The Citrus County Health Department has recently developed an updated Community Health Assessment.

This assessment is a systematic and collaborative process of analyzing and sharing data and information about the local community’s health and challenges to educate and mobilize the community, identify priorities and resources, and plan meaningful actions to improve the public’s health. This process requires partnerships with other members of the community to provide, in part, other perspectives of the data and factors that impact the outcomes. Data used includes not only the traditional public health data but quality of life, both natural and built environmental factors, social determinants and socioeconomic factors.

WHY DO COUNTY HEALTH DEPARTMENTS (CHD) PREPARE COMMUNITY HEALTH ASSESSMENTS (CHA)? We must be able to identify the needs of the community to understand the potential health factors that are impacting our citizens. The preparation of the CHA provides us with the local trending data to determine where we need to concentrate our efforts.

HOW DID YOU SOLICIT INPUT FROM THE PUBLIC AND OTHER HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS? Three slightly different surveys were used: the Citizens Survey, the Business Owners Survey and a Providers Survey. The surveys were made available both electronically and as a hard copy through numerous public venues in both English and Spanish, at our CHD website and clinics, and through many of our community partners.

WHAT DO YOU DO WITH THE INFORMATION THAT IS CONTAINED IN THE CHA? The updated CHA identifies four areas for improvement: obesity in adults

(Healthiest Weight for all ages), access to health care, availability of healthy foods and mental health, and substance abuse services. This information will be used as a guide to focus the community to these issues. We will be coordinating these needs with community partners so that we can join forces to improve the health of our citizens.

WHAT ARE THE NEXT STEPS? We will be developing our Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP), which uses CHA data to identify priority issues, develop and implement strategies for action and establish accountability to ensure measurable health improvement. The CHIP is developed by bringing together community partners who serve a specific segment of the community. These partners work together to contribute to community health improvement.