photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Several community members gathered on Thursday, October 17, 2024 to hear about the launch of the Community Health Improvement Plan for Douglas County.

Over the next five years, health officials in the Lawrence area want to expand access to healthy food, reduce suicides and opioid deaths, and break down barriers that might be preventing people from getting the health care they need.

Those are a few of the big goals that Lawrence-Douglas County Public Health and its partners shared with the community on Thursday night at a launch event for its Community Health Improvement Plan, which is envisioned as a roadmap for improving the community’s health and wellness outcomes by 2029.

The plan comes after the county’s community health assessment in 2023, which revealed several key issues: 48.8% of renters in the county are cost-burdened; overdose deaths are increasing; Hispanic, multiracial, and Native American populations have lower insurance coverage; Black babies are more likely to be born small for their gestational age than white babies; only 29% of residents live within a mile of healthy food options compared to 43.7% statewide; and 1 in 10 children live in poverty.

On Thursday, officials from a variety of agencies in the county spoke to all of those focus areas — access to health services, poverty reduction, behavioral health, birth outcomes, food security and housing.

LDCPH Director of Policy and Planning Vicki Collie-Akers said she hoped the community could create more neighborhood and community linkages to care, especially to the kind of regular, everyday health care that can prevent people from ending up in the emergency department with more serious problems.

“(We hope) that it promotes access to preventive care services, including things like cancer screenings,” Collie-Akers said. ” … (There is) a broad array of approaches that are policy, system and environmental changes aimed at creating more opportunities for people to gain access to care by reducing barriers that people might experience, like transportation.”

photo by: Josie Heimsoth/Journal-World

Executive Director of Lawrence Douglas County Public Health Jonathan Smith spoke at the launch of the Community Health Improvement Plan on Thursday, October 17, 2024.

Multiple speakers said it was important to improve the well-being of mothers and families. Erica Hill, director of health equity & strategic initiatives at LMH Health, said that Black maternal health in particular was a national and international crisis.

And Kathy Smith, vice president of Douglas County initiatives for the United Way of Kaw Valley, said the plan wanted to devote special attention to households in Douglas County with a single mother living below what’s called the “ALICE threshold.” This level consists of those who earn more than the federal poverty level but less than the basic cost of living for the county.

“It’s not poverty, which is at one level, but rather it is that (these families) are unable to make ends meet with the income that they have,” Smith said. “They do not qualify for these services, which are people who live below the poverty line. They are in between those two areas.”

On the topic of behavioral health, Bob Tryanski, the county’s director of behavioral health projects, said it was important to integrate housing and behavioral health services, continue to decrease the suicide mortality rate, reduce the number of opioid deaths and reduce absenteeism rates in Douglas County schools.

“One suicide in Douglas County is too many,” Tryanski said. “One chronically homeless individual is one chronically homeless individual too many. One opioid death in Douglas County is one too many in a community of our size.”

Executive Director of LiveWell of Douglas County Ginny Barnard discussed some ways to help improve food security. She said the goal was to provide everyone with a well-balanced diet through an equitable and sustainable food system, and that this would require raising awareness about and utilization of food assistance programs, expanding access to nutritionally dense food options and supporting transportation projects to connect more people to healthy food.

Jill Jolicoeur, assistant county administrator, said the city and county’s plan to end chronic homelessness, “A Place for Everyone,” also plays a role in the community health plan. She said there are a lot of intersecting strategies between the two individual plans.

“Part of why ‘A Place for Everyone’ is such a perfect name for the plan is that truly we need to have a place for everyone to live in this community,” Jolicoeur said. “Having affordable housing is paramount to that.”

LDCPH Executive Director Jonathan Smith said the department intended to host future events about the plan’s progress. He said it was important to evaluate the community’s status annually rather than waiting until the end of the five-year period to see how the plan had worked.