On Oct. 9, a Virginia Mason Franciscan Health representative presented the King County Community Needs Assessment to the Federal Way Senior Advisory Commission, explaining its findings — and their impact on seniors as well as the county.

Cora Wyche, operations fellow at VMFH, said the assessment was compiled using King County hospital data. Wyche said that as a nonprofit organization, VMFH is required to participate in the report every three years.

Through this assessment, Wyche said the key priorities where they saw the biggest changes and impact on King County the most are domestic violence rates, food insecurity, firearm-related incidents, youth depression and housing. Wyche said housing is one of the areas that continues to be a priority from prior reports.

Wyche said King County is seeing an increase in adult food insecurity, particularly among adults ages 25 to 44, as well as in unhoused children. Wyche said that among LGBTQ+ adults, the rates of food insecurity are four times that of cisgender adults. Wyche said domestic violence is also another issue that has been increasing, but is affecting people of color more than other groups.

“It’s predicted, I believe, by 2050, that 62% of King County will be people of color. However, what we see with domestic violence is that American Indian, Alaskan Native, Black, and Hispanic adults have really experienced a disproportionate rate of domestic violence, and that has largely impacted South King County,” Wyche said. “What we’ve identified in that is that a lot of it has to do with COVID-19. People were locked in. There weren’t a lot of resources or ways to get out of the house. So situations that may have been treated by resources or access to services didn’t get that attention.”

Wyche said community resources are now starting to serve people experiencing domestic violence again, and the rates of people utilizing them are increasing.

Firearms and fentanyl

The next big issue Wyche spoke about was firearm-related injuries. Wyche said the age groups where the biggest uptick was seen were ages 18 to 24 and the age group 75-plus. Regarding the age group 75-plus, Wyche said most of those firearm-related injuries come from senior suicide. Wyche said another reason for the prevalence is someone in the 75-plus age group might have dementia or another neurological ailment that causes them to hurt themselves or others when they come across an unsecured firearm in the home.

Wyche said people of color are being disproportionately affected by firearm-related injuries, and Black residents are eight times more likely to experience firearm-related injuries. The groups with the lowest rates of firearm-related injuries were the American Indian, Alaskan Native people, Native Hawaiian, and Pacific Islander communities. Wyche said this might be because these communities are very tight-knit and share information.

Regarding drug-induced deaths, Wyche said there’s been a large increase in access to fentanyl.

“Fentanyl has been a very pervasive drug in not only South King County, but East King County as well, and across the entirety of King county, we have seen the access to this drug has resulted in homicide, has resulted in violence, domestic violence, as well as situations that really make it difficult for health systems to reach these individuals,” Wyche said. “Perhaps they hide the use, or they don’t want to seek care because they are afraid of police or getting in trouble. So we’re seeing even more serious situations and cases with these individuals where they wait, and then maybe an overdose happens, or they get a severe injury, and it’s much harder to treat them and more expensive as well.”

In this group, Wyche said the American Indian and Alaskan Native people make up a huge portion of the drug-induced deaths. Wyche said this has a lot to do with these communities experiencing depression, causing people ages 18 and under and ages 18 to 44 to make up the majority of deaths in these communities.

Wyche said she wanted to end the presentation by saying that youth mental health needs to be addressed. She said that they’ve been noticing higher rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation among LGBTQ+ students, Hispanic students, and students of color. Wyche said there is a lot of access to mental health treatment, especially after the pandemic, but they’ve also seen an increase in access to fentanyl.