Ouachita County Public Health Coordinator Dr. Jera Smith spoke to the Camden Lions Club about health issues affecting the county, and also highlighted a new study concerning adverse health affects from a popular sweetener.
A graduate of Decatur High School, Smith obtained her bachelors in chemistry from Arkansas Tech University in Russellville and went to medical school at the UAMS in Little Rock.
Smith said, "Upon graduation from there, I wanted to do family medicine and I wanted to do a very specific breed of medicine, and that's why I wanted to continue to deliver babies, which is not so common now as it used to be... It used to be all family doctors delivered babies, and now it's fairly unusual. So I wanted to go to a program that had a lot of (obstetrics) coverage."
After coming to Camden and serving at Ouachita Valley Family Clinic, Smith opened her own practice, First Choice Family Care, in 2020.
"We probably get between 200 and 300 babies a year and there's two providers that deliver babies and it's either feast or famine. I either have no deliveries, or four in one week," Smith said.
She also recently took over the role of Ouachita County Public Health Coordinator upon the suggestion of previous officer Dr. Larry Braden.
She said, "That position is really trying to give a point of contact for dissemination of information in emergency settings really, but I also know a lot of people know now throughout the health systems network and it's like why don't we try to, from the ground up, improve Arkansas's health."
Health Issues
Smith said Ouachita County faces numerous health issues and that education is key to improving those situations.
She said, "I would say that here in Ouachita County, there is an unnatural amount of high blood pressure and diabetes and obesity. I think there's a lot of parts to that -- if there was a quick fix, we'd already know what it is and be working on it -- but to me that shows there's way more things than just one thing."
"We're affected by Southern culture in general, which tends to have higher diabetes and blood pressure and waist circumference due to our great food and our, you know, inactive lifestyle, and so I think that culturally speaking, things like The Trace and trying to get programs like that set up to increase activity," she continued. "I think just availability of information on nutrition -- because and I tell people all the time it's like, I'm very educated as far as science and that type of thing, but I have a financial advisor because I'm not very good at business and money things like that."
Smith said that the culture of poverty also plays a part in health.
"I think it plays a huge role because just limitations. I do think that has improved over time because, used to -- like with WIC (a supplemental nutrition program for Women, Infants and Chlidren) -- you only got processed food, and so there's a direct link between health and the amount of processed food you eat. And so now we have fresh fruits and vegetables that you can get and I think things like that really change it, but you're also breaking into a culture that was funded almost on principle of not a lot of fresh things. And so you still have a really high rate of processed foods, and so I think that's probably the biggest part of poverty. I think now there are options outside the processed foods, but they're just not explored," she said.
Smith also warned of the dangers a popular sweetener, erythritol.
"There was a study where they took a thousand people and they drew blood on them every day, and they tested those blood levels for erythritol, which is a sugar alcohol that's used as a sugar-free sweetener, and they tested their blood levels for it, and at the end of that study, which was three years long mind, which is kind of short for a study, they found that the people that had the top quarter highest levels of erythritolin their blood were two to three times more likely to have a heart attack or stroke."
"It turns out it increases the platelets sensitivity to clotting factors," she said.