What are the ingredients of a healthy community? Specifically, what
are the factors that can be used to measure the health of Hall County,
Georgia?
With
its diversity of people and places, the health of a community must be
evaluated using a broad course of study, measurement and observation. This
has been the task and responsibility of the Healthy Hall Partnership—to
assess the health of Hall County as broadly and as comprehensively as
possible. Why? To better understand the health of our community and what
can be done to make it better.
Over the past nine years, Healthy Hall has guided two community
assessment projects. The first in 1998 resulted in findings that were
shared among the community, used by many non-profits in grant
applications, and used by The Medical Center Foundation in selecting its
projects for the Healthy Journey Campaign. Information from the
assessment also provided the impetus for the Hall County Medical
Society's Health Access Initiative, a project designed to help uninsured
adults with no other resources get the medical care they need. United
Way's 2-1-1, the service that connects individuals and families in need
to the appropriate community resources, was also formed after findings
from the Healthy Hall assessment supported the need for such a service.
Like a physician conducting a physical,
Healthy Hall uses this 2007 project to evaluate the health of our
community, probe attitudes, measure vital signs and compare findings to
expected norms and historical data, including a follow-up assessment
from 2003.
Unlike a medical exam where results are
confidential, however, Healthy Hall's intent is to share our findings
and observations as far and wide as possible. This report is a community
tool, designed to provide any citizen or community organization with
valuable information that can be used to plan, implement and help
produce a healthier more vibrant community. We invite any civic-minded
organizations, community advocates, health agencies or others to use our
data for their own work and planning.
GOALS
The
goals for the 2007 Healthy Hall community needs assessment are to:
-
Provide
authoritative, comprehensive information on community practices, needs
and attitudes that define social capital and influence health and
quality of life.
-
Measure
changes in health status and key health practices from the
2003n study.
-
Involve
a broad cross-section of community interests in the development of the
assessment
-
Organize
reporting of community health data geographically and by school
district to support the ability to facilitate improved planning and
implementation of school and neighborhood initiatives.
-
Provide
a central source of community health information, such as a website,
that also provides links to related state and national health data.
-
Support
the ability to evaluate data by race or cultural group, as well as by
key demographic factors such as age, income and education.
RESEARCH
METHODS
The
following research methods were used in the completion of this assessment:
-
A
comprehensive telephone survey of 500 randomly selected homes in Hall
County. Efforts were made
to ensure the polling provided samples based on the demographic
profile of Hall County.
-
Focus
groups conducted among a cross-section of Hall County groups,
including youth, senior adults, South Hall Countians and major ethnic
groups.
STUDY
ORGANIZATION
The
Healthy Hall Steering Committee has organized its evaluation around four
major areas of inquiry—health, safety and security, connections to the
community and confidence in the future.
Here are brief explanations of what these categories represent:
-
Health
-
Without
good physical health, no person or group can be truly healthy.
To evaluate health in Hall County, the Healthy Hall effort
measures access to care, personal health
practices and attitudes that contribute
to healthy lifestyles.
-
Safety
& Security
- A
sense of living at risk undermines the health of an individual, a
family,
a neighborhood and a community. The
Healthy Hall study
seeks
to measure citizens' attitudes toward risk and fear, as well as their
levels of confidence in the institutions that protect them.
-
Connections
To The Community
-
The
very definition of community implies that people live together, get
along and help one another. The
more a community is connected by living, working, serving and
fellowshipping together, the more edifying
and healthy it will be. The
Healthy Hall assessment seeks to measure the extent to which Hall
Countians connect to one another, as well as
some
of the attitudes that keep people apart.
-
Confidence
In The Future
