Opinion: Think Locally! Act Locally!
Too much global thinking without local knowledge, leadership and adjustment is failing us at home. It is way past time to expand our reliance on local community knowledge and action, particularly to improve local health care.
One of the best examples of how local activism makes things happen is the 2024 reopening of the Klamath River — 60-plus years of work by dedicated local residents brought down the Klamath dams, which might have stood for eternity without deep local knowledge and experience. Buttressed and expanded through regional and national collaborations and a willingness to go wherever experience led — no matter how uncomfortable — local action succeeded.
The fight to remove the dams, owned and operated by huge multinational entities, and reopen the Klamath for the first time in 100 years won for many reasons, starting and ending with the committed and unwavering human beings who live on the river, but in part because local knowledge proved time and again to be more precise, correct and action-generating than data from far away.
Just a few miles as the condor glides from the reclaimed Klamath, we sit on our hands facing what is repeatedly called an existential crisis in health care on the North Coast, waiting for “someone” to solve it for us. (Thank you for helping draw attention to the crisis, Natalie Arroyo!)
Besides shortchanging us all in terms of adequate care and local options, our healthcare shortage also reduces economic development, jobs and business health because individuals and companies that look at workforce essentials like housing and health care make choices not to locate or expand here.
Healthcare institutions can do only so much within economic and practical constraints, and still may not help the thousands of people in Humboldt County, disproportionately seniors, who are forced to travel out of the area for health care not available here. There is no single, magic solution that does not involve both our healthcare institutions and a robust, broad-based, coordinated public/civic effort.
But wait, you say: the rural healthcare crisis is nationwide and systemic, out of our reach locally. Damn folks! So were the dams!
We are in the bottom-middle of similar communities in terms of numbers of local doctors, 25% fewer today than in 2005 (see “Health Care & Aging in Humboldt,” Senior News, May 2025). That means many rural communities are doing better than we are. Standouts are Nebraska (yes, Nebraska) and Kansas, with large rural areas not considered medically underserved. What’s different is their deep tradition of civic problem-solving and community engagement.
That kind of attitude used to exist here in Humboldt. Good grief! Where did our defeatism come from?
It is always difficult to build the authentic cross-sector, inclusive and broad-based coalitions necessary to solve big systemic problems. It requires that we do more than just complain and blame others. If you have any doubts, remember how the impossible was achieved on the Klamath (read Amy Bowers Cordalis’s just-released book, “The Water Remembers,” about the removal of the Klamath dams).
Let’s all focus for five seconds and get ORGANIZING to confront our healthcare problems!
Peter Pennekamp of Eureka, formerly an executive at the Humboldt Area Foundation and National Public Radio, is a member of the Senior News Community Advisory Council.
Email: henkswords@gmail.com.
