Madison County sets three health priorities in response to residential surveys

by Randy Pierce • Behavioral health, access to care and healthy lifestyles are three top local area priorities for the next five years, according to a resolution approved unanimously last month by the Madison County Board. 

As brought forward by the county health department based on residential survey results, the establishment of these priorities is being implemented in compliance with the provisions of a state code requiring such an assessment and plan every five years, this current one extending through 2031.

The local health department, as part of this mandated program, is responsible for determining the county’s greatest health needs through contacts with schools, organizations, churches, hospitals, medical care personnel, other related stakeholders and citizens in general.

Submitted to the Illinois Department of Public Health (IDPH) to maintain the county health department’s certification, the plan and its orchestration were discussed at a meeting of the county’s health department committee in February. 

Emily Won, Madison County Health Department community health services director, said there were 507 survey respondents whose answers were utilized in the development of these priorities.

She pointed out that hospitals in the state additionally have to develop similar plans and partner with the county in working on the ones for both entities. 

When a county board member who is on that health department committee, Don McMaster of East Alton, inquired about one specific aspect of the plan, Won responded that promoting a healthy lifestyle can involve focusing on no-cost opportunities like the county’s trail system or parks that have equipment which can be used for various types of exercises while further mentioning the need to educate the public about these sorts of things.

Questions also surfaced in the setting of the health department committee about the quantity of people (507) surveyed and whether or not it reflects a genuine representation of people in Madison County with Won answering that her department uses a special type of calculator that determines what a statistically valid response total would be and it showed 387 to be an appropriate number.

“We were very vigorous,” Won said, “and the data we collected wasn’t just done randomly. We sat in libraries, we sat at events and we asked everybody to help pass out our survey” with about 80% of them completed in person and some verbal responses being written in the forms by those asking the questions plus a small amount done through Facebook.

“So, to your question,” Won told McMaster, “Yes, it is statistically valid and we do feel pretty confident that what we have here is following the guidelines for community health.”

While communities such as Alton and Edwardsville were targeted because of their greater population densities, Won said, “We did go out to, you know, Troy. We did go out to Highland.”

She further mentioned that the health department will be able to use some of the data generated by the survey in seeking grant money for various purposes.

Under the area of focus called behavioral health, Won said youth suicide was one component examined and coupled with access to care to address it. 

“We have a very strict plan that we’re going to kind of present to the community and say, ‘Hey, we’re hoping that in this amount of time, we can decrease suicide rates or we can decrease overdose rates.’ We are very specific with our objectives with that.”

Components of the healthy lifestyle priority also include chronic diseases plus nutrition and food security along with physical activity and environmental factors.

To help achieve the various goals, Won said the health department doesn’t create new programs but instead sends its staff to various community meetings to advocate for the needed services including support for and utilization of them.

“That’s the beautiful part about Madison County is that we do have really, really good community-based organizations that also touch base on these high priorities,” Won added.

A finding she also shared pointed out that Madison County has a lower ratio of doctors to residents than other areas so this information has been shared with hospitals while both Won and the health department director, Douglas King, have written letters to various sources in an attempt to bring more primary care providers into this area.