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Lake County begins five-year community health assessment; board discusses role in advocacy
Summary
County public-health staff began a community health assessment required every five years, identifying priorities including health-care access, housing, mental health and substance use. Board members asked how the assessment will guide public-health advocacy and when staff should represent the board in external proceedings.
Lake County Public Health staff told the Board of Health on May 9 that the county has begun its statutory community health assessment (CHA) — a process required every five years — and that the assessment will inform a community health improvement plan (CHIP) to be completed in 2026.
Kelsey Maxey said an advisory committee met April 3 with wide community representation. The group’s early priorities include health-care access and cost, affordable housing and homelessness, mental-health access and cultural and language barriers, substance-use treatment, food access and concerns about changing federal and state funding and policy that could affect local services.
“Because we have folks representing what we truly believe is the different pockets in our community… we all went through an activity to identify what we're seeing in our areas of being the biggest issues for our community,” Maxey said. The CHA work will catalog which organizations currently provide services and where gaps exist, and the results will feed into an improvement plan that the county expects to implement into 2026.
Board members asked how and when the public-health department can publicly advocate on community matters such as emergency shelter decisions. One member recounted asking whether the agency would “show up to advocate” at a city-council hearing; staff said that historically public-health recommendations were developed internally and then presented to the board for direction before public advocacy. Maxey described a range of advocacy activities from informal sharing of public-health observations with community partners to more public actions like presenting before a city council, noting that public advocacy should be aligned with board priorities.
Staff said the CHA contractor is under a mini-grant that pays for data collection and drafting; the county plans subsequent outreach and refinement before producing a formal CHIP. Maxey and other staff asked the board to provide direction about the level of public advocacy they should undertake while the plan is being developed.
