LUBBOCK, Texas — A rise in syphilis rates, elderly isolation and drunk driving were all concerns brought to the table on Thursday, April 18 when the City of Lubbock Public Health Department hosted “Lubbock Let’s,” which allowed citizens to give comments on and ask questions about the current state of public health in the city.
This was the first time Lubbock’s health department hosted this idea exchange. One of the biggest concerns brought up was the rapid rise of syphilis rates and the lack of sex education for teens.
“Can we talk about sex? Can we talk about sex in Lubbock Texas?” a community member asked, which spurred a lengthy discussion about sex education among the group.
“It is absolutely astonishing what those students don’t know,” another Lubbock community member and teacher said.
The citizens called on schools and parents to “just talk about it,” especially after syphilis rates increased by 500% in the past few years in Lubbock.
“If we’re going to have sex, let’s make it safe because there are sexually transmitted infections that I can fix and there are certain transmitted infections that I can fix that you’ll carry for the rest of your life,” Dr. Ron Cook, who works in the department of Family and Community Medicine at Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center, said.
Katherine Wells, the Director of Public Health for the city responded to the comments and offered some possible solutions.
“We say, ‘Oh this is something parents should talk to their children about’ but we don’t necessarily teach or give our parents those tools. So, I think it’s going to be a two-sided approach where we’re going to work with both young people and then also educate our adults on how you talk to your kids about this,” Wells said.
Concrete solutions that will show up in the community, however, won’t come into play until after the health department gathers all of the input from the discussions they’ve hosted and their public health survey responses. They will present their findings to the Board of Health in June. From there, they could have the chance to present it to Lubbock City Council, according to Wells.
“It’s really looking at what the future direction of public health will be in our community for the next five years – the next 10 years,” Wells said.
While sex education was a big topic in the discussion, another widely discussed issue was elderly isolation.
“For the elderly – it is sad,” a citizen at the meeting said.
Wells added that she noticed other big points at the meeting were high child abuse rates, domestic violence, food insecurity and access to healthcare.
Wells, along with the other health professionals at Thursday’s idea exchange, considered all of the topics discussed.
“That’s why we’re doing these listening sessions … to hear from different parts of our community about what their biggest concerns are. And yes, there was a lot,” Wells said.
If you’d like to add your input on public health in Lubbock, you can find a link to a survey here.
