ACCOMACK COUNTY, Va. - Up and down U.S. Route 13 in Accomack County, advertisements abound for cheap cigarettes.
In its 2024 Community Health Assessment for Accomack and Northampton Counties, Virginia's Department of Health cited higher rates of smoking in the two counties as one cause of lower health metrics.
According to the Assessment, Virginia's Eastern Shore has higher rates of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, and heart disease than the rest of Virginia. The life expectancy was also lower in the two Delmarva counties.
But smoking wasn't the only factor contributing to the poor health numbers..
"We're a food desert here on the Eastern Shore of Virginia, so we don't have access to healthy foods as there are opportunities in the western part of the state," said Jennifer A. Tyler, chief operations and clinical officer for Eastern Shore Rural Health System. "We have a higher rate of inactivity. We have less opportunity for exercise outlets."
"[Other] reasons include poverty, unhealthy diets, medication adherence, and genetics," said Lloyd J. Kellam, MD, a cardiologist with the Riverside Health System.
Neighbors in Accomack County say they can't establish a long-term relationship with their primary care doctor.
"It just seems like they come down here and stay a few months and they're gone again," said Nolan Warnick of Chincoteague, Va. "And I would like to have a doctor that you could go to for months at a time, not have such a turnover."
Chincoteague neighbors Debi Owen and Betty Jones lament the lack of medical specialists on Virginia's Eastern Shore. They take their medical needs to Maryland.
"I can't find what I need here, so I just go to Salisbury to see my neurologist, she sees her heart doctor, anything like that we have to go up that far," Owen said.
Owen also noted that having to travel to Norfolk or to Salisbury for specialized care can be a large burden on a family.
"It's hard with families. When you're in the hospital or doing things, they have a distance to travel to see somebody. [They need to find] where they're going to stay, if they're going to stay overnight, it's just really hard," Owen said.
Lots of things need to improve across Accomack and Northampton Counties, according to David F. Jones, MD, Chief Medical Officer at Riverside Shore Memorial Hospital. "[We must] increase the number of primary care physicians as well as specialist care for Eastern Shore residents," Jones said. "It is imperative to continue working with our community partners to improve education of these various health conditions with focus on healthier lifestyles and diet, smoking cessation, and solutions to improve timely and proper access to healthcare."
Health experts also say that while health metrics are overall worse on Virginia's Eastern Shore mainly due to the fundamental problems of being in a geographically isolated and relatively poor area, the care that people do get for diseases such as diabetes is more effective than in the rest of the Commonwealth.
"Our control rate is eighty percent, which means that eighty percent of our patients have an A1C which is less than nine, which is actually better controlled than the rest of the state (sic) of Virginia," Tyler said.
According to the Virginia Department of Health, the next step is to use the information collected in the Community Health Assessment to develop and implement a Community Health Improvement Plan. Click here to read the complete Community Health Assessment.