Survey identifies key health areas to address needs in Clark, Champaign counties

Jun. 12—Health agencies in Clark and Champaign counties have identified five top health concerns to address after the results of a community health survey.

The survey, the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA), is taken every three years to identify needs in Clark and Champaign counties. The 2022 survey identified access to care, health risk prevention and social determinants of health, behavioral health, chronic disease and maternal and infant health as focus areas.

Mercy Health — Springfield Community Health Director Carolyn Young said the survey is a partnership between the hospital and the Clark and Champaign County health departments.

"This is a big community vested plan in the data collection, and it's not just to help Clark, it's not just Mercy driving this vision, this blueprint, the future," Clark County Assistant Health Commissioner Chris Cook said. "It's literally sticking our fingers out and getting the pulse of what's going on."

Cook said this survey is the most important in his eyes because it is the first affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.

One focus area, identified as being improving access to care, seeks to provide more people with primary care, women's health care and improve urgent and virtual care in Clark and Champaign counties.

Another goal is to increase food, transportation and education access.

For behavioral health, the plan is to address mental health, addiction and trauma. Young said there is a national shortage of primary health and mental health care providers, and the hospital encourages its employees to pursue further health care education that it funds, which could break down financial barriers and ease the shortage.

"That's a constant challenge because we're trying to build up supports for a community when those supports don't exist, so this program is a way that we're trained to build something and build capacity within the community that we have and the gifts that we have as opposed to looking outside of our community for it," Young said.

Chronic diseases like heart disease, stroke and cancer were also found to be priorities.

Much of the data was gathered through focus groups, Cook said.

"It is a marriage of the data and the partners that are willing, that is the interest and the drive behind all this," Cook said. "All those have to work together and produce this improvement plan for the next three years."

Young said Mercy Health has seen access to care being one of the biggest struggles, and the hospital launched a neurology service line as one way to address this.

"Stroke is a big risk factor in Clark County, and so we wanted to make sure that residents of Clark and Champaign County has close-to-home excellent care that's at their fingertips," Young said.

The hospital as well as the health departments already have some programs that can help address the health priorities, and Young said Mercy Health plans to increase outreach and education to encourage more people to use them.

Cook said the health department has worked on providing health access in a more equitable way, bringing education to neighborhoods that could benefit but lack the resources to go somewhere else to receive care and education.

"Sometimes it's as simple as marketing diabetes awareness classes in certain areas or it's delivering the classes in those areas," Cook said. "We're getting that surgical because I think we're realizing that it's not a one-size-fits-all."

Young said a partnership between Mercy Health, the Nehemiah Foundation and several local churches achieves a similar goal. She said she recognizes the health department or medical community is not always a person's go-to to talk about their health needs.

Sometimes people go to a friend or family member, or someone within their church or local community, Young said. This is why Mercy Health is working to "build capacity" in certain areas that partners identify as needing more resources.

Cook said oftentimes health priorities remain the same or similar survey to survey, honing in on more specific areas within a priority to address. He said effectively addressing focus areas is more important than quickly doing so.

"The truth is, it typically takes more than three years to ... see and measure results from the areas that we're working on, so its not uncommon for most counties in Ohio to reboot a lot of their things, making almost like a six-year cycle to be able to put things in place," Cook said.