Issues

Iowa is home; where we all live and work and raise our families. We all have an interest in our own health and access to health care providers. We have a moral obligation to our friends and neighbors. We and our families are all one significant life change or illness away from our daily lives being forever changed.

A recent Iowa Cancer report released in February 2025 reports that Iowa has the second highest and fastest rising cancer rate (new cancer) across all age groups in the nation. This is alarming information.

Additionally, the Iowa Medical Society recently reported a physician workforce shortage crisis like never before, where Iowa is ranked 44th in the nation as far as patient to physician ratio per 100,000 (30% worse than the national average). Iowa also ranks last nationally for OB-GYNs per capita, with 3.3 providers per 10,000 women (national average is 4.5).

We need to recruit and retain qualified providers to our area.

We need to eliminate legislative actions and proposed legislation which make it undesirable for health care providers to come to our great state of Iowa.

We need to invest time and research, in a real way, into finding the root causes of our rising cancer rates and solutions to the issues we are already aware of in our water quality.