Welcome everybody to Midday Magazine for this July 22nd, 2024.
Have your host, James J. Mailoff here.
In part two, we're going to speak with Haley Heitzel,
the 77th Alice in Darryland looking forward to that,
but right now in this, oh, well, on the phone with us right now,
we have Nikki Luckt.
She is the epimedialogist with our good friends
over at the Wood County Health Department.
And Nikki, that took me a little bit there.
I had to work my tongue on that word,
a couple of those words there.
I apologize if I got any of that wrong,
but we do appreciate the time from you and want us
and big thank you to our friends at the Wood County Health Department.
Thanks for joining us, Nikki.
Yeah, absolutely.
Thanks for having me.
Nikki, let's dive right into things.
We're here with us today to talk a little bit
about the Wood County Community Health Assessment
that was published recently.
And this is for 2024 to 2027.
Where would you like to start with this?
So this is a little bit of a follow-up from being on the show last fall.
We had asked folks to take our community health assessment survey,
and that was a large part of what informed this assessment now.
So kind of doing a little bit of a follow-up on that.
Yeah.
Now, do we need to rewind at all?
Do you think to some of the previous conversation
or do you want to go right ahead with this kind of second half of the assessment?
Probably just sharing, again, a reminder that
Healthy People Wood County is a collaborative effort.
There are three lead organizations on it.
So that's the Wood County Health Department, where I said,
Aspirus Riverview Hospital and Clinics,
and Marshfield Clinic Health System.
So all three of our organizations are required by different laws
to submit and publish a community health assessment every so often.
The health systems is every three years,
health department every five years.
So in an effort to not duplicate,
we have gotten on a three-year timeline together now
so that we can put all of our efforts together
and do this as one big assessment rather than all of us doing something separately.
So the overall organization is Healthy People Wood County.
It's our big coalition community lead.
And the three organizations that are sitting there as well.
What did you, what the Dishealth Assessment,
what does it identify, Nikki?
So it tells us the most pressing health needs.
So we look at a bunch of different data.
So we do some data collection ourselves,
which is why that community health assessment survey last fall was so important.
So we look at the health needs.
And we also look at some of the assets,
the resources that are in the community that we can hopefully build upon.
But the biggest thing that this tells us is where things are not as good
as they hopefully that they could be.
So where are our higher health risk?
Where are the worst health outcomes?
And then from this, we identify those top priorities that come from this
and end up completing a community health improvement plan,
which is basically a giant action plan that will work on over the next three years.
So hopefully improve some of these issues that bubble up from the assessment.
About how many people took this survey, Nikki?
So it's super exciting.
We had 3,215 that community members take the survey.
So the highest number of responses we've ever had since we started doing community health assessments
when they were mandated back in the 90s.
So this was really exciting for us.
We really were able to get out there and talk to a lot of different people
and hear from a lot of people in the community.
And then in addition to the survey,
we also had some grant funding to do some one-on-one interviews and focus groups of people.
And we talked to an additional 123 people through that.
So all of that different information that we heard from community members
was really helpful in informing this assessment.
We have a lot of the results from the survey within the assessment too.
So people are particularly interested.
Like if you, you know, there was a question that really stuck out to you
that you're like, my wonder, what ended up coming from that?
The community health assessment report has a lot of that information.
And you touched on the previous conversation
and even with this one, some of why we're doing this and what kind of data we get from this.
And the picture it paints.
I'm curious of what now where you come with, what we're doing with the data now.
Yeah, so we, over the last, well, it's been a year-long process now.
But over the last six months, really, we had over 50 community partners come together.
We had monthly meetings, sat down and looked at the data that community members had shared with us.
And then we also look at other data from local state national sources.
And we look at all of that and figure out, okay, what is it telling us?
What are the top health priorities now that will come from this?
So that's like a big piece of the community health assessment is then figuring out what are the priorities we're going to work on for the next three years.
So from all of that information that we compiled and have lots of meetings about, we ended up with the top priorities being in five overarching categories.
So we had substance use, mental health, and then access to care and what falls under that is both oral health and access health services.
Another big bucket was built environment, which includes housing and transportation.
And then the fifth one is financial stability, and that includes affordable child care, jobs, affordable wages and benefits, and enough money for basic needs.
So with, with all of this information going forward, what are some of the things that you're looking to do?
What is our, not only our wood kind of health department, but our health departments around the state?
Yeah, so the next step after completing the community health assessment, that is required by state statute, and then it's also required to complete the community health improvement plan or chip as we like to call it.
So all health departments are required to do that, and that's basically creating an action plan to improve the issues that we found in the chat.
So we will now be creating that chip, which really serves as a guiding document to improve health, especially in those top five areas, those top priorities that we identified.
So now our current chip that goes through the end of this year. So we will be working now through the rest of 2024 to create that action plan with community members, with community partners to figure out what activities, what strategies, what are things that we think.
We could do as a community, so not just the health department, not just the hospitals, but all of our different community partners and organizations in Wood County.
Everyone really has a role to play in this. So what can we all do to come together to improve some of these issues?
Yeah, it takes a village, and when it comes to any, I deal with this with our listeners from time to time, where there can be so much going on, and it can seem so overwhelming.
And the topics that you mentioned, the priorities identified in the CHA, a lot of them, and all of them have an, you know, an importance to be addressed in today in modern time and right now kind of situations.
It seems always easier if you kind of list things out and you don't try to attack the whole thing at once, but rather work together with others and combat these things individually with different groups.
Is that kind of the approach that we're taking with this?
Yeah, absolutely. I've heard it described in other public health spaces as wicked problems. You know, these are something that the health department could do by itself.
It's not something as virus or marshals could do by themselves. It really takes all of us, like you said, it takes available to take all of us coming together and figuring out what are the different roles we can play to all come together and improve these issues.
Nikki, with this list that you gave us of the top priorities, if you will, I think a lot of them, if they, if they didn't seem, you know, to a listener out there, not in their head yet, that's definitely a big priority.
It certainly wouldn't be shocking to hear that some of these have come up, but were there any to you that you didn't expect to see on this list, as far as, you know, things that are concerns in our communities?
I think none of them are really surprising to me. I think though, it might be surprising to some listeners or folks who maybe are still a little bit like, what is housing have to do with health or what does childcare have to do with health, for example.
And so I think we have moved a little bit upstream and looking at health in a much bigger lens than we used to.
So we have found data show is that access to healthcare, going to the doctor and having those checkups is really important, but about 80% of what makes what makes people healthy actually occurs outside of a healthcare visit.
You know, if you don't have affordable or safe housing, you're probably not thinking about those other things like making sure you're eating healthy that people typically think of when they think of health.
So some of those bigger areas are different than we have seen in our, our child before.
And then another one that really actually stood out to me and did surprise me a little bit was our oral health.
I don't know if we've ever had that come up as a top priority before, but we heard, especially when we were talking to people about the issues with Medicaid and not being able to get into dental providers because they don't accept badger care.
Or even just that the waiting lists are so long so people are having to use the ER when that's not what they would prefer to do, but they can't get into somewhere for six months or more or they're traveling.
I've seen a lot of comments that people had to travel outside of what county to get care.
I don't like hearing those stories any more than anybody does out there, but I will say for me, I've been on the airwaves many times talking about one of the biggest, if not the biggest issue that we need to solve in this state, in many states as child care.
And in part, I bring that up because of how much it bleeds into other things and how much it'll assist other things if we can take care of it.
The oral health thing is something that I've been on for a while, but I like you have not heard a lot of other people mentioning this.
And just like I mentioned with child care, part of the reason it's so integral and so important we get this figured out is because of how much we rely on our mouths, we rely on our teeth.
Not just the simple fact of like just being able to take in food and everything, but how much a tooth pain can affect the whole body and affect your whole day.
I'm a little sensitive to this one. I've been dealing with some tooth pain.
So I might be a little bit getting on my soapbox with it and everything, but as much as I wish others weren't going through this, I will say I was happy to see that this is something being brought up and being talked about.
I'm with you. I was a little surprised to see that I'm there, but I was also kind of relieved in some ways. It okay. Well, this is something.
Yeah, it doesn't mean that we're going to solve it overnight, but the sooner we talk about it, the sooner we get talking about it, the sooner we can come up with the solution.
Yeah, absolutely. I'm sorry to hear about your tooth pain, but yes, you're totally right with an oral health really has so much of an impact on the rest of your health too.
And the child care one is a great example of where we have other partners coming in that maybe want to see themselves in a health assessment before.
For example, like we have the chamber has been at the table because they're hearing from a lot of businesses that that's a big issue when they're trying to get employees because there's not affordable child care.
So, you know, it's affecting employment. It's affecting our businesses. It's just such a critical need right now.
We do have a wood county child, child care task force group that has been meeting for gosh, at least over a year.
That is trying to help tackle this issue, but yeah, this came up a lot among our survey respondents.
If people want to find the community health assessment, how can they find it and find out more about this?
Yeah, so you can find the assessment online at this period, Lee, so that's b-i-t period.
And that's b-i-t-l-y slash wood c-h-a-2024 or they can go to our website, healthypeoplewoodcounty.org, and it's going to be on there.
You can also request printed copies if you're not an online person.
Sometimes you like to have it printed out. I'm still one of those people so you can call the health department at 715-421-8911.
And also if you're just interested in seeing updates and seeing what comes of the community health improvement plan, we do have social media.
We have Facebook page and Instagram page and we're always posting updates on there.
So you just look for healthy people wood county and you'll be able to find us.
Be sure to follow the wood county health department on social media. It's not only a great way to keep informed on your community, but even share some of those things on your pages and maybe somebody sees it that might not have otherwise.
So it's a great idea to keep up with. We're speaking with that.
Absolutely.
We're speaking with our friend Nikki Luckt with the wood county health department.
And Nikki, I'm sometimes I'm the kind of person that needs things spelled out for me ever once in a while.
And I was like this with the word diet for forever. I didn't understand what the word diet really means.
I thought it was just something some people do to lose weight or what have you.
I didn't realize it was a part of everything really.
The term for just your eating habits and some of that.
But I'd like to wrap up with you if you don't mind, especially since I got a pro with me.
What is health?
I think that it's something we don't talk about really ever.
I don't know when it ever comes up and this is a great opportunity for us to kind of touch on that.
And for those out there, think that they know what it might mean to give them maybe even more little more data to that a little more detail to it.
Oh, my goodness. Yeah, there's there's so much of this one.
So I can't give you like one set definition.
But it it helps us determine by so much more than our choices and access to care.
Like I said earlier, 80% of what makes people healthy occurs outside of the doctors visit.
There's almost anything that you could think of probably has an impact on your health.
So some of the things that have come out of this community health assessment that are a little bit newer.
Yes, when you think about health, safe housing, public transportation, education, good jobs with fair pay, access to healthy and affordable food.
Those are all things that impact our health.
So I know there's a great definition out there from the World Health Organization.
Health is not merely the absence of disease.
I don't remember the rest of it here, but it talks about all of these other things, these social environmental, economic things that impact our health too.
And the more you know about these things in this subject matter, the better you're going to be informed and the better you will be going forward with your own health and figuring that out because it varies for every person of whether whatever aches and ailments you might have or you know how you're doing.
It's an important part of this.
As we wrap up, do you mind going over a little bit of the background of healthy people wood county?
Yeah, so just another reminder, healthy people.
It's really a group of community partners, residents, members, all working together to improve health and wood county.
A community coalition that's been going on for over 10 years.
We have hospitals, nonprofits, businesses, public health officials, schools, principles.
We have so many different partners that come together to do this work and was so thankful and appreciative of them.
And really the ultimate goal of our work is to create driving communities where all people in wood county can say that they are as healthy as possible.
So whatever health means to them, like we were just talking about and we want everyone to have that opportunity to be as healthy as possible.
And really we've got some great people behind this one too in our wood county health department and so many of our community members greatly appreciate the work that you guys do a day in and day out.
Nikki, please say hi to everybody over that the department for us.
One more time, where can people find the community health assessment and learn more about that?
They can go to HealthyPeopleWoodCounty.org or you can go to BIT, Period, Lee, Flash, Wood, DHA, 2024.
Or you can request them to drop these by calling the Health Department.
And that number is 715-421-8911.
And Nikki, if people want to find out more from the Wood County Health Department or reach out to you and have follow-up questions or anything, is there a way to do that?
Yeah, they can look for the Wood County Health Department.
You should be able to just do a quick online search and you can find us there.
You can send us an email at healthatwoodcountywi.gov or give us a call. We're happy to talk to you anytime.
And you can find out more information as well as woodcountywi.gov, woodcountywi.gov.
Nikki, we again really appreciate the time. Thanks for informing our audience.
We're that much smarter and feel that much better about this going forward.
You have a great day and say hi to the staff over there for us.
Thank you so much for having me.
Well, a more midday magazine coming up for you right here at 97-5 FM 13-20 AM WFHR. We are locally grown radio.
