Stark Health launches women’s resource portal with help from Hoover students

A Stark County Health Department survey last year found that many women in the county faced accessibility and bias-based hurdles when trying to access health care.

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Now, it's taking the first action to address those findings with the launch of the "Dear Stark Women" resource hub and marketing campaign. The website can be found at dear-stark-women-starkcohealthoh.hub.arcgis.com.

The campaign's website includes maps of clinics that take Medicaid or offer sliding scale payment, links to transportation options and information about after-hours care providers, all of which were issues women brought up in the initial survey.

"Helping our community members address social, physical and mental health needs before, during and/or in between pregnancies is the best way to improve the overall health of women, children and our community," Director of Administration and Support Services Kay Conley said in an announcement about the program.

47% of women delayed or skipped health care due to barriers to access

The original survey, which involved 303 Stark County women ages 18 to 44, was initiated as part of the agency's Maternal Child Health grant from the Ohio Department of Health. The goal is to decrease infant mortality, reduce chronic diseases and increase access to care.

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The survey found that 47% of respondents had skipped, canceled or delayed a health appointment due to a barrier or a past negative experience. Some of the cited barriers included lack of access to transportation, inability to get time off work for a health appointment and challenges finding affordable care.

Survey respondents also cited bias or negative interactions with health providers, including incidents where they felt their health concerns were ignored or dismissed.

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The Dear Stark Women campaign is patient-focused, with resources aimed at those seeking care. Kelly Potkay, accreditation coordinator and health educator for the Stark County Health Department, said provider trainings are already in the works.

"Currently we are working with the Alliance Family Health Center & My Community Health Center to provide [diversity, equity and inclusion] and cultural competence trainings to their providers and support staff," she said. "Next year, we are planning to continue with providing those trainings to other community partners, possibly Access Health, Lifecare, etc."

Hoover students help

The Dear Stark Women campaign is an effort of the health agency, but it didn't work alone. Through MentorStark and Hoover High School's work based learning program, six biomedical sciences career tech pathway students joined the health department in coming up with ideas to address the findings in the survey.

"I was interested in the project because I felt like it was very important for women to be able to access health care easily, because we already face many things in our daily lives and I don't think accessing health care should be one of the more difficult things," Hoover rising senior Marissa Perry said.

She, along with Sydney Pike and four other rising seniors took the survey information and researched three areas to improve, specifically transportation, care coordination and cultural competence, and provided potential options that the department could consider.

Pike tackled transportation and looked into the accessibility of rideshare apps like Uber and Lyft as options for those without public transit access. She said she was surprised to learn just how difficult finding accessible transportation can be.

"One thing I found really interesting while I was researching is how expensive some of the options can be, like a lot of insurances don't exactly cover those services, which I feel like that's something that definitely should be paid for more because you can't get health care if you can't get into the health care facility," Pike said.

Perry focused on cultural competence, and said she was excited when she saw that the Dear Stark Women website layout looked similar to some of the accessible resources she had found and suggested using.

Looking ahead, the Stark County Health Department plans to continue using its survey information to address women's health needs in the county.

"We are also planning an empowering women campaign to take charge of their health care journey," Potkay said. "Our hope is that this would help build the confidence women need to stand up for themselves."

Sam Zern can be reached at szern@cantonrep.com or 330-580-8322. You can also find her on Twitter at @sam_zern.

This article originally appeared on The Repository: Stark Health Department launches resource hub for women's health