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Wicomico Health Department completes CHNA, prioritizes mental health, chronic disease and access to specialist care
Summary
Wicomico County Health Department presented a newly completed community health needs assessment and a three-year community health improvement plan June 17, identifying mental health, substance use, chronic disease and access to specialty care as top priorities and outlining outreach and prevention strategies.
Wicomico County Health Officer Matthew McConaughey and Christina Gray, director of planning and assessment, briefed the Wicomico County Council on a completed Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) and an accompanying Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) June 17.
Gray summarized the CHNA methodology and findings. The process included more than 1,200 community surveys, 28 leader surveys, 53 focus-group participants and nine key-leader interviews. Gray said the CHNA factored social determinants of health ' including economic stability, education, health-care access and neighborhood environment ' into priorities and noted a strong community response compared with previous cycles.
The CHNA identified timely, accessible care and specialty access (notably gastroenterology/colonoscopy), behavioral health (mental health and substance use), chronic disease (diabetes, hypertension and heart disease), older-adult health and healthy eating/active living as primary community concerns.
Gray said the CHIP will focus on three priority areas for the next three years: improving health-care access (including care coordination and digital referral systems), increasing chronic-disease screening and prevention, and strengthening behavioral-health screening, referral and intervention. "We're looking to increase the way that we do referrals both between primary care providers and prevention programs," Gray said.
McConaughey and Gray also provided public-health updates: influenza dominated the recent respiratory season compared with COVID and RSV; Maryland has had HPAI (avian influenza) impacts among poultry and some wild birds but Wicomico County had no confirmed flock outbreaks; and national measles activity included roughly 1,200 cases across 35 states with three deaths noted nationally, while Maryland retained high MMR coverage for incoming kindergarteners.
The health team highlighted tick-borne risks, including a notable rise in Lyme disease and growing presence of the lone star tick linked to the alpha-gal (red-meat) allergy. Environmental health staff reported permitting work in fiscal year 2025, completing 269 applications for new and replacement septic systems and wells, and meeting state turnaround benchmarks for permit processing most of the time.
Gray and McConaughey raised funding concerns: the department has absorbed the termination of some federal COVID-era ELC carryover funds and may face further reductions that could affect tobacco-prevention, family-planning and teen-health programs. They told the council staffing has not been reduced to date but warned of potential future impacts if federal support continues to decline.
Councilmembers asked about regional efforts to recruit specialty providers and about data sources to document population changes; the health team described residency programs, HRSA/HPSA recruitment tools and internal service-use data as avenues to demonstrate shifting service needs.
