The results of the latest Clark County Combined Health District's Community Health Assessment found youth wellness is a top priority in the county.
The assessment is done every three years to identify health needs in the community and ways to improve them. The four priority concerns that arose in this year's assessment were: chronic disease, mental health, maternal and infant health and community stability.
"These are priorities that have popped up every three years here in Clark County and also at the state level, we kind of align there with Ohio in that sense," said Anna Jean Sauter, community health accreditation and data coordinator at the health department.
Clark County Deputy Health Commissioner Gracie Hemphill said food insecurity is a major concern, especially among young people.
“If you look at children, 23% of Clark County children are food insecure," she said. "And so that is higher than the state, which is at 20%.”
To analyze the county's overall health priorities, Clark County Health Commissioner Chris Cook said they use a nationally accepted, evidence-based practice called MAPP, which stands for mobilizing for action through planning and partnerships.
"And that process takes us through three different phases where we assess the health of the community," he said.
The first phase involves gathering all stakeholders in the community for an inventory of resources. Next, they set goals for what they want out of the assessment process and talk about their current mission and vision.
"We talked about health equity, which lays across everything that we do from the data collection to implementation of strategies," Cook said. "And then we move to what we call phase two where the actual assessment is."
From there, the department looks at community partner systems and assesses their capabilities by measuring successes or areas that need improvement. That's followed by a more traditional community status assessment where they look at quantitative, existing data systems.
"Here in Clark County, we take on something called the Youth Risk Behavior Survey" every two years, said Cook. "And that's where we actually go into our schools and ask them to administer a survey of the youth in middle and high school."
Following data collection, the organization turns to the community for feedback in two virtual community conversations.
"This is everyone's data, this everyone's health. So we're really looking for feedback to see, does this resonate with people," said Hemphill. "Does the data that we're presenting, the priorities that have bubbled to the top in our steering committee and going through the data, does this seem right to people? Have we missed the mark?"
At the county's second community conversation event Tuesday, multiple community members and representatives attended to share their thoughts and hopes for the assessment.
Among them was Kristen Collier, associate director of the Hagen Center for Civic and Urban Engagement and member of the Youth Empowerment Task Force.
"When we did our own little personal survey with youth providers in the community, I would say the majority of the conversation certainly came around mental health as being a very, very prominent need related to youth in the committee," she said.
Others expressed concerns about youth homelessness, immunizations and social media effects on youth mental health.
"I think it would be good to do a little more info gathering on the correlation between social media, especially in youth mental health," said Sarah Webb, community engagement manager at Clark County Public Library.
Sauter said the county did improve on concerns addressed in previous Community Health Assessments, including overdose fatality rates.
"It's still higher than the state of Ohio, but it is decreasing, which is very positive," she said, "Our STI rates are decreasing as well. Still high, but going down, same with teen pregnancy."
The health district is now moving into the third phase of its assessment: Health Improvement Planning, in which "those strategies and goals and activities will get identified and then put into action," Hemphill said.
She said the county plans to release its final community health improvement plan by January.
"When we have limited resources, you've got to be strategic and surgical about how you make those available in the community," Cook said. "And so we know prenatal care is lacking. If we want to do best by our babies and our moms, we have to look at this data and make some real strides in the next few years."
A full copy of the current Clark County Community Health Assessment can be found at ccchd.com.
