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What Can a CHP Grant Do- To discuss community services in Yamhill County

By: NWHF Staff | Posted on: February 23rd, 2011 | Share:
Categories: Grantee Reports • Public Health • Rural Health

Guest Author: Teri Watson, Yamhill County Health Department

Yamhill County Public Health, Commission on Children and Families, Yamhill Community Action Partnership, United Way of Mid Willamette Valley, and Cooperative Ministries received a small grant from the Northwest Health Foundation to provide a leadership team to design a format for people to come together and discuss health and wellness in Yamhill County. The leadership team met monthly from April until October preparing for the Community Health Forums.

Yamhill County hosted two Community Health Forums in McMinnville and Newberg to start the dialogue with community members, organizations, businesses and health professionals around health and wellness. Small group discussions were held to ask:

• What does it mean to be healthy?  What does health mean to you?
• What does it mean for a community to be healthy?
• What, if anything, should we do to improve the health of Yamhill County residents?
• What would “success” look like, in terms of community health?
• What are first steps we could take to determine the health of the community; identify areas of need and take action?
• Where do we go from here?

Individual responses for “what is means to be healthy?” ranged from: health means taking care of basic needs like food, clothing and shelter to health is a balanced approach between the mind, body and spirit. Many agreed that health is more than just seeing your doctor when you are not feeling well.

Group responses for “what does it mean for a community to be healthy?” took on a similar theme with: affordable housing, education and employment opportunities being common responses. However, groups talked about ways agencies and businesses could collaborate and coordinate to bring health and wellness to all Yamhill County residents. 

Small group responses to “What should we do to improve the health of Yamhill County residents?” centered around: assessing the social services currently offered and fixing the gaps in these programs, increasing the communication between groups and organizations to improve the way we share information about our services with the public and increase access to services.

An overall theme of making health a community value was shared by many community members. Several participants felt that food preparation classes and parks would not be taken advantage of fully until citizens of Yamhill County had their basic needs met.

Next steps as reported by community members are: 1) To make health a community value 2) To design one clearinghouse to hold the entire county’s relevant data and information, possibly a website where community partners could all access and update, current, local data; 3) Organize further ongoing assessment, working with the different higher educational institutions in the communities; and 4) Provide continued health education outreach to younger populations.