{"id":585,"date":"2023-07-28T04:00:00","date_gmt":"2023-07-28T04:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/?p=585"},"modified":"2023-07-06T21:00:25","modified_gmt":"2023-07-06T21:00:25","slug":"health-care-costs-are-pushing-people-into-poverty-heres-how-shepherd-is-helping","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/2023\/07\/28\/health-care-costs-are-pushing-people-into-poverty-heres-how-shepherd-is-helping\/","title":{"rendered":"Health-care costs are pushing people into poverty. Here\u2019s how Shepherd is helping."},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Health-care expenses, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, pushed about 8 million Americans into poverty<\/a> in 2018. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the economy and drove up health care spending by nearly 10%.<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Good health is often taken for granted until it\u2019s threatened in some way. But once a person\u2019s health slips, the damage to employment, including lost wages, hits just as household expenses increase. As a result, a person can lose financial stability in only a few weeks and regaining that stability can take years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At Shepherd Community Center, the staff has identified good health and mobility as one of 10 essential assets<\/a> for breaking free of poverty and sustaining financial independence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve talked to too many parents in the past couple of years who feel forced to neglect their own health so that they can meet their children\u2019s needs,\u201d Jay Height, executive director of Shepherd, said. \u201cThat will catch up with at least some of them, and then the outcomes aren\u2019t good for anybody.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 2015, researchers with the Urban Institute and Virginia Commonwealth University found that lower-income adults<\/a> were almost five times as likely to be in fair or poor health as those with incomes at 400% of the poverty level, which at the time was less than $24,000 for a family of four. Lower incomes also are associated with higher rates of diabetes, heart disease, stroke and other chronic illnesses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

To help improve and sustain neighbors\u2019 health, Shepherd, with the support of partners such as Ezkenazi Health and the city of Indianapolis, offers a variety of services, including deployment of a fulltime paramedic<\/a> who provides direct medical care and assists patients in obtaining treatment from other medical professionals.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Shepherd also has hosted drive-through clinics where neighbors can receive services such as free flu shots<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And part of the long-term strategy behind operating a food pantry, offering cooking classes, and filling students\u2019 backpacks on Fridays with nutritious food to eat on weekends is to sustain adults\u2019 and children\u2019s health.  Good, sustained nutrition is a preventative health measure.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe know that health care can be expensive. And we know our neighbors are often at higher risk of various illnesses,\u201d Height said. \u201cWe\u2019re committed, as part of our mission to break the cycle of poverty, to ensuring that neighbors have access to the health services they need.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Health-care expenses, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, pushed about 8 million Americans into poverty in 2018. And that was before the COVID-19 pandemic disrupted the economy and drove up health care spending by nearly 10%. Good health is often taken for granted until it\u2019s threatened in some way. But once a person\u2019s health slips, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":586,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"off","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-585","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-shepherd"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=585"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/585\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=585"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=585"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/upliftindy.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=585"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}