Community ideas, input collected
Hays County — Everyone has their own vision of what a healthy community looks like, but the Hays County Local Health Department (HCLHD) is working to make these visions a reality for its residents.
The HCLHD held a community health visioning session on March 1 at the San Marcos Public Library. According to Matthew Gonzales, HCLHD’s Health Equity and Community Engagement program manager, the session was the first part of the county’s larger community health assessment.
Community members from all over Hays County filled the room to talk about what a healthy county looks like with each other and Initium Health, a public benefit corporation (PBC), which responded last year to the department’s request for proposal to aid in conducting a community health assessment.
“We've kind of done a little bit of work from December up until now, building partnerships with organizations to interact on that public health sphere or provide public health services,” Gonzales explained. “All of them [community members at the session] had various experiences, knowledge and demographics. And that was the best part, I think, that we finally had a culmination of this melting pot that exists in these counties to really talk about their goals for health.”
The session played a key part in the department’s “steering committee.” The committee is comprised of nearly 30 organizations or individuals who are part of the county’s public health services.
“We’re asking members of that committee to also help us facilitate these assessments or use their strengths,” Gonzales said. “For example, we have some university professors who may be good at data analysis and quantitative analysis, whereas we have organizations who can get people to show up and show out to events to participate in the surveys or participate in the forums.”
Throughout the visioning session, Gonzales said that one motif stood out the most: residents want a resilient health community — one that can come back from COVID-19 and be the best that it can be.
“Other things we saw were being innovative with the way we address health and go about conducting public health essential services,” Gonzales said.
Part of the assessment is discussing ways in which the county can improve its health services and outreach.
“It asked us in a way of, ‘What are the things that aren't happening that we would like to see done throughout the community health assessment process?’” Gonzales said. “A big one was open communication between organizations and the local government with one another so that everyone is informed of what's going on and how they can address things and how the public can be aware of those things … A lot of individuals also talked about rural health. There's pockets of the counties that often get overlooked. Communities like Woodcreek, Uhland, Niederwald, Driftwood — all these developing areas of the county that are growing at the same rate of the county but have been small thus far, so they're kind of getting overlooked.”
Gonzales also noted that there is a lack of services for bilingual speakers and youth, both of which topped the list for what residents want to see improvements in.
Now that the first session has been completed, Gonzales said the community can expect to see health department members “out in the field” collecting and analyzing data for four different assessments. These assessments include:
• A community health status assessment, which will look at data from the CDC and state to look at current trends and statistics.
• A local public health system assessment, which will look beyond the local health department and into the larger health system as a whole. This includes 10 essential public health services and their strengths and weaknesses, how they each interact and how improvements can be made by partnering together.
• A community themes and strengths assessment, which will interview individuals and look into areas such as what they think is important to the community and how they perceive their quality of life.
• A forces of change assessment, which will identify and look at trends, events, legislation and technology that can affect the community and how the public health system operates.
Gonzales said that strategic issues will be identified and prioritized following the results from these assessments. Then, the department will work to develop goals, strategies and an action plan with the steering committee.
“We want to make sure that as we're doing these activities, we're not just doing it through social media or an online survey,” Gonzales said. “We're going to try hosting events across the county to make sure that we're reaching constituents where they are. Maybe that means we switch a little bit from quantitative data to qualitative data in order to really capture those experiences or we have iPads or computers out for constituents to complete the survey with just a human face in front of them to make it more engaging for them.”
“I think we really found a pearl here for a company who really cares about what they're doing and really wants to see this be a successful project,” he continued. “I think between my team's energetic and eagerness to really help the community and their [Initium] eagerness to get this done, it's a perfect match.”
To stay updated on the HCLHD’s next steps and be a part of the community health conversation, follow the department on Facebook at www.facebook.com/HaysCountyLocalHealthDepartment.
