TERRE HAUTE —
A new website unveiled Tuesday compiles important indicators about the health and wellness of Vigo County and five other Wabash Valley counties.
Health care officials and employers hope to use the information to identify key health problems and develop initiatives to combat those problems.
“We can turn the Wabash Valley into a collection of communities that starts to be known for its health, instead of its unhealthy ways,” said Ken Baker, director of human resources at AET and chairman of the Terre Haute Chamber of Commerce Better Health Wabash Valley committee.
The Wabash Valley Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) includes a variety of measurements rating the health and wellness of Vigo, Clay, Vermillion, Parke, Greene and Sullivan counties.
The CHNA represents a collaboration between Union Hospital Health Group and Terre Haute Regional Hospital as well as the Terre Haute Chamber and Better Health Wabash Valley.
Baker and leaders of the two hospitals, Scott Teffeteller and Mary Ann Conroy, participated in an announcement at the chamber office Tuesday. Both Union and Regional provided funding for the project, which took nearly six months to complete.
“The Wabash Valley has a lot of needs in terms of health. We know that as an employer,” Baker said. “We are very concerned about the cost of health care and the condition of health in our community.”
At AET, over the past two years, 50 percent of new hires have been tobacco users, he said.
CHNA provides a comprehensive assessment of the health and well-being of residents in the six-county area, Baker said. “The CHNA is not simply about gathering data, but rather will serve as a tool to attack critical health needs in our area.”
It also will aid employers in “knowing where to invest our resources,” Baker said.
Among the serious health issues in the communities are childhood obesity, smoking, diabetes and cardio-vascular disease.
Teffeteller, Union Hospital’s president and chief executive officer, said, “This is a call to action for our community.”
The health and wellness of residents in the six-county area needs to be a communitywide initiative, he said. CHNA “provides a measuring stick for where we are, and where we need to be.”
He said he hopes other partners get involved in efforts to improve the community’s health.
Conroy, Regional Hospital’s chief executive officer, said that while the website focuses primarily on physical health, it also includes information related to education, economic well-being and other societal issues. “It’s important to look at all of those metrics in terms of moving our communities forward,” she said.
The CHNA information can be found on the Chamber’s website, as well as the websites of both hospitals. “It’s a very easy tool to navigate,” Conroy said.
The next step, Baker said, is to form a task force and identify “where can we make the biggest impact on the health of the Wabash Valley.”
He anticipates targeting one or two health issues and quickly developing programs to address them.
A year from now, the task force will assess its progress. “I expect to see we have made an impact,” he said. Baker said he’s excited about the possibilities.
He noted that the chamber’s Better Health Wabash Valley initiative has successfully undertaken initiatives — and sought grant funding — to improve the health of the community.
One area of particular concern is childhood obesity, Baker said. The data also shows that “tobacco is a big problem in our community.”
The Community Health Needs Assessment website was created by California-based Healthy Communities Institute. The site includes nearly 100 indicators measuring health and wellness, economic factors, education, public safety and social environment.
The CHNA indicators each feature a “dashboard” representing data that has been collected from about 40 different sources. Each “dashboard” has a needle pointing to one of three colors representing the good (green), the cautionary (yellow) and the serious condition (red) of a particular indicator.
James Twitchell, Union’s community benefits specialist, said the website takes information from many different sources and “compiles it all in one place.”
Information on the Wabash Valley CHNA will be continually updated as it becomes available to Health Communities Inc.
Nonprofit hospitals such as Union are being required to do periodic community health assessments as part of the Affordable Care Act.
Sue Loughlin can be reached at (812) 231-4235 or sue.loughlin@tribstar.com.
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Website offers Valley health assessment
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