Jennifer Poff Cooper is a contributing writer to the News Messenger and Public Relations Specialist at the New River Health District.
Collaboration was the key word at a Tuesday meeting of stakeholders in the local health care arena.
The panel consisting of Jeff Dinger, Giles County; Ashley Hash, Carilion Clinic; and Dr. Noelle Bissell, Director of the New River Health District reviewed health need findings from the NRV and Giles County, then took questions from the audience at Carilion Clinic.
Carilion hosted the community forum at its New River Valley campus to review the top health-need findings for New River Valley and Giles County area and explain what they mean for the community.
At the meeting, Carilion and its community partners discussed survey findings and the organization’s plans to address top priorities.
The panel brought together Dr. Noelle Bissell, the director of the New River Health District, Virginia Department of Health; Jeff Dinger, representative for Partnership for Access to Healthcare, Special Projects Manager, Giles County, and Focus on Communities Utilizing Services, and Ashley Hash, Health Educator, Carilion Clinic.
The panel was moderated by Anthony Grafsky, senior director for clinical operations for Carilion Clinic.
According to Hannah Curtis, public relations specialist for Carilion Clinic, Carilion’s Community Health Assessments, called CHAs, collect data every three years to uncover issues, indicate where improvement goals are needed and track and promote progress in key areas.
Typically, the CHA rotates among the Carilion facilities, from Tazewell to Lexington and includes the New River Valley clinic, forming the first system-wide CHA.
“Carilion can’t do it alone,” Curtis said of the inclusive forum. “It desires to engage both stakeholders and beneficiaries in the community.”
Data collection in the New River Valley was community-driven and
methods included community health surveys, stakeholder surveys, target population focus groups and secondary data from outside sources.
Ultimately, the CHA demonstrated ongoing improvement for the community’s health.
Bill Flattery, vice president of Carilion Clinic Western Region, called the assessment a “robust study.”
According to the community’s input, cost is the biggest obstacle to people accessing health care; adult dental care is the hardest to access; and drug and alcohol abuse is the biggest problem.
Twenty percent of the New River Valley lives below the federal poverty level., and poverty impacts health care access.
Dr. Bissell said, “It affects all of [the New River Valley] when we have one out of five people with insecure housing… It really does affect them and they just don’t know it.”
The top needs were myriad, but included transportation, access to mental health services and health literacy.
Flattery turned over the floor to the panel, Dr. Bissell listed programs of her health district addressing the top needs in the New River Valley and initiatives for addressing education, prevention and harm reduction.
“We are meeting people where they are,” Dr. Bissell said describing approaches that get healthcare out into the community, at farmers markets or on social media Immunizations are being given in schools so that parents do not have to take time off from work to ferry children to clinics.
Also to overcome the transportation barrier, the New River Health District, the NRHD, is using a mobile health unit in which it gives immunizations and tests for sexually transmitted infections in all area of its district.
Also important is the NRHD partnering with other agencies such as the Community Health Center, the CHC, and New River Valley Community Services, NRVCS.
For example, the NRHD and CHC grow a garden behind the Roanoke Street clinic where they demonstrate to clients that eating healthfully is not necessarily expensive.
“We partner with basically everyone in here to augment and provide services,” said Dr. Bissell of the stakeholders in the room.
Hash of Carilion and Dinger of Giles County listed their own programs and there was a great deal of overlap between the three panelists’ ideas.
Drug and alcohol abuse is another major concern.
The panel delineated strategies to address healthcare needs.
Dr. Bissell spoke about raising public awareness of local health departments and their services.
She hopes the mobile unit will become a “mobile health department” as its use expands.
Addressing drug and alcohol abuse, a major concern, other progressive steps dealt with “harm reduction.” Dr. Bissell advocates medication-assisted treatment for drug addiction.
“The data is there to show it works,” she said as well as using pre-exposure prophylaxis, a medication used to prevent HIV in high risk populations.
She also would like to see a needle-exchange program in the New River Valley and hopes to “work with the community” toward that end.
The biggest impediment to accessing healthcare and treatment is the stigma around some of these issues.
“People look at them as moral failings not as medical conditions,” said Dr. Bissell. One of two, half of the population will get a sexually transmitted disease by the age of 25.
“The numbers are staggering,” she said. Nevertheless, “there is a lot of community resistance” to some of the solutions.”
Finally, stakeholder involvement is critical Bissell said and employer engagement would show how these issues impact corporations. She also mentioned engaging faith-based communities and the 180,000 individuals in this area.
