photo by: Bremen Keasey

Jonathan Smith, the Executive Director of the Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health, gave a presentation to the Lawrence City Commission Tuesday night about the County Health Improvement Plan.

Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health’s five-year plan isn’t just about hospitals and clinics, the department’s leaders told the Lawrence City Commission on Tuesday — it’ about some of the city’s top policy priorities, like adding affordable housing and reducing chronic homelessness.

On Tuesday, the City Commission heard an update on LDCPH’s Community Health Improvement Plan, which was released last October after being in development since 2022. The plan is a five-year roadmap for a number of health and wellness goals — expanding access to healthy food, reducing suicides and opioid deaths, breaking down barriers that might be preventing people from getting the health care they need and more.

These health outcomes aren’t just important to public health officials, LDCPH Executive Director Jonathan Smith told the commission. He said many of the outcomes in the plan are connected to the city’s policy goals and to each other, and fixing one area helps fix others, too.

“Outcomes don’t live in silos; our solutions shouldn’t, either,” Smith said. “The plan is not something separate, but something to achieve the outcomes” in the city’s and county’s strategic planning.

For instance, of the six broad areas the Community Health Improvement Plan focuses on, Smith said one of them is actually the implementation of another city-county plan — the “A Place for Everyone” plan to fight chronic homelessness. Even when the overlap isn’t so obvious, there are other parts of the plan that are tied to the city’s and county’s goals.

In a few slides in his presentation to the commission, Smith showed side-by-side comparisons of where the health plan’s outcomes align with the city’s strategic plan. One of the city’s goals, listed under its “strong, welcoming neighborhoods” section, is “to make homelessness a rare, brief and one-time experience,” and progress in this area is measured in part through the annual point-in-time homeless count, which aims to count all people sleeping outside on a single night in January. The health plan, meanwhile, has a goal to “reduce the Douglas County Point-In-Time count for unsheltered individuals by 50%.”

Another objective of the health plan, listed under the behavioral health objectives, is to achieve “functional zero” chronic homelessness by 2029, meaning the number of people experiencing homelessness never exceeds the community’s capacity to move people into permanent housing. To do this, the plan calls for more integration of housing programs with behavioral health supports.

In addition to implementing “A Place for Everyone” and improving behavioral health outcomes, the plan has four other areas of focus, said Vicki Collie-Akers, LDCPH director of policy and planning. They are expanding access to health services, improving birth outcomes, expanding food security and working on anti-poverty goals. Collie-Akers said LDCPH would provide “backbone support,” and organizations like the United Way, LMH Health and Just Food would work on the concrete objectives in each area.

City Commissioner Amber Sellers asked the presenters how LDCPH would show that it was making progress. Smith said LDCPH would be hosting community update meetings to let the community know how the work is going and give the public chances to get involved.

And City Commissioner Bart Littlejohn praised the health department’s work, but said he worried about whether cuts at the federal and state levels might affect the plan. Sellers shared those same concerns, but emphasized that the plan focuses on “strategies we can do locally,” and that the process of developing the plan brought together a coalition of people who could advocate for more funding at the federal and state levels.

In other business, commissioners adopted an action plan required for spending around $1.5 million in federal grant funds from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development.

The city is expected to receive an allocation of $1,224,058.61 in federal grants from HUD’s Community Development Block Grant and HOME Investment Partnerships Program, with the funds being allocated for initiatives intended to primarily benefit low- and moderate-income residents. The federal funds require a 25% local match, which will lead to a total fiscal impact to the city of just under $1.5 million.

The funds from the Block Grants are split between “public services” and “non-public services.” The plan would give $112,858 in grants to the Lawrence Community Shelter for stabilization services for its guests through the public service projects. For non-public service projects, the city would give Lawrence Habitat for Humanity $55,607 for weatherization assistance and $161,762 to GoodLife Innovations Inc. to rehabilitate a group home facility.

The remaining $521,685 is slated for “various city department projects,” which can include acquisition of property for affordable housing, direct financial assistance for homebuyers, sidewalk gap projects in low- and moderate-income neighborhoods and more, according to a city memo.

The $473,307 in funds from the HOME Investment grants would be largely split between the Lawrence-Douglas County Housing Authority for tenant-based rental assistance and Tenants to Homeowners for project funds and operating expenses.