Pros: 'Community is strong and united' to improve health; new studies spotlight region's challenges

Apr. 1—JOHNSTOWN, Pa. — Vegetable plants started at the Sandyvale Memorial Gardens and Conservancy greenhouse in Johnstown's Hornerstown section are planted and grown in a network of community gardens tended by other groups, finding their way to dinner tables and local food banks.

The system grew out of the Local Foods, Local Places Community Action Plan, a federally funded program administered here by the 1889 Jefferson Center for Population Health, Conemaugh Health System, the Sandyvale organization, the United Way of the Laurel Highlands and others to provide healthy, fresh foods for individuals and families with food security issues.

Food security has been identified as one of the Cambria County area's health challenges in two population health studies published this week.

Cambria and Somerset counties' three-year Community Health Needs Assessment, rolled out Friday, follows up on the annual national County Health Rankings study that was published Wednesday. Both showed severe shortfalls in elements needed for all residents to achieve healthy, active lives.

1889 Jefferson Center Executive Director Jeannine McMillan cited the Sandyvale food program as an example of how local agencies and organizations are coming together to address the challenges identified in the reports.

"We are seeing these incremental programs and initiatives that are being launched that didn't really exist three to five years ago," McMillan said. "Those are the collaborations and initiatives that are going to have that ultimate success on improving those county health rankings, moving forward."

Cambria County ranked 64th and Somerset County ranked 39th among Pennsylvania's 67 counties in the County Health Rankings report. The Wisconsin-based organization uses publicly reported data and random surveys to compare counties across the country.

The local Community Health Needs Assessment begins with the same data and builds in its own local surveys, bringing together dozens of regional health and human service organizations to plot a future course, McMillan explained.

Led by Conemaugh, the United Way, and the 1889 Foundation with its affiliated 1889 Jefferson Center for Population Health, more than 70 organizations — many from Vision Together 2025's health and wellness group — gathered last summer at the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown to review the survey responses and national data.

That summit identified seven key areas to address — mental/behavioral health, access to social deterrents of health or health care, obesity/healthy living, substance use, socioeconomic conditions/employment, early childhood needs, and violence and abuse.

Leaders also compared the information to the last Community Health Needs Assessment, completed in 2019.

"There definitely were some improvement areas from a data perspective," McMillan said. "The other exciting thing to see over the past several years is the type of collaboration that is occurring within each county and between Cambria and Somerset counties with regard to addressing some of these needs."

Dr. Elizabeth Dunmore, chief medical officer at Conemaugh Health System, also pointed to groups working together.

"The unity of the community and the resources in the community to address all these complex issues continues to improve," Dunmore said. "In a sense that the community is strong and united to address these things, I think we'll continue to improve and build on our past experiences."

Five of the seven priority areas were included in the previous Community Health Needs Assessment, and McMillan said initiatives in those areas are already showing progress.

"All of these initiatives around those priority areas are result of agencies working together to collaborate, to bring this response to our dire health outcomes, to make that change and improve our rankings and improve the health of our residents," McMillan said.

"Aside from the statistics, it's these real tangible stories of these initiatives that are underway. We may not see the fruit of that labor in a year or two years, but the hope is that these are best-practice initiatives that we are bringing that will have this longitudinal change moving forward."

She cited the behavioral health providers' new mental health collaboration, through which the professionals share strategies for recruiting more providers and resources, for speeding up the credentialing process and for overcoming other barriers to care.

Hyndman Area Health Center's new RV-sized mobile medical center is another example, McMillan continued.

Designed with a mobile examination room inside, the vehicle was developed to make routine stops in areas where residents have the most barriers to routine, no-cost check-ups.

The nonprofit has been working with the Johnstown Housing Authority to bring the mobile health unit to Johnstown's housing communities.

Population health is at the heart of both new reports.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says: "Population health brings significant health concerns into focus and addresses ways that resources can be allocated to overcome the problems that drive poor health conditions in the population."

The conditions are often not traditional health care concerns, Dunmore stressed.

Housing, education, employment opportunities, social and community connections and access to affordable health care are all considered social determinants of health.

The federal Office of Health Promotion and Disease Prevention says: "Social determinants of health are the conditions in the environments where people are born, live, learn, work, play, worship and age that affect a wide range of health, functioning and quality- of-life outcomes and risks."

Early childhood care and education provide a good example of how the factors can affect lifelong health, said Karen Struble Myers, president and CEO of United Way of the Laurel Highlands.

"More and more people are recognizing the value of childhood development and early learning options," Myers said. "Access to child care not only affects our children. It affects the workforce."

The United Way helps sponsor the Nurse-Family Partnership with Home Nursing Agency.

Many population health programs target areas of poverty. Myers said that is a good starting point.

"Those living in poverty have a more difficult time achieving those pillars of health we think of when we think of a healthy lifestyle we feel all should be able to achieve," she said.

The federal Affordable Care Act requires all hospitals to complete community health needs assessments for their primary service areas.

Like Conemaugh, many have involved other sectors of their communities to develop a working paper.

"We initiated the Community Health Needs Assessment with the goal of identifying significant health needs, priorities, goals, and objectives, and we knew that community input would be absolutely critical to the success of this effort," Conemaugh CEO Rodney Reider said. "We learned a lot from the Community Health Summit and are grateful to everyone who took the time to participate and share their insight.

"We look forward to unveiling our plans for improving the long-term health and wellness of this region and are eager to continue fulfilling our mission of Making Communities Healthier."