November CHIP Update

Dear Community Partners and Key Stakeholders,

Throughout October we have continued to work on our process to identify where our CHIP focus will be over the next 3+ years.  In early October, the CHIP Advisory spent time reviewing the stand-out data from publicly available resources such as the NC Center for Health Statistics, the WNC Regional Telephone Survey and the Key Informant Interview that some of you participated in.  CHIP Advisory engaged in a process to consider the health conditions that have risen to the top so far in regard to relevance, impact and the feasibility of addressing these conditions.  Later in October, the CHIP Advisory had the opportunity to hear what community members feel are important and pressing issues as well as information from public sources around social determinants of health.  On November 1st (drum roll please) we hope to narrow the list of stand-out to just 2 that will be presented to the Buncombe County Health and Human Services Board for consideration in mid November.  One of these health conditions will be a focus for the next 3 years and one for potentially 10 years.  

Throughout this process there has been a profound interest and concern in how we move forward in a way that ensures that social determinants are woven through our CHIP work.  We don't know exactly what type of structure or process this will require but will be working to address this challenge over the next couple of months. 

With the months-long in the weeds data process, it's helpful to remember that we are in Phase 1 of the CHA/CHIP process.  We look forward to moving past the data and into the Strategic Planning process.

Don't forget to visit our additional blog pages to learn more on how you can Engage on important issues related to our CHIP priorities and Social Determinants of Health, Support our many partners, Learn, and access Resources.  

Don't forget each of our priority work groups has a separate blog page which you can find at the following links:

• Diabetes Workgroup 
• Food Security strategy area workgroup 
• Infant Mortality work. 

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.

In appreciation of all you do!

The CHIP Team!

October Update

Dear Community Partners and Key Stakeholders,

Our Data Team is working overtime to sift through our 2018 CHA data and compile "stand-out" data in an easily understandable format. At our next CHIP Advisory meeting on October 4th, we'll start the work of narrowing the data to determine where we will be devoting energy and resources during the upcoming CHA cycle.  This process will take place over 3 work sessions in October and early November.  This first session focuses primarily on the data collected from state and regional resources and the regional telephone survey that includes over 175 indicators in addition to the local key informant survey.  We'll be engaging our advisory in helping us consider the data that is standing out with some additional criteria such as impact and relevance.

Our community data gathered from listening sessions and other community gatherings is currently being analyzed.  Thanks SO MUCH to all of you who helped in this effort!  The conversations have been rich and informative. The second CHIP Advisory work session will help us consider the stand out data in regard to what the community has told us as well as factors such as social determinants of health. We'll come together again the first week in November to identify just a few health conditions to present to the HHS Board. In an effort to really mobilize and move the needle, this is a much smaller number than we have identified in the past.  It will be challenge to narrow our focus but we are hopeful that we can be successful.

In mid-November, we'll make our recommendations to the Buncombe Health and Human Services Board for the two health conditions that collectively we will be working to really make a difference on over the next several years.

If you serve on the Buncombe CHIP Advisory Board, please make sure that you RSVP for the series of work sessions coming up.  We are asking for 100% participation.  If you are not able to attend, we ask that you send someone who is knowledgeable about health and the conditions that impact health who can inform this process.

Don't forget to visit our additional blog pages to learn more on how you can Engage on important issues related to our CHIP priorities and Social Determinants of Health, Support our many partners, Learn, and access Resources.  

Don't forget each of our priority work groups has a separate blog page which you can find at the following links:

• Diabetes Workgroup 
• Food Security strategy area workgroup 
• Infant Mortality work. 

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.

In appreciation of all you do!

The CHIP Team!

September Update

Dear Community Partners and Key Stakeholders,

 

The CHIP Advisory has been working on how we work more effectively together and how we are going to support the Community Health Assessment in the coming months. The next Advisory meeting is coming up this Thursday, September 6th. As always, you'll find meeting materials on the right-hand menu bar on the blog. 

 

Exciting news! Released on August 17 - The Community Health Assessment data workbook with a wealth of secondary data, the telephone survey data as well as the results of the key informant survey that many of you contributed to. Where possible, these data sets provide comparison to the region and the state.  WNC Healthy Impact has provided great guidance and tools on how to review this abundance of data so that our local data team can identify a manageable number of health conditions that, in turn, will be initially prioritized by the CHIP Advisory. The Advisory Council will in turn make recommendations to the Buncombe County Health and Human Services Board who will contribute to the final decision on what health priorities will be moving forward.  We continue to host listening sessions/focus groups and obtain input on our one key question with individuals across the county.  Thank you so much to those organizations and individuals that have assisted with this process!

 

It is with appreciation and sadness that we are saying farewell to our Health Improvement Specialist extraordinaire, Deanna LaMotte who will be leaving us in a little over a week.  Deanna won't be going very far so expect to still cross paths as she leads the Mission Health ACT Now! grant to address regional diabetes.

Don't forget to visit our additional blog pages to learn more on how you can Engage on important issues related to our CHIP priorities and Social Determinants of Health, Support our many partners, Learn, and access Resources.  

Don't forget each of our priority work groups has a separate blog page which you can find at the following links:

• Diabetes Workgroup 
• Food Security strategy area workgroup 
• Infant Mortality work. 

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.

In appreciation of all you do!

The CHIP Team!

August CHIP Update

Dear Community Partners and Key Stakeholders,
Striving for simplicity in our communication, we are moving toward a new format for our monthly updates. Each month you'll be receiving a very short update, highlighting just a few noteworthy items and directing you to our blog for more information. Please let us know how you like the format or if you would like to see any changes!

The CHIP Advisory has been working on many aspects of how we work more effectively together. The next Advisory meeting is Thursday, August 2. And you'll find meeting materials on the right-hand menu bar on the blog. 

We're deep into the Community Health Assessment data collection cycle. Many of you have graciously offered to help host a data collection activity.  If this applies to you, just a heads up that we'll be reaching out in the next couple of weeks to finalize logistics.

The YMCA and ABIPA have been settling into their new roles as leaders for the Diabetes CHIP priority and both the Diabetes Workgroup and the Food Security strategy area workgroup are going through a "refresh" to determine what this work looks like moving forward.

There is a lot of exciting news from our Infant Mortality work. Check out the recently updated blog page for hear what's happening with Mothering Asheville (formally Community Centered Health Home) and the Sistas Caring 4 Sistas doula program, our home visiting collaborative and more!

We still are maintaining our blog pages on sharing how you can Engage on important issues related to our CHIP priorities and Social Determinants of Health, Support our many partners, Learn, and access Resources.

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.

In appreciation of all you do!

The CHIP Team!

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

January CHIP Update

Dear Community Partners and Key Stakeholders,

There is lot happening as we move into this new year that we are excited to share.  Our CHIP Advisory reconvenes on Thursday, February 1st, 9-10:30. We will meet at MAHEC in Blue Ridge B.  

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.

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.

In appreciation of all you do!

The CHIP Team

December Update

This fall has been an exciting time for CHIP as we have worked to ensure the amazing work of our partners can be sustained as we make this transition into a new structure with more focused priorities.  We are calling the result CHIP 2.0. This new model is built on the premise that in order to sustain community level work, it is essential to have community  leaders moving the work forward and that the role of Health Improvement Specialists (HIS) is changing to to allow for a focus on providing technical assistance to those community leaders and other CHIP partners. There are three main components of CHIP 2.0: 1) Building capacity among community partners to sustain their work and leadership in community health; 2) Narrow the focus of CHIP priorities; and 3) Better measurement of the impact of CHIP efforts both in clinical and community settings.  Data-sharing across key stakeholders is fundamental to better measurement.  

As for the CHIP Priority Workgroups, their work is tireless! Here are just a few updates: 

The Diabetes Workgroup is in the process of evaluating the most effective way to use the valuable information and stories obtained through the Shiloh Diabetes Photovoice initiative.  Our Food Security Workgroup has developed an action plan to increase capacity and sustainability and improve collaboration and is receiving support from Leadership Asheville to make this collaboration more effective.  Double Up Food Bucks opened a second market location at West Village Market and last week submitted a USDA Food Insecurity Nutrition Intervention grant application to support expansion in Buncombe County and into our western counties under the umbrella of MountainWise.  To support the evaluation and data collection capacity of our food security partners, a special RBA training was held with the Asheville Buncombe Food Policy Council and UNC Asheville faculty and students in November.  And on the physical activity front, in September Open Streets Asheville welcomed 1800 walkers, cyclists and skaters to the streets of downtown Asheville to play and celebrate active lifestyles and community.

Infant Mortality Workgroup is celebrating that MAHEC recently received a two-year implementation grant from Blue Cross Blue Shield, continuing the work Community-Centered Health Home started in 2015. The grant, co-written by all of the partners engaged in the initiative over a 6 month period, prioritizes building community capacity, making clinical shifts, making environmental and policy changes, and creating a strategic communications plan to further this model. In addition, four of the doulas from Pisgah View and Hillcrest apartments, trained with support from this grant grant, were just on-boarded as MAHEC PRN staff. In

Perinatal Substance Use, MAHEC's Project CARA is thrilled to be entering into a year-long technical assistance relationship with UNC's Horizons program, which has been in existence for over 20 years and has set the standard for wrap-around services for pregnant and parenting women with substance use disorders.

Violence Prevention Task Force has just finalized an exciting county-wide 10-year plan to prevent intimate partner violence, sexual violence and child maltreatment. And related, MAHEC also hosted a second successful Adverse Childhood Experiences Southeastern Summit, with 400 attendees, including presentations from Australia and Japan!