NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Reno County is once again going through the process of a Community Health Assessment.
"The Community Health Assessment is an assessment that partners here in Reno County do every three years to assess health in the places where they live, learn, work, and play," said Megan Gottschalk-Hammersmith with the Reno County Health Department. "I like to think of it as a way where partners take the temperature about what's happening in health around our community and what we can do better and what we're already doing well."
There will be multiple ways to contribute to the assessment.
"We're choosing to do kind of a four-pronged approach this year," Gottschalk-Hammersmith said. "We're going to kick off the survey this year, and it has to be done in 2025. We'll be kicking off a consensus survey that will be online. So, we're going to be releasing that via social media, and it can be sent out to friends and family. It should take about five to 10 minutes to complete. We're hoping to have about a thousand individuals complete that. And then, from there, after that, we will be doing a partner survey and holding some focus groups around the priorities that come out of the consensus survey."
The Reno County Health Department will use the data to inform its decision making over the following three years.
"The last iteration of the community health assessment, our priorities were substance misuse, mental health, transportation, childcare, and access to food," Gottschalk-Hammersmith said. "Communities work on those particular priorities through grassroots efforts, through coalitions, and we put programs into place to save lives."
The online assessment is open through the end of the year.