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Lewis County public health outlines five‑year priorities including housing stability, mental‑health supports and suicide prevention
Summary
The county public health director proposed five priorities — housing stability, anxiety/stress, suicide prevention, adverse childhood experiences and smoking cessation — and identified evidence‑based interventions and local partners to pursue over the next five years.
Ashley Waite, director of Public Health, presented the Lewis County Community Health Improvement Plan with five priority areas recommended for the next five years.
Waite said the priorities were selected by the health department together with local health and human services agencies and are framed by the New York State Prevention Agenda. The five priorities and example interventions are:
- Housing stability and affordability: conduct a community assessment of housing and rentals, support community land trusts/land banks, and form a housing committee to coordinate available resources. Waite noted Lewis County reported the highest housing‑insecurity rate in the region and outlined existing housing survey work to inform interventions.
- Anxiety and stress: expand school‑based social‑emotional learning, continue mental‑health first‑aid courses for staff who regularly interface with the public, and consider the Credible Minds app to increase access to mental‑health resources countywide.
- Suicide prevention: continue gatekeeper trainings and the lethal‑means reduction "Lock and Talk" program (gun‑lock distribution) and promote 988 through education and outreach; Waite said the county will continue partnering with the Suicide Prevention Coalition.
- Adverse childhood experiences (ACEs): promote referrals to the Healthy Families home‑visiting program and integrate trauma‑informed approaches across the workforce, working with partner agencies including FDRHPO, which is applying for grant funding for trauma training.
- Smoking/vaping interventions: target youth prevention (particularly vaping) and cessation efforts using JEWL settlement funding and partners such as Pivot for school and community initiatives.
Waite emphasized these strategies are part of a broader body of public‑health work and asked committee members for feedback. Committee members asked about county employee training and outreach to homebound seniors; Waite said many county employees who regularly interface with the public have already received mental‑health first‑aid training and that Office for the Aging programs exist but countywide protocols for homebound suicide prevention were not identified in the presentation.
The committee received the presentation and moved on to draft resolutions on human services dockets.
