Lorain County health partners release health priorities for next three years

Lorain County Health Partners are prioritizing chronic diseases, maternal and child health, mental health, substance abuse and cancer headed into 2020 and through 2022. The health agencies outlined health priorities for the next three years in the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) released Monday. Lorain County Public Health is the facilitating organization for the plan. "The Lorain County Health Partners' goal is to make it possible for all Lorain County residents to live long, healthy lives," Lorain County Public Health Commissioner David Covell said. "By focusing on data-driven priorities and working in partnership, we can create the biggest impact on the health of the whole community." Data for the priorities come out of a community health assessment, which was last done in May. Health partners across the county then identified five areas where the county will focus on for the next three years. Each priority had different strategies and goals tied to it. For chronic disease, the health district will focus on stopping the upward trend of female age-specific heart mortality and reducing age-adjusted incidence rate of diabetes from 9.2 new cases per 1,000 population to 6.3. Chronic disease was also a focus of the last plan put forth by Lorain County Public Health. For maternal and child health, the county wants to decrease preterm birth rates by 10 percent and increase kindergarten readiness assessment rates by 10 percent. In mental health, the goal is to stop the upward trend of overall suicide deaths by staying at or below the last five-year average. For substance abuse, health partners want to see a decrease in both youth and adults tobacco use. And in the fifth goal of cancer, the Lorain County health district will try to decrease late stage diagnoses outcomes by 2 percent in three cancers and decrease the number of eligible cases failing to initiate or continue treatment due to unmet needs by 2 percent. "For nearly 130 years, our ministry has been sewn into the fabric of this community," said Catherine Woskobnick, director of community health at Mercy Health Lorain. "... Being able to develop programs that directly serve needs identified from this process, such as Resource Mother's, Parish Nursing and others, allows us to further build a healthier community as well as make a lasting impact — a healthy impact." All of the priorities have a deadline of 2022. The state requires that CHIPs be done by health departments and hospitals every three years. Agencies that worked on the CHIP include Cleveland Clinic, Lorain County Health & Dentistry, Lorain County Metro Parks, Lorain County Public Health, MHARS, Mercy Health Allen and Lorain, Speciality Hospital of Lorain and University Hospitals Elyria. To read the full CHIP, visit LorainCountyHealth.com/cha. Contact Laina Yost at (440) 329-7121 or lyost@chroniclet.com. Follow her on Twitter @misslainamae.