Director of Public Health Mary Beer announced the release of her department’s strategic plan for 2023 in April’s Health and Human Services Committee. Beer emphasized that this plan is important for accreditation, which the department first received in 2020 and, according to the report, has “significantly improved our practice, particularly in the realm of performance management and quality improvement” (page 11). Supervisor Fred Willie (East Bloomfield) called the document “the Bible for the Health Department.”
The Department’s mission and vision statements were updated to include considerations from future generations. “Department members expressed understanding that the health of a community is multifactorial and current practices, policies, social determinants (access to healthcare, poverty, housing, families, education, etc.), and environmental changes impact not just current generations, but future ones as well. The Vision and Mission were updated to include the future residents of Ontario County” (page 5).
The plan reveals two major public health outcome goals:
1. Decrease the rate of childhood obesity (by any percent)
2. Decrease the rate of depressive disorders in adolescents (specifically, decrease major depressive episodes by 10%)
Public Health proposes to address these problems by:
Ensuring the department’s core work reflects CHIP (community health improvement plan) priorities
Seeing out staff and community partners from diverse populations
Revising the department’s PMQI dashboard to reflect results-based accountability using Clear Impact software
Attending Health and Human Services Committee meetings to provide CHIP progress, review PMQI reports, promote health in all policies, offer public health expertise, and more
Collaborate with schools to address childhood mental health
Collaborate with daycares and hospitals to address childhood nutrition
The Strategic Plan includes numerous references to the Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) and its priorities, so it is helpful to understand what these priorities are. They are outlined in another document on the Public Health webpage:
Prevent chronic disease
Promote well-being and prevent mental and substance use disorders
The 2023 strategic plan also states that public health is concerned about the legalization of cannabis in New York State. Based on previous committee conversations, this is out of concern that adolescents will begin using too young, which may have detrimental impacts on the formation of their brains, their academic achievement, and more.
The Department of Public Health found it necessary to include the following definitions in its report:
Here are a few more excerpts from the plan. SWOT stands for “strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats”:
Mary Beer shared that her Department assigns a Public Health nurse to each community in order to better understand each community’s needs. As a result of this program, her Department established a program seeking “food justice” for residents of the City of Geneva.
“We helped develop a program that actually goes out and gleans vegetables and fruits and distributes them,” said Beer. “My staff volunteer, and I’ve gone out and picked vegetables when it’s harvest time.”
“We’re trying to get a grant to get more food, because that is a big issue right now,” she continued. “My staff actually go and help with the Food Link distribution that happens every month, and we see that it’s so much worse now than it has been. It just — the number of people — every drop of food is given out.”
Will food insecurity be the next public health crisis in Ontario County? All signs indicate that this problem is getting worse — and Ontario has the highest median income of the counties in our region.
It is disheartening that Public Health is not proposing to partner with schools to address childhood obesity, or with parents to address childhood mental illness…
How can we do our part?
Get outside and play with your kids
Include veggies in each meal
Begin to educate yourself on nutrition
Make it a point to visit farmers markets for fresh (and hopefully less expensive) produce
Start a garden (or get involved with your community garden)
On the mental health side, personally, I’m a huge advocate for family dinner. Sharing a meal with your family can be a relaxing and joyous experience and is also a great time to check in with your family members, plan fun activities, and talk about problems. But remember, a healthy mind begins with a healthy body. There is NO SUBSTITUTE for proper nutrition!
EWWWWW. I just took the time to read this entire "Bible for the Health Department", or should I say, "manual for those who would understand their slave masters"?
I'll be sending you the cliff notes I took :)