BRUNSWICK – It was only appropriate on Friday that heartfelt appreciation was shown for two Wilton health care professionals who “made a demonstrable difference in the health of the citizens of Franklin County,” according to Dr. Lani Graham, former Maine Bureau of Health director, at a leadership luncheon at Bowdoin College.
Dr. Burgess Record and Sandra Record, a registered nurse, are not only partners in marriage but partners in bringing preventive health initiatives to Franklin County for more than three decades. For their efforts, they were awarded this year’s Dan Hanley Leadership Award at a gathering of more than 100 people.
Graham, now medical director for public health emergency preparedness for the Department of Health and Human Services, nominated the couple, saying the Records “have been able to combine the best that evidence-based medicine and public health can offer.”
Named for Dr. Daniel Hanley, who served as head physician at Bowdoin for 33 years, recipients of the award are chosen based on collaborative, courageous, innovative and kind hard work, according to the Dan Hanley Memorial Trust Web site.
In 1974 the Records, through Rural Health Associates, initiated a program to reduce high blood pressure in the county by going to rural communities and providing free blood pressure screenings, referrals and preventive education, much like the Healthy Community Coalition still does today with its van. As a matter of fact, it was the precursor to the coalition, of which the Records were two of the founders.
In one year, 130 volunteer nurses, coordinated by Sandra Record, screened 4,500 people, one-quarter of Franklin County’s adult population.
The blood pressure program led to a cholesterol-lowering program, which in turn led to smoking-cessation and healthy lifestyles programs that still exist.
“One of the keys to what we’ve been doing is going to where the people are,” Sandra Record said after the luncheon.
“It was very dynamic and exciting,” Burgess Record said about the initial program Friday. “It turned into a communitywide crusade,” he added.
Through a research project that used nurses and doctors to treat patients together, they learned that the combination makes a good sense.
Nurses have time to listen to patients’ daily concerns, while doctors are better acute-care providers, they both agreed.
Just as children do well with having both directive and nurturing figures in their lives, so too do patients. Doctors tend to be directive decision-makers, while nurses are more nurturing and caring, the doctor said.
“It explains why this model works so well,” he said. “The sense of caring has a positive health impact.”
“They were able to capitalize on the very best both professions are able to offer,” agreed Graham.
And their program is making a difference.
A study published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine in 2000 showed that despite the county’s high unemployment rate and limited availability of doctors, factors often associated with poor health, heart disease mortality decreased over 20 years as opposed to two other similar rural counties in the state where the rate remained constant. “People live healthier lives and are able to enjoy life in a full way,” Graham said. Their work is not just about death and sickness, it’s about health, she added.
Comments are no longer available on this story