Findings in Public Health Reported from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Factors influencing high respiratory mortality in coal-mining counties: a repeated cross-sectional study)

2019 NOV 22 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- Current study results on public health have been published. According to news originating from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University by NewsRx correspondents, research stated, “Previous studies have associated elevated mortality risk in central Appalachia with coal-mining activities, but few have explored how different non-coal factors influence the association within each county. Consequently, there is a knowledge gap in identifying effective ways to address health disparities in coal-mining counties.”

Financial supporters for this research include Appalachian Research Initiative for Environmental Science.

The news reporters obtained a quote from the research from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University: “To specifically address this knowledge gap, this study estimated the effect of living in a coal-mining county on non-malignant respiratory diseases (NMRD) mortality, and defined this as ‘coal-county effect.’ We also investigated what factors may accentuate or attenuate the coal-county effect. An ecological epidemiology protocol was designed to observe the characteristics of three populations and to identify the effects of coal-mining on community health. Records for seven coal-mining counties (n = 19,692) were obtained with approvals from the Virginia Department of Health Office of Vital Statistics for the years 2005 to 2012. Also requested were records from three adjacent coal counties (n = 10,425) to provide a geographic comparison. For a baseline comparison, records were requested for eleven tobacco-producing counties (n = 27,800). We analyzed the association of 57,917 individual mortality records in Virginia with coal-mining county residency, county-level socioeconomic status, health access, behavioral risk factors, and coal production. The development of a two-level hierarchical model allowed the coal-county effect to vary by county-level characteristics. Wald tests detected sets of significant factors explaining the variation of impacts across counties. Furthermore, to illustrate how the model estimations help explain health disparities, two coal-mining county case studies were presented. The main result revealed that coal-mining county residency increased the probability of dying from NMRD. The coal-county effect was accentuated by surface coal mining, high smoking rates, decreasing health insurance coverage, and a shortage of doctors. In Virginia coal-mining regions, the average coal-county effect increased by 147% (p-value< 0.01) when one doctor per 1000 left, and the effect increased by 68% (p-value< 0.01) with a 1% reduction of health insurance rates, holding other factors fixed.”

According to the news editors, the research concluded: “This study showed a high mortality risk of NMRD associated with residents living in Virginia coal-mining counties. Our results also revealed the critical role of health access in reducing health disparities related to coal exposure.”

For more information on this research see: Factors influencing high respiratory mortality in coal-mining counties: a repeated cross-sectional study. BMC Public Health, 2019,19(1):1-16. (BMC Public Health - http://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com). The publisher for BMC Public Health is BMC.

A free version of this journal article is available at https://doi.org/10.1186/s12889-019-7858-y.

Our news journalists report that more information may be obtained by contacting Ruoding Shi, Department of Agricultural & Applied Economics, Virginia Tech. Additional authors for this research include Susan Meacham, George C. Davis, Wen You, Yu Sun, Cody Goessl.

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