May Update

Dear Community Partners and Key Stakeholders,

Happy spring (or is it summer already)!  Our CHIP Advisory reconvened in February with some frank conversations over the past several months about how to ensure that the CHIP advisory council continues with a clear sense of purpose and that changes are made to ensure there is trust and transparency. 

As we have mentioned more than once lately, spring is the time of accountability and recognition in the public health world. Buncombe County submitted it's State of the County Health (SOTCH) report to the the North Carolina Division of Public Health in March which highlighted the work of many of our CHIP partners in addressing Chronic Disease/ Diabetes prevention, Infant Mortality and Intimate Partner Violence. While impossible to list all the work mentioned in the report, notable were the Double Up Food Bucks initiative, the National Diabetes Prevention Program offered by the YMCA (a program prioritized by NC DPH), the collaboration with the Diabetes Prevention and Self-Management programs and 211, MotherLove, the many facets of the Community-Centered Health Home (now known as Mothering Asheville), the Home Visiting Network, new clinical community connections with Pisgah Legal, and the creation of the Buncombe County Pathway to Prevention: A Comprehensive, Multi-Year Plan to Prevent Domestic Violence, Sexual Violence and Child Abuse. Across priorities, training and use of the Results Based Accountability Framework was highlighted.

The National County Health Rankings were released on March 14th. Thanks to all of our partners agreed to speak to the media and are a huge part of what it takes to do better. (Bob Wagner and Mountain True did a great interview on WLOS).  And while Buncombe ranked quite well this year. This joint initiative of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute aims 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 2018 Community Health Assessment process is well underway and we have several asks for you! The contractor for much of the primary data collection process, PRC International, has begun the telephone survey process. We encourage you to to share this information with those you work with and encourage them, if called, to take the time to participate in this important process. The calls are generated locally and on caller id just appear as Asheville.  We also expect those of you who agreed be Key Informants to please be on the look out for an email with a survey link. If you are expecting to be contacted but haven't received an email with the interview link, please check your spam folder! We are also working with the CHIP Advisory and other community partners to identify additional key questions and opportunities to further engage community voices.  We will be reaching out to many of you in the near future to help us with this engagement. In the meantime, we have created a worksheet to help you craft 3 key messages to use in talking friends, clients, stakeholders about the Community Health Assessment, the value to the community and in participating.  Please take a few minutes to craft your "elevator speech" so you can be ambassadors for this important work.

Most of you are very much aware that Western North Carolina has embraced Results Based Accountability as a framework for CHIP across the region.  Because of this, WNC Healthy Impact and Asheville was fortunate to co host the Results for Health International Conference May 14-16th and it was good to see many of your faces there. If you haven't received training in how to use this practical framework for planning and evaluation or just need a refresh, don't forget that WNC Healthy Impact offers a quarterly training. Click here for details on the next scheduled one. And, if we have enough interest from Buncombe partners we are happy to schedule a Buncombe-centric opportunity.  Just let us know. 

This month we begin publishing a section called Upstream Connection where we will share the work of our many partners in addressing social determinants of health and health equity.  These stories may or may not be directly connected to a CHIP priorities but speak to upstream community health promoting activities.  If you have something you would like to share in this space....a story, a success an upcoming event,we have created a quick online form to make it easier (which also includes a file upload function) that you will be able to find in each Monthly Update as well as on the sidebar of the blog.  And of course you can always contact Terri or Deanna using our contact info below. 

To start this series we would like to congratulate the community partnership that led to a hugely successful First Annual Student Summit to focus on opioid awareness and abuse prevention. Key to this success were student leaders from throughout WNC, MAHEC Buncombe County School Nurses, The Partnership for Substance Free Youth/RHA Health Services and Buncombe HHS staff. Eighty middle and high school students from more than a dozen WNC schools gathered at the Western Carolina University Biltmore Park Campus. Using the Head, Heart, and Hands framework students learned how opioids affect the brain, impact relationships and aspirations, and what peers can do to support a friend, start recovery and build community awareness. During the summit, students heard from each other, peer recovery specialists, and addiction specialists that inspired students to take action. 
 ..Click here to read the full story....

Just a reminder that you can find and share information regularly on ways our partners can get involved in important community work on our Engage Page.

We also continue to provide information on our Support page on how to support each other's work (including job postings) and learning opportunities and resources on the Learn and Resource pages respectively.

Keep up-to-date on more timely information and partner updates on our Facebook page. To share your info on our Blog and Facebook pages, send content to Terri at anytime.

Finally, we would also like to invite you to play a more active role in crafting our communications and we will be forming a small communications team.  If you are interested in participating, please reach out to Terri and look for more information in the near future.

In appreciation of all you do!

The CHIP Team