Spectrum

Dr. James R. Gaskell has been a physician for over 50 years specializing in pediatrics. He also is the Health Commission of Athens City and County in Southeastern Ohio. When he took that job 20 years ago, he certainly didn’t expect to be fighting a major pandemic from the bottom up—from the grassroots front lines. He normally does his job in a small Appalachian community and rural county. His major fights concern populations who are impoverished, unemployed, and often opiate addicted. At the other end of the economic spectrum, his area also is the home of a major residential university…Ohio University, with nearly 19,000 undergraduates, graduate students and medical students from all over the world on the main campus. This adds to the disparate nature of the populations he serves. As the Coronavirus entered our country early in 2020, his job changed. His days now consist of making sure testing is available for his people (although it was slow trickling down to the rural areas), preparing local hospital