cook said that “overall, not all reportable infections to the Department of Health are increasing.” Last year, he said, no one died of tuberculosis. “But 42 people died from Covid.”
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