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Cochise County health department announces mobile markets, age-friendly certification and local-care website
Summary
Health staff briefed the Board on multiple public-health initiatives: a grant-funded searchable website to direct residents to local providers (15,000 hits reported), a mobile market partnership with farmers for WIC participants, and a state age-friendly public-health certification.
At a March 10 work session, Cochise County health staff summarized a set of public-health initiatives intended to increase local access to care and healthy food.
Miss Lang said a grant from the Arizona Community Foundation funded a searchable website to help residents find local hospitals and visiting specialists. "Since this website has started a month ago just under 15,000 hits on it," she told the board, and staff can track appointments made with local providers including Copper Queen, Canyon Vista and TMC. She added that the most-clicked specialty in recent reporting has been urology.
She also described the Cochise Mobile Market, a partnership with local farmers to provide fresh fruits and vegetables at reduced cost or via WIC benefit redemption at scheduled pop-up locations; the health department produced a healthy cookbook for distribution. Miss Lang said the county is working with WIC sites in three locations and has scheduled markets in Benson, Douglas and other communities.
Miss Lang told the board Cochise County completed staff trainings and an action plan required to become, she said, the first "age-friendly public health organization" in Arizona; the certification requires training, an action plan and applied activities.
Other items included environmental health sanitarians pursuing voluntary national retail food regulatory program standards to standardize inspections and to assist grant applications, free prevention classes (sun safety, mole checks, hypertension and dementia-prevention education) offered around the county, and community gardening projects at skilled-nursing facilities with wheelchair-height beds for residents.
The board discussed operational details such as USDA rules that limit donation of some meats and the practical need for potable water in restaurants for customers and employees. Staff said they would follow up on unanswered specifics, such as the per-administration cost of naloxone.
