Improving fitness levels, preventing suicides and dealing with substance abuse are three top public health concerns in Tooele County.
The Tooele County Health Department hosted a Community Health Improvement Planning meeting Tuesday and invited about 45 community leaders to attend. After reviewing a recent community health assessment summary through a slide presentation, leaders were asked to vote on priorities to focus on for the next five years.
“About 30 people attended the meeting,” said Matt LaFrance, quality improvement coordinator for the health department. “After three rounds of voting, we identified three major health priorities to focus our collective efforts over the next five years.”
The three priorities were not listed as first, second and third, but simply as three top priorities.
One of the priorities is physical fitness, obesity and healthy living.
Another is suicide. The final top priority is mental health and substance abuse disorders.
Community partners who attended Tuesday’s meeting included health care providers, government officials, private business leaders, pharmacies, school officials and others.
LaFrance said the health department will develop a community health improvement plan with community partners during 2017.
He described a community health improvement plan as a “long-term, systematic effort to address public health problems on the basis of the results of community health assessment activities and the community health improvement process.”
LeFrance added, “This plan is used by health and other governmental, educational and human service agencies, in collaboration with community partners, to set priorities and coordinate and target resources.”
He said three workgroups will be formed to address each of the three health priorities.
“These workgroups will develop goals and objectives to address these priorities,” LaFrance said. “In 2016, we spent the whole year collecting data to determine health priorities and we started with a list of 45 health issues. After that, we went through three rounds of voting on Tuesday with these community partners.”
He added, “We will meet with community partners throughout the year to develop goals and objectives. By the end of the year we will have a written plan and ways to address these top issues.”
The voting was facilitated by Westminster Professor Sharon Talboys from the School of Nursing and Health Sciences.
“My role was to walk the participants through a prioritization process to select the top health priorities on which to focus over the next five years,” Talboys said. “This included multiple rounds of voting with much discussion in between. It was meant to allow all voices to be heard and to narrow the focus of the Community Health Improvement Plan to a few high priority health issues. Participants included a diverse group of community stake
holders and I could see that they care great deal about the citizens of Tooele County.”
The 70-page 2016 County Health Assessment is available at the Tooele County Health Department.