Healthy Lifespan
The 2020 year started out with a lot of collective momentum around supporting young families in Winnebago County. The Winnebago County State of the Child Report had been recently published; related work and collaboration that was tied to First Five Fox Valley was bringing funding and shared resources and partners all over the Fox Valley together. The Winnebago County Board of Supervisors also passed a resolution in May 2016 advocating for the state of the child.
The Family Child Health Team was attending an annual conference provided to PNCC coordinators related to maternal child health's latest research and advocacy efforts when the pandemic was declared. Our work was immediately restructured to support all efforts of the COVID-19 Disease Response.
Our division has a variety of professions. While some of the public health nurses were pulled into disease investigation, it was clear there would be ample other needs and roles for our health strategists to support through community engagement and education.
This division's goals were to find better ways to communicate our separate but related work amongst the division and better integrate within the whole department. COVID may have disrupted the planned route, but not the outcome. As public health was pulled into emergency response mode, we suddenly had an opportunity to share our skills and strengths alongside the nursing leads. It was an exhausting but productive year in which we learned great lessons of humility, patience and the power of our community.
While most workplaces were disrupted during COVID, the essential services and strategy that public health provides a community strongly demanded alternative solutions. This opportunity to explore non traditional worksites and ways of connecting is a practice that will be reviewed to allow for efficiencies in our future work (less cost due to travel, time, etc.).
As the COVID-19 situation developed. many experienced public health nurses gather to discuss strategy. Years of training in public service, risk communication, de-escalation training allowed our staff to work across multiple roles to help our county departments, business owners and the public traverse the unknown.
In person visits were halted - with a major shift to new guidance and standards of physical distancing. As we review the past year and try to match residents immediate needs, we'll keep newly adapted home visit practices and try our best to maintain options such as virtual or strategic referrals that were streamlined in 2020.
Family Child Health
The State of the Child affirmed the concern that many of our children are entering school developmentally delayed and not ready to learn.
We know many of the stakeholders and elements of an improved environment for young families, (educational system, social services, child care, tax credits) but it's much more difficult to piece them together among disjointed programs and priorities. The goal is to bring our partners together with a community focus of improving the lives of young children, and thus our future.
Turning data into action...
Multiple staff are connected to different initiatives and stages of the First Five Fox Valley efforts in our region:
Obtaining grants, partnerships, sustainability
Hiring a family resource/navigator driven by the data of a centralized access point
Advocating for policy change and funding
The Winnebago County Health Department will use the report to educate policy makers regionally and statewide
Supporting Families & Creating Connections to Social Services
Although PNCC referrals and new mom/baby visits were halted after March of 2020. At first it was out of caution to slow the spread of COVID and learn about the disease. As the year progressed and many health services started to resume elsewhere, our health department was still completely overwhelmed with the needs of COVID response and support to the disease investigation. Having versatile staff professions allowed for great depth and flexibility as we ensured emergency needs were met while shifting the majority of RNs from young family and senior health services to join the Communicable Disease's investigation efforts.
Promoting Healthy Aging
Wellness Plus
A collaboration of health care professionals, advocates and the community working collaboratively to assure evidence based self-management programs for health and well-being are available, accessible and referred to routinely in Winnebago County.
2020 Successes:
Created curriculum to offer a new class - Tai Chi.
Falls Prevention
Most all work on falls - risk assessment / education / rehabilitation - were halted. Health strategists continued to reach out to provide education by phone, but the in person visits can not be easily adjusted. As more video technology become utilized by our aging population, we have the capacity to explore tele-health options. This gives our staff a great reach and more options for residents. Human Services Department continues to be an intral partner in coordinating referals and care management for our homebound residents.
Home Visits
Another focus of the Promoting Health Aging team is preventing hospitalizations and unnecessary ER visits through nurse education, case management and medication management at home visits. Referrals come to public health when other resources have been exhausted. Public health nurses work one-on-one to understand the needs and assist clients to some resolution. WCHD nurses continue to take referrals for adult visits with primary needs related to mental health, management of chronic medical conditions and management of medications.
Nurse Visits to the Housing Authority
The Winnebago County Health Department is contracted by the Winnebago County/Oshkosh Housing Authority (HA) to provide services to residents in subsidized housing in our county. These services exist to assist residents in obtaining an optimal level of health and to help them remain in their independent living residence as long as possible. This valuable partnership has existed for over 25 years and allows residents to be productive, social members of society.
Access to Health Opportunities
The Wisconsin Well Woman Program provides breast and cervical cancer screening to low income, uninsured or underinsured. The Winnebago County Health Department can help access this program for women in the following 9 counties: Calument, Green Lake, Fond du Lac, Marquette, Outagamie, Sheboygan, Waupaca, Waushara, and Winnebago.
Our coordinators continued to support and enroll eligible participants through 2020 providing guidance and alternative options as much of preventative medicine was halted to accommodate the COVID emergency. While the enrollment numbers remained on a steady incline for 2020, many participants were not able to schedule screening appointments. As healthcare systems regain stability and WWWP reviews eligible medical visit options, we will continue to support early screening and detection.
Access to Health
As we consider how our division could track and improve strategic goals of increasing access to health, you could similarly review the many staff currently work on coalitions/teams of reducing health barriers. The cross divisional collaboration of the Policy Team, Equity Team and other social health factor focus groups is where we will continue to prioritize our efforts. The successes in transportation (free student busing), health literacy (creating more diverse health publications/multi-language, graphics), and public health authority, were all shared efforts of WCHD staff that affect and improve our community health.
Time to learn...
For example, our student intern, Anastacia King, researched and provided a presentation to staff on the effects of CBD use during pregnancy. As CBD use and popularity increase, the family child health team requested more information on what are the facts, myths and best guidance to give their clients.
Time to advocate...
Policy & Equity Teams
Cross divisional work among community health strategists continue to bring public health priorities like equity and inclusion into planning processes that deliver health to our community. Our Healthy Lifespan division works on transportation, child health, incarceration reform, among many other things.
Time to train...
2020 Trainings Held by Healthy Lifespan:
Contact tracing
Assistance to childcare centers
Mindfulness and other mental health courses
Advocating for Public Health
Community presentations on the local COVID-19 response and need of community support
Not only cross training amongst our staff- but also training the next wave of public health staff that would be needed for COVID response.
