Aaron Yao's Crusade Against Cancer
This is Nengliang "Aaron" Yao, PhD. He's from China, originally, and is the first in his family to go to college. He's been researching cancer disparities in Appalachia, and he's come to the alarming conclusion that when it comes to cancer, the people in rural China have it better than the people in rural Appalachia. He's out to change that, and he's urging people to join his crusade. Will you?
UVA Health System - Cancer Disparities in Rural Appalachia
The cancer incidence rates is decreasing everywhere in the United States but is increasing in rural Appalachia, so these are the most striking disparities I have ever seen. I'm Aaron y'all I'm an assistant professor of Public Health Sciences at the School of Medicine University of Virginia. We used 50 years of cancer death rates data and we found a very disturbing results about rural Appalachia cancer disparities. We found that 50 years ago we had the lowest cancer death rates in the United States but now they have the highest actually — it's about 15 percent higher than the rest of the United States. It's not just about cancer death rates, it's actually you find disparities across the continuum of cancer care from screening to early diagnosis to stage a diagnosis to survivorship and the cancer treatments. So you actually find this disparities at any stage of cancer care these people they're kind of independent and self-sufficient we don't really hear their complaints about healthcare in reply sure but we got to do something to solve the problem and for specialty care. We should design some telehealth solutions to solve the problem and the UVA telehealth Center is doing very well and we are establishing telehealth sites in Roger. About 50 years ago, President Johnson declared war on poverty but after all these 50 years I kind of want to conclude that we lost the war we might need to re declare the war on poverty and we might want to fight war differently now. It's a globalized world and we should fight the war on poverty from the global perspective. I'm from China but from the rural area of China so I can say I'm a country boy so I always have a passion for rural life. I tried to do my research to improve health care in rural regions. I feel a lot of the younger generation that they are doing worse than my brothers and sisters in rural China since I really live close to rural Asia and they're about I think a percent of the population that live in Appalachia so if I can do something I will use my you know research career to to solve this problem.