HOLLAND Every three years, a cohort of health organizations in Ottawa County oversee a survey of county residents, health care professionals and community leaders to gauge its overall health.
This survey, the Community Health Needs Assessment, helps health officials identify health issues and prioritize strategies to address them.
Results of the 2020 CHNA were released Thursday, March 11, during a presentation given to local and regional stakeholders. Officials identified 10 key findings from the survey, among them access to health care, mental health and the COVID-19 pandemic s effects on physical and mental health for county residents.
“The data collected from this in the past has been vital in understanding community health, said Patrick Cisler, executive director of the Lakeshore Nonprofit Alliance.
Officials are also seeking financial help from the state on local projects.
Those efforts include bringing a medical facility to West Augustine and expanding septic-to-sewer conversions in the neighborhood on West Third Street.
HB 3901, the West Augustine Care Center, seeks $4 million toward a health center that was envisioned based, in part, on the 2018-2020 Community Health Improvement Plan, according to the request. The principle beneficiaries of the Care Center are lower income residents from the West Augustine area; however, the center will be made available for all St. Johns County residents.
As is common for St. Augustine, there are some historic preservation projects on the list.
Racism is a public health crisis in Buncombe County.
County health and government officials testified to that fact in a pair of resolutions passed this summer promising action to address glaring health inequities as the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted those differences across the country.
Six and eight months after those resolutions were signed, on the tail end of a spike in COVID-19 cases and during a once-in-a-generation vaccination effort, those on the front lines say it s a promising start, but there s still plenty to do. We re looking at systemic change across all county government, said Stoney Blevins, Buncombe County Health and Human Services Director, who also noted that in July, the county s Justice Resource Advisory Council proclaimed racism a public safety emergency as well, a month before every county commissioner voted in favor of their resolution.
Feb 08, 2021
The past year of living through COVID-19 has made everyone aware of what pork producers have known for some time. There are severe negative economic impacts and movement constraints that come with a foreign disease entering the U.S.
That s why county delegates at the recent Iowa Pork Producers Association (IPPA) annual meeting in Des Moines supported two resolutions that would build a more efficient system for managing swine health incidents.
The first was a resolution asking Iowa pig farmers to record and maintain their pig movement records with both the source premises and destination premises identification numbers (PIN or Prem ID) in a format that would be readily available to send to the Iowa state veterinarian in the event of a foreign animal disease (FAD) outbreak.