Top health priorities in the Chippewa Valley highlighted in Community Health Assessment

EAU CLAIRE — The completion of Community Health Assessments in Eau Claire, Chippewa and Dunn counties addresses the top health priorities for the Chippewa Valley.

The assessment happens every three years by taking input from community members, health data and feedback from local health coalitions. The results of the data were made publicly available at a press conference held on July 9 at the Eau Claire County Government Center.

Some of the top health issues in the three county areas include alcohol misuse and lack of access or unaffordability of childcare. Other health priorities addressed include difficulty with health care access, poor mental health, lack of safe or affordable housing and environment or water pollution.

While this assessment of a three-county area gives the community an idea of what some of the major priorities are in terms of health issues, it also gives coalitions and partnerships an idea of what the next steps are.

For the Chippewa Health Improvement Partnership, the Eau Claire Health Alliance and the Health Dunn Right coalitions, that next step is a community health improvement plan.

“This year-long process has really come to shed some light on how we can all come together to improve health conditions for everyone in our community,” said Brook Berg, director of community engagement for Mayo Clinic Health System. “We are encouraging everyone to get involved. Please use this data and think about how these health issues impact all of us in our community, including our family members, our coworkers and our neighbors. It really is a ‘we’ and not an ‘us’ and a ‘them.’”

As the health issues of these communities become highlighted through the assessment, it provides data to see both what the community needs, and what they should continue to focus on.

“We’re going to continue to stand on the shoulders of the work that we have already done,” said KT Gallagher, director of the Dunn County Health Department, speaking towards those issues which continue to be picked.

She continued, and said, “In Dunn County, we did a housing assessment leveraging some federal grant dollars and have some really fine data about the housing concerns in Dunn County… We really combined the forces with some governmental players, some of the developer players and some of the folks with other lived experiences, so that we can continue that work and move forward with a full table of folks with both context, meaning lived experience; and content, meaning educational experience around those issues, and hopefully leverage some dollars.”

Adding on, Isabella Hong, community impact director for United Way of the Greater Chippewa Valley, said another piece they will be focusing on is collaboration to bring together a lot of the foundational work that already exists.

“I know that even before the Community Health Assessment, there were discussions about childcare and the needs for childcare in our community,” she said. “There are some groups out there that are already doing that work, and the Community Health Assessment will only put more focus on these issues in our community and how we can collaboratively work together to target these issues.”