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  • Fox Cities serves as health example

    Appleton Post Crescent, WI
    March 26 2004

    Fox Cities serves as health example

    How area treats children may be applied in Eurasia

    By Kara Patterson
    Post-Crescent staff writer

    APPLETON - Dr. Arzu Rustamova of Baku, Azerbaijan, says she's found
    hope for her capital city's orphanage-bound children with special
    needs in Appleton's approach to community wellness.

    `The children were abandoned because they need constant care and
    attention, and the parents are not able to see their condition might
    be changed for the better,' said Rustamova through an interpreter.
    `It's important to communicate to parents that they should be active
    participants of this process.'

    Rustamova is one of 17 physician administrators in the U.S.
    Department of Commerce's Special American Business Internship
    Training Program who spent this week in the Fox Valley learning
    management strategies they'll employ in their five Eurasian home
    countries.

    They say their observations of healthy American communities will help
    them contribute to their countries' transitions from
    government-controlled health care to privatized systems structured
    more around individual responsibility.

    The Fox Cities-Kurgan Sister Cities Program Inc. and World Services
    of La Crosse Inc. introduced the delegation to local health care
    professionals, business leaders, teachers and nonprofit service
    providers.

    The group leaves today for Des Moines, Iowa, on its four-week U.S.
    tour.

    Rustamova, the administrator of Baku Children's Rehabilitation
    Center, met a potential mentor in Bob Russo, president/CEO of the
    Appleton-based Valley Packaging Industries Inc.

    Valley Packaging's Early Intervention Program, serving children with
    disabilities from birth to 3 years old, may influence the development
    of Rustamova's proposed pilot program. She's hoping to turn full-day
    orphanage care for special-needs children in Baku into a day program
    dependent upon family support.

    `That carries over to when they are no longer children,' Russo said.
    `One of the things I pointed out was how our program not only treats
    the child but reduces the need for (future) medical attention and
    other services.'

    Dr. Karmella Poghosyan, who oversees a pediatric hospital in Yerevan,
    Armenia, said she was impressed by displays of nutrition, personal
    hygiene and healthy lifestyles information decorating the walls of
    Johnston Elementary School in Appleton.

    Dr. Victor Pologov, a city health department administrator in
    Sevastopol, Ukraine, said his country's employers must learn more
    about health insurance because such benefits now are on the horizon
    for their employees.

    Kara Patterson can be reached at 920-993-1000, ext. 215, or by e-mail
    at [email protected]
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