People all over New Hampshire care deeply about who they elect to represent them, whether it’s on their select board, in Concord or the halls of Congress.
Joanne M. Conroy, MDAs part of the We Care We Vote initiative, Dartmouth Health hosted a Rural Health Equity Forum at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) on Wednesday, September 4. Co-hosted by Dartmouth Health’s Office of Government Relations and Center for Advancing Rural Health Equity, all candidates running for New Hampshire’s second Congressional District, where DHMC is located, were invited to learn about rural challenges and share their political strategies to tackle health disparities. In attendance were Democrats Maggie Goodlander and Colin Van Ostern, who are both seeking for the seat soon to be vacated by Rep. Ann McLane Kuster (D-NH).
At the forum, community members—including clinicians, researchers, students, nonprofit leaders, journalists and more—were invited to ask health equity-centered questions of the candidates with context and background information. Moderated by Dartmouth Health CEO and president Joanne M. Conroy, MD, Van Ostern and Goodlander gave their pitch on a wide array of topics related to rural health, including challenges facing older adults, improving outcomes for children, Medicaid expansion, and how each candidate would address these issues and more in Washington.
“Granite Staters have long played an outsized role relative to our state’s small size on the political stage, but that’s not limited to the first-in-the-nation presidential primary. People all over New Hampshire care deeply about who they elect to represent them, whether it’s on their select board, in Concord or the halls of Congress,” Conroy said. “Dartmouth Health takes its role as a public health authority in this state seriously, especially as the most rural academic medical system in the nation. I thank Ms. Goodlander and Mr. Van Ostern for sharing their visions for improving health equity for everyone in the District, regardless of their zip code.”
A video of the forum is available upon request.
About Dartmouth Health
Dartmouth Health, New Hampshire’s only academic health system and largest private employer, serves patients across New England. Dartmouth Health provides access to more than 2,300 providers in nearly every area of medicine, delivering care at its flagship hospital, Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC) in Lebanon, NH. Its network of hospitals, outpatient centers, clinics and home care facilities, spans a broad geographical area. Year after year, DHMC is named the #1 hospital in New Hampshire by U.S. News & World Report, and is consistently recognized for high performance in numerous clinical specialties and procedures. Dartmouth Health includes Dartmouth Cancer Center, northern New England’s only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Centers and one of less than than 60 total nationally; Dartmouth Health Children’s, which includes the state’s only children’s hospital (Children’s Hospital at DHMC/CHaD) and more than 20 locations around the region; eight member hospitals in Lebanon, Keene, Claremont, Hampstead, and New London, NH, and Windsor and Bennington, VT; Dartmouth Health Home Care; Dartmouth Health Connected Care Center for Telehealth, serving patients as far away as Texas; and more than 30 primary and multi-specialty clinics across New Hampshire and Vermont. Through its partnership with Dartmouth College, Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine and the White River Junction VA Medical Center, Dartmouth Health trains nearly 400 medical residents and fellows annually and performs cutting-edge research and clinical trials with international impact. Dartmouth Health and its more than 16,000 employees are committed to serving the healthcare needs of everyone in the communities it serves and to providing every patient with exceptional, state-of-the-art, personalized care. Learn more at dartmouth-health.org.