Health care needs of the disadvantaged in a rural-urban area.

HEALTH CARE is a community affair. The report of the National Commission on Community Health Services states that "health services, operated to meet the needs of every individual, should be located within the environment of the individual's home community" (la). The report further points out that "the performance of community health services should not be considered the province solely of the physician and the public health officer. It must be recognized that the health 'team' is not a closed fraternity. . . . The vested interests of voluntary, private, and public agencies and of the professions must be subjected to the overriding interest-that of the health of the people" (Jb). In the summer of 1970 I was asked to chair a special Task Force on Priority Populations for ALPHA (Area-wide and Local Planning for Health Action, Inc.), a community health group for a six-county region headquartered in Syracuse, N.Y. The task force operated under the premise expressed by the national commission that health care is not the province of any special group. Our task was to identify the health care needs of poor people, older people, and members of disadvantaged minority groups in this upstate New York area. The area consists of urban and rural sectors and, in many respects, is a prototype of middle-sized metropolitan communities throughout the nation. Syracuse is its hub. It has a population of approximately 200,000 and is often used as a setting for commercial market research because of the representativeness of its population.