Promoting better health

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joconnell@journalnet.com

POCATELLO -- Larry Murillo sees the broader picture of health care. It goes well beyond vaccines, prescription medication and regular checkups.

From Murillo's point of view, the key to improving the health of a community is to first conduct an intensive study of that community's culture. Then comes the harder part -- changing it.

On a global scale, he believes people have shifted toward less healthy lifestyles, and he's convinced unfulfilled potential manifests itself in physical ailments more than most experts realize.

Murillo, the son of a Shoshone mother and a father from Mexico, is an assistant professor and director of the Master of Public Health program at Idaho State University's Kasiska College of Health Professions.

He has about 30 students and started his job at ISU in March.

The cultural health educator has developed awareness programs pertaining to maternal child health, aids, tobacco use, diabetes and obesity.

"Medical care is designed to work with germs and viruses. The kinds of health situations we have out there aren't necessarily related to germs and viruses," Murillo said, citing suicide, alcoholism and drug use as being among the leading threats to long and healthy lives. "Underlying all of that, especially for younger people, there's not a sense of purpose or a role for them."

He argues the nation's health care system is in trouble, and as people lose access to health care, it's increasingly important that they understand how lifestyle affects well-being, focusing more on prevention, and spiritual and emotional health than treatment.

"The way the health care system is going, there's such a huge opportunity here to educate people to take care of themselves rather than depend on physicians for their health care," Murillo said. "People don't take care of themselves until they get sick."

Murillo, a 1975 Pocatello High School graduate, did his undergraduate studies in psychology at Gonzaga, where he attended on an academic scholarship and walked on to the baseball team for a short while. He obtained a master's degree in psychology at ISU and got his master's of public health and a doctorate of public health from the University of California Berkeley.

For four years, he worked at a Portland, Ore., medical school, until his grant ran out. He was thrilled when the opportunity opened at ISU.

Murillo believes the nation's obesity problem traces back to the explosion of fast food restaurants. But on Indian reservations, he argues the problem started earlier, back when the U.S. government implemented a subsidized food program to Native Americans that utilized unhealthy commodities.

Early in his career, Murillo organized a gathering of Native Americans in California for a dialogue on health. It struck him that elders and the old ways promoted a far more healthy lifestyle.

It was evidence that the erosion of culture correlates with the increasing prevalence of health problems among Native Americans.

"I don't want to say they were lost, these cultural practices, but they were hidden from the community maybe. The idea was to restore them," Murillo said.

Nowhere was the concept clearer than in Tuba City, Ariz., where Murillo was charged with addressing an obesity crisis in a community of 10,000 Navajo and Hopi Indians.

One in every four Navajo males in the community had diabetes. One in five Navajo women had diabetes.

He learned in the old days, members of the community traditionally woke early, faced the east and prayed, and then went on a long jog. They thought of it as more of a spiritual exercise than physical.

"When I started talking to the older people about restoring some of those cultural traditions, they were really into it," Murillo said.

Next week, Murillo will be a featured speaker at a conference at Lewis and Clark College in Portland. His topic will be historical trauma and traditional health problems.

By John O'Connell

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