Dear Community Partners and Key Stakeholders,
Close on the heels of our first meeting of the new year we will be preparing for several weeks with much focus on the work of CHIP and what impacts health and well being in Buncombe County. The national County Health Rankings are released around mid-March every year. This joint initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute aims to The goals of the program are to "Build awareness of the multiple factors that influence health" and to "engage and activate...[and] empower community leaders working to improve health". This process typically generates community conversations and media around health issues, the social and environmental conditions that impact health and what is happening in the community to "turn the curve" on these conditions.
The first week of April is National Public Health Week. The themes this year include: Behavioral Health, Communicable Diseases, Environmental Health, Injury and Violence Prevention & Ensuring the Right to Health (Health Equity). No doubt many of you see your work in one of these themes. Again, our plan for this week is to celebrate your work as critical public health partners during this week.
Our Health Improvement Specialist and Buncombe County Health and Human Services are beginning to identify and craft stories around potential conditions that could possibly be highlighted in this year's rankings and the April public health themes. For this month's "Ask", we would like to invite you to think about what stories you could share about how your work is impacting health in our community. We encourage you to visit last year's health rankings to help you begin to consider what may be highlighted this year. ?would it be helpful to include a link to a google form"...to make it easy, we've created a simple google form to help you share your stories? And, as always, please reach out to Terri or Deanna with questions.
One additional opportunity to engage taken place this week is promoting the National Drug and Alcohol Facts Week campaign. You can read more about how to join this social media campaign and help spread the word on our Engage Page.
We also continue to provide information on our Support page (ways to support community partners, including job postings), Learn page (learning opportunities and resources) and Resource page.
