Jun. 15—Hundreds of free air purifiers are headed to medically vulnerable Jackson County residents to help protect them from wildfire smoke.

The Oregon Health Authority is reaching out to Oregon Health Plan members who have health problems that could be worsened by smoke. Those who want an air purifier can pick them up at local medical clinics.

Residents who don’t get a call but think they may be eligible can call OHP Client Services at 1-800-273-0557.

Jackson Care Connect, which manages OHP physical, mental and dental health care benefits for 60,000 Jackson County residents, recently teamed up with Mercy Flights to prepare air purifiers for distribution. Mercy Flights provides ground ambulance service plus medical airplane and helicopter flights.

Working in a Mercy Flights hangar near the Medford airport, about two dozen employees of the two organizations recently put air purifiers in cardboard boxes, added informational flyers and secured each box with shipping tape. A morning’s work yielded a small mountain of 286 boxed air purifiers stacked in tidy rows.

The next stage of the journey for the air purifiers is local medical clinics run by groups such as La Clinica, Rogue Community Health, Asante and Providence. OHP members who’ve been selected to get a free air purifier will be able to pick one up at a clinic.

When the air is thick with wildfire smoke, ambulance crews notice the impacts on patients, said Mercy Flights Chief Executive Officer Sheila Clough.

“We work hard to educate our team about the signs and symptoms of smoke exposure. Calls from the community increase during fire season. We see a lot of breathing problems. A lot of patients with chronic health issues need more assistance,” she said.

Wildfire smoke can impact people’s mental health as well, especially if smoke lingers for weeks or months, said Jackson Care Connect Chief Executive Officer Jennifer Lind.

People can’t enjoy outside activities, and the sky is gloomy.

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“We see an exacerbation of mental health conditions,” Lind said. “Opaque skies are so oppressive in the summer. We’re preparing for more and more climate emergencies from heat and smoke. The medical community is trying to figure out how to respond.”

Climate models predict hotter summers for Southern Oregon and longer fire seasons.

Money for the air purifiers came from the Oregon Legislature’s passage of Senate Bill 762 in 2021. The wide-ranging bill to address wildfire issues requires the state to develop programs to distribute air purifiers to vulnerable people and upgrade the air conditioning and ventilation systems of some public buildings such as schools and libraries. Those public buildings can then serve as shelters from smoke and excessive heat.

Statewide, about 5,000 home air purifiers are going out to medically vulnerable people.

State Sen. Jeff Golden, a Democrat whose district includes Medford, Ashland and the Applegate Valley, advocated for passage of the bill.

He said most of the air purifiers will go to Oregon counties hard-hit by smoke in past years, including Jackson County.

Even when there aren’t any local wildfires, smoke from the region collects in the bowl of the Rogue Valley and gets trapped there.

“The Rogue Valley gets inversions, and we collect smoke from all over,” Golden said.

He said getting air purifiers into the homes of vulnerable people will allow them to stay in place — breathing cleaner, healthier air. Golden said even though the community will have more public buildings outfitted to serve as shelters against heat and smoke, many medically fragile people are less mobile and have trouble getting around.

The Grovpure Aspen air purifiers going out to people typically sell for less than $200. The idea for the purifiers came from a U.S. Army veteran who saw the impacts of dust and contaminants on fellow soldiers, according to the company’s website.

The purifiers filter out 99.97% of airborne particles, including smoke, pollen, mold spores, pet dander and dust. When set on automatic mode, they sense their surroundings and speed up their filtering when air quality is bad, according to the company.

Lind, the CEO of Jackson Care Connect, said distributing the air purifiers through local medical clinics will not only help people deal with smoke, the program could get some patients reconnected to medical care. Many people stopped visiting their doctors during the COVID-19 pandemic.

One of the flyers Jackson Care Connect and Mercy Flights workers put in the air purifier boxes encourages people to schedule a wellness visit with their doctors. Some patients may be eligible for a gift card when they have a health care visit, the flyer says.

“We’ve seen a lot of disruption to people’s health care during the pandemic,” Lind said. “People stopped going to see their doctors. We saw that well-child visits were down, and vaccinations were down. There are a lot of people with unmanaged diabetes. A lot of chronic conditions are made worse by delays. We’re really trying to get them reengaged with their doctors.”

AllCare Health, another local manager of Oregon Health Plan benefits, also is distributing free air purifiers to selected patients. AllCare Health members with questions about the program can call the state OHP Client Services number or 541-471-4106.

About 75,000 of Jackson County’s 225,500 residents are covered by the Oregon Health Plan.

Reach Mail Tribune reporter Vickie Aldous at 541-776-4486 or [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @VickieAldous.

Source: https://news.yahoo.com/free-air-purifiers-headed-vulnerable-122000215.html