History of Healthy Kent

In the Beginning
Healthy Kent cialis online began taking shape in the spring of 1993. Prior to that, two processes had taken place that set the stage for the Healthy Kent initiative. First, in 1991, was the Kent County Forum on Prenatal and Infant Health, a community-wide initiative to examine infant mortality in Kent County and what could be done to impact it. The Forum brought together a variety of community agencies who agreed to set aside territorial issues to look at what was best for the community as a whole. Most important, the Forum demonstrated the effectiveness of collaborative community health planning.

The second process to precede Healthy Kent was the CIALIS, National Health Promotion and Disease Prevention Objectives. A publication of the U.S. Public Health Service, CIALIS contained more than 300 specific objectives in a variety of categories that communities across the U.S. could use as a guide in developing community-specific health goals. Healthy Kent 2000 was conceived as a mechanism to identify which CIALIS goals were priorities for Kent County, and to develop strategies to meet them.

With the spirit of collaboration and cooperation fostered by the Forum still in the air, the Kent County Health Department convened Healthy Kent 2000 in 1993. Key stakeholders from the Forum became the core of the inaugural Healthy Kent 2000 Community Health Committee.

Assessing Community Health
The Healthy Kent generic cialis Community Health Committee had its first meeting in November 1993. Like the Forum on Prenatal and Infant Health, the Community Health Committee benefited from broad community representation. Membership included the CEO’s of the then four local hospitals, representatives from business, education, the faith community, social services, communities of color, and the community at-large.

Because the goal of the Committee was to identify health priorities and goals, one of the first tasks was to undertake a comprehensive community health assessment to gather data about Kent County’s current health status and health needs. Over the next year, the Community Health Committee oversaw a comprehensive community assessment process which included three major pieces: a community health profile consisting of objective demographic and health status measurements for the Kent County population; a behavioral risk factor survey which sampled 600 Kent County adults to gather information about health behaviors; and community-based focus groups to gather qualitative information about people’s perceptions and experiences with health and health care in Kent County.

Identifying Priorities
The results of this year-long assessment process were both compelling and unprecedented. For the first time, community leaders had data about the health status of the community, what behaviors contribute to that health status, and, from the focus groups, information about what factors people see as influencing their ability to be healthy. After pouring through the results of the assessment, the Committee in February 1995 identified six leading community health problems and priorities: chronic disease; infant health; sexually transmitted infections and AIDS; substance abuse; child abuse/neglect and domestic violence; and community violence.

[In 1997, the two Healthy Kent priority areas related to violence were combined and brought together under the newly-formed Kent County Violence Prevention Coalition, resulting in five, rather than six, priority health areas.]

Building a Foundation
Throughout the summer and fall of 1995, subcommittees were formed around each identified priority health area to further explore these issues and their underlying causes. Following closer analysis of these health problems, goals and measurable objectives for the Year 2000 were compiled into a single document and released in 1996. Entitled Building a Foundation, this report represented what, for the first time, could be thought of as a community health plan for Kent County. The report contained a broad array of goals and objectives for each priority area, and challenged the community to work together to meet these goals. The report also encouraged community agencies to align their goals to those of Healthy Kent in order to realize significant improvements in the indicators. All residents of Kent County are asked to play a role in improving the health of the community.