This week on HealthConnections is the second part to the conversation with Senator Dr. Richard Briggs. Dr. Carole Myers, a professor emeritus in the University of Tennessee College of Nursing, talks with state senator and physician, Dr. Richard Briggs, about Juul settlement funds and disparities in rural healthcare access.
WUOT’s Carole Myers: A bill has been filed to allow Juul settlement funds to be used to prevent teenage vaping. What are the prospects for this bill?
Richard Briggs: That issue has not been settled. If you have been following the Juul situation closely, there was a settlement that the Tennessee Attorney General made and we have received funds on that settlement. The funds are still in the attorney general’s office and he has some leeway as to what to do with them and this may end up an area of contention. I hope it is not an area of competition about what to do with these funds. But, I think many in the legislature would like to be able to use those funds and direct those to either stopping, prevention and education of our teenagers because unfortunately we have made a tremendous amount of progress in stopping smoking, particularly in our young people, but for all that progress we’ve gone in the opposite direction, in a bad direction because of Juul and we have a lot of our teenagers now who are addicted to nicotine and once they are addicted to nicotine, it is so easy to make that jump from Juul to cigarettes that we have to be very concerned and we really need to address that. I am hoping that we can use those funds for prevention of teenage use of Juul and the vaping apparatices. Just like we are trying to do with the opiate funds to where, by law, those have to be used to address the opiate problem, I would like to see the Juul settlement funds to be used to address the teenage vaping problem.
What’s your assessment? Is the state making progress in reducing disparities in rural health and healthcare? I mean, Medicaid expansion is part of the answer, but it is just a part.
You’re absolutely right. It is just part of the answer. This is another area which could be a bright spot because again whether you are a democrat or a republican, we all recognize that particularly in our rural areas it is very difficult to find a physician, it is very difficult to find any of these health personnel. If you talk to our hospital administrators, they’re even having difficulty finding nurses to staff our healthcare facilities. There are some things that we are trying to do in Tennessee to address those problems, but there’s not going to be a quick fix. So, it gives us an opportunity. We know that if residents train in a state then they are much more likely to stay in the state. We are doing a very good job now of graduating people from the medical schools and the osteopathic schools and our nurse clinician schools. But, we are having a difficult time retaining them in Tennessee because they are having to leave the state to do their residencies in family practice or in psychiatry or for the nurse practitioners and more or less general care.
So, that ties into a final question I have for you. You have used the words ‘bright spots’ and I’m interpreting these bright spots to be not necessarily that we’re reversing bad trends, but that we are talking to each other and beginning to look at unique Tennessee-based solutions.
What I’m calling a bright spot and it’s really where there is no political disagreement. There’s no philosophical disagreement. We know we have a problem. It doesn’t mean that we have solutions, but we know we have a problem and we are working on those together.
This transcript has been lightly edited for content.
