By JEFF EPSTEIN
[email protected]
WINDSOR, Vt. — Mt. Ascutney Hospital and Health Center displayed data from its 2018 Community Health Needs Assessment and asked for feedback from the community in an event at the downtown American Legion Hall Thursday.
The event brought together in one small room persons from many different fields. Data about elderly care, family care, wellness, alcohol and drug misuse, and many other topics were displayed on easel boards in front of 6-foot tables, one per topic. Participants were asked to walk around the room and select one or more topics that were of interest to them. Therefore, several persons tended to crowd around each easel that was of interest.
The data came from a survey made by MAHHC, which a display said produced 1,073 responses from the primary service area of more than 44,000 people.
“Approximately 3 percent of the service-area adult population took the survey,” it said.
Each topic had its own dataset. For example, on the topic of “wellness”, the display stated that 572 survey respondents answered the question, “If you could change one thing that you believe would contribute to better health in your community, what would you change?”
It then stated that several common themes were related to wellness, including:
Improved resources, programs or environment for health eating/nutrition/food affordability (9.8 percent)
Improved resources, programs or environment for physical activity, active living; affordable recreation and fitness (9.3 percent).
Overall wellness; health and wellness education; alternative health information and services (6.3 percent).
In smaller subsets, the data appeared to say that 35 percent of adults in Windsor County ate fruit two or more times daily, compared with 26 percent of Windsor area high school students. Thirty-five percent of middle school students were physically active, compared with 32 percent of high school students. However, the percentages may refer to the self-selecting group of survey respondents.
In the “alcohol and drug misuse” display, one statement was that “16 percent of adults in the service area reported binge drinking in the past 30 days.”
After the participants had a chance to walk around looking at the easels, the facilitator, MAHHC’s Jill Lord, asked the participants to sit a topic table of their choice in 15-minute increments and discuss the meaning of the data for that topic and what should be done about it. A recording clerk at each table compiled the results for that table. Then they were to move to a different table if they wished to do so and repeat the process.
“Why do we have a community health assessment? To make an impact on health,” Lord told the room in a prelude to the breakout sessions. “So the next step, this step, which you are helping us launch, is a critical step for us.”
As the apparent purpose of the exercise was for the participants to generate topic-based conclusions that would later be compiled into recommendations by MAHHC, themes and conclusions across topics were not available. It was also not clear if or when the results of the conference event sessions would be published in an updated report by MAHHC.
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