Fairmont State students present community needs survey

May 3—FAIRMONT — Substance abuse and mental health services are the top needs facing Marion County, according to findings published Thursday by a team of student researchers at Fairmont State University.

Their survey compared this year's findings to the previous study published in 2013.

"Heart disease in 2013 has been replaced by suicide prevention," Claire Leutz, health care management graduate student, said. "Stress management is the top concern. Mental health is still in the Top 5."

The survey is part of a requirement MVA Clinic must follow to maintain its nonprofit status. The Internal Revenue Service maintains the requirement so that nonprofit health agencies don't leave underserved or marginalized communities behind. It also provides a window to what community needs are unmet, such as primary care, internal medicine, pediatrics, obstetrics and gynecology.

Through a partnership between MVA Clinic and Fairmont State University, students from Professor Raymond Alvarez's class received first hand experience with crafting a survey, performing it and analyzing the results. Exchange students from Calabria, Italy, performed the project management side while both health care management graduate students did the health care related work.

Substance abuse continued to be a key issue for health care from 2013, which Leutz found notable. However, what changed in the decade since was the perception of drug abuse. Leutz said West Virginians have become less complacent about substance abuse and want to see it addressed.

"It feels like a lot of the time people will decide that, that's the way it is," she said. "But, combined with the mental health factor, I think it says a lot of good things for what we can expect moving forward."

Autumn Durr, who is also pursuing a graduate degree in health care management, said the survey revealed the community needs more access to education surrounding suicide awareness and mental health awareness. She said information on those subjects wasn't reaching deep into the public, which is alarming considering the advances made in communications technology since 2013.

The survey had 442 respondents, beating the 300 person goal team members set for themselves. Women primarily responded, making up 70% of respondents while men made up the other 30%. The survey was anonymous, limiting what conclusions could be reached from the data. While the survey provides a surface level overview of the county's health needs, to obtain a more comprehensive view there would have to be more surveys using sampling methods more sophisticated than the ones used here.

Overall however, much of the concerns the community had in 2013 remain the same in 2024.

Durr said the work she and the team did could prove useful to community stakeholders who need to determine what needs have to be met by service providers.

"Do they need more education?" Durr said. "Do they need more access? More transportation? It's really getting the community's stance on what they need for the community."

Nicole Anderson, senior nursing home administrator for the John Manchin Senior Health Care Center, was one of the audience members who attended Thursday's presentation. Her key takeaways surrounded the desire from families to live in a safe place, as well as the emphasis on mental health care. Overall, she felt the survey provided an accurate depiction of the area.

The narrative report of the survey still needs to be published, most likely due May 5.

"We're going to share it with community agencies and then we're going to continue to work on the analysis of the information," Alvarez said.

The project also provided three students from Calabria, Italy, the chance to apply their classroom knowledge toward practical use.

"We learn how to put in practice everything because we dealt with a real team and real stakeholders," Melania Pelegrino, UNICAL project management student, said. "In Italy, we study how to manage every possibilities, every risk. And in fact, we call it risk management. But, not in the real life. So this was so important for us."

Pelegrino, along with fellow students Emanuele Muraca and Angela Villani, presented the project management tool that kept the project organized. They built a self updating Gantt chart in Microsoft Excel which tracked the different stages of the project.

Graduate student Annalisa DeMarzo used the project to study the differences between the U.S. and Italian health care systems. Of particular challenge to the students was encountering the U.S. insurance system.

"When you have to pay a bill you have co-payments, coinsurance, you have so many things and it's very hard to understand what we have to pay and what you don't have to pay," DeMarzo said. "When the insurance works, when insurance does not work. Uh, it's very complicated."

Overall however, the students enjoyed their time in the U.S. Pelegrino said Italy and the U.S. are very different. They return home in two weeks.

"Everything is different from Italy but we have some nice time," Pelegrino said. "Also, thanks to our professors. They make us feeling like at home. It was so nice. We learned a lot of things, and we are looking forward to coming back to Italy and show to our professor and our colleagues, our mates, what we have done so far."

Reach Esteban at efernandez@timeswv.com