Live Well Wake presents county Community Health Improvement Plan focused on access, housing and mental health

Marcellus Allison, Live Well Wake program manager, told commissioners that the county completed a community health needs assessment and then developed a Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) using public prioritization surveys and steering-committee work groups. "These were the top 3 strategies that were voted across the county: access to health care, affordable housing and homelessness, and mental health," he said.

Allison described a published scorecard that will track performance measures and indicators across the three priority areas, including youth suicide rate and mental-health ED visits for the mental-health work group; housing-cost burden and counts from the Homeless Management Information System for housing; and provider-per-capita measures, appointment wait times and vaccination counts for access to care. He said work groups will meet monthly and that the county will produce an annual State of the County Health report capturing updated metrics.

Commissioners asked how often metrics will be reported to the Board; Allison said monthly work-group reporting and an annual public report will provide updates, and he explained that work-group strategies prioritize strengthening safety-net partners, leveraging mobile units and expanding community health worker capacity. Commissioners also pressed for targeting resources and the best uses of additional funding: Allison recommended maximizing coordination among federally qualified health centers, smaller clinics and major hospitals to broaden access to Medicaid and reduce missed capacity.