Orange County to survey residents on health issues

Volunteers will be going door-to-door in northern Orange County this weekend in an ongoing effort to collect information on the area’s health needs.

The Orange County Health Department is administering the community health assessment, which helps identify health concerns in individual county neighborhoods.

Last week, southern Orange County residents voiced their health concerns and habits through door-to-door surveys. Today and Saturday, volunteers will gather input from residents living in the northern part of the county.

The survey will be distributed to about 400 people and asks questions about personal health issues like physical activity, nutrition and barriers to health care.

“The survey is just one piece of the health assessment process,” said Nidhi Sachdeva, coordinator of Healthy Carolinians of Orange County, which is administering the assessment.

To get more data, Healthy Carolinians uses focus groups that invite eight to 12 people from a specific background to talk about a general topic.

This year, proposed focus groups include Latino immigrants, Burmese refugees, older adults and adolescents, Sachdeva said.

“Surveys are helpful in that they give us a lot of data, but they don’t answer the question why,” she said.

The department expects to find people having trouble paying for medical care after the economic downturn, said Donna King, health promotion and education services division director for the county.

To form the completed community health assessment, Healthy Carolinians also uses secondary sources, like census data.

“We’re trying to get more information about issues that may not be represented in current surveys being done,” King said.

In the past, information from the assessment has led to the creation of health-related programs like the Pro Bono Counseling Network, which helps therapists give free services to uninsured and under-insured patients.

“It was really launched as part of the health assessment,” said Mark Sullivan, executive director for Mental Health America of the Triangle.

“It’s really brought together key people in the community and got them cooperating and talking.”

Other programs formed as a result of the assessment include a health program for refugees, an obesity educational handout and therapist listings for teens.

“The process ties together current health status information, inventories the efforts of community organizations and provides the basis for a road map for going forward,” Sullivan said.

This year’s community health assessment will be released in December after data is analyzed, Sachdeva said.

Results will then be discussed with individual communities.

“We’re not just going to ask and not share back,” King said. “Our goal is to bring information back to the community.”

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