A ‘Check-Up For the Entire Community’: Humboldt County Health Survey

Marian Strong of Humboldt County’s Public Health Branch

Seeking to tell the “story of community health,” a Humboldt County survey on healthcare needs will inform an updated Community Health Improvement Plan.

The survey and its significance was discussed by Marian Strong, a program coordinator with the county’s Public Health division, in an April 8 online presentation to the Community Economic Resilience Consortium.

“We’re trying to get the voices of the community to share with us what are they thinking about their health, what are their needs and what are the things that we’re doing well that we can leverage,” she said. “And then we take that information into community health improvement planning.”

The surveying concludes April 15 and Strong described it as being “like a check-up for the entire community.”

The information gives the county an idea of “the conditions that help residents thrive as well as the barriers that hold us back” and will be used to guide the improvement plan’s update.

The data will also be used by public agencies and organizations for “understanding what our residents in Humboldt County truly need.”

Strong said the last survey, completed about five years ago, identified four “priority areas” for the plan – suicide prevention, substance use, housing instability and homelessness and adverse childhood experiences.

The effort is done through a collaborative group, Live Well Humboldt, whose mission is “to help all residents live their happiest, healthiest lives” by “shaping resources, programs and services that support individuals, families and communities across the county,” Strong said.

Another aspect of the health improvement quest is an online information resource, the Community Health Data Dashboard.

It can be assessed at the same website where the survey can be taken, at livewellhumboldt.org.

“On the dashboard, we have accessible up-to-date data on key local, national and state health indicators,” Strong said. “It helps leaders, organizations and residents track progress and understand emerging needs.”

The data is important for efforts like gaining grant funding and the county is ambitiously aiming for a 10 percent survey response rate, which Strong described as “pretty high.”

“So far we’re doing all right, but we still need your help in getting that rate a bit higher,” she told the online audience, which included members of local governments and community organizations.

Gregg Foster of the Redwood Region Economic Development Commission, the meeting’s host, asked how the survey is used to implement healthcare improvements.

Strong said the previous survey and the current version of the improvement plan identified a troubling issue.

“We were able to identify that we have a very high rate of suicide in Humboldt County – 2.5 times the rate of California,” said Strong. “So looking at that, we say, okay, that’s a concern, what are the things that we can do to make that something that we share strategies and common goals on.”

Addressing needs can be done through outreach such as grant applications. “And then using those resources that come in, collectively, we can improve the systems,” said Strong.

She was asked if the survey data could help draw the state’s attention – and funding – to local issues.

Strong said it “potentially could” and gave an example of local policy stemming from the data.

She said the county’s retail tobacco licensing ordinance “started with understanding the problem and having the data” and “there was also support from the state.”

Kerry Venegas of Changing Tides Family Services is on the Live Well Humboldt Steering Committee and said the data “does actually guide a lot of the advocacy” of Changing Tides and other groups, and is helpful to cite when communicating with legislators.

She added that when it’s used in grant applications, it “really helps us be very specific and concrete about the needs in our community and to be able to back it up with data.”

Noting that the Consortium is “about economic resilience,” Foster linked community health to economic health.

“One of the selling points of any community, of course, is how healthy its population is,” he said, adding he’s hoping “there is progress being made on some of those things that we can use to talk up our community as a place to invest.”