- Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare conducts its Community Health Needs Assessment every three years.
- The number of neighbors who filled out the last survey is far below the population size of our four-county area.
- Watch the video to learn why the survey is important and how neighbors are pitching in to get everyone to participate.
BROADCAST TRANSCRIPT:
Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare's Community Health Needs Assessment is designed to spotlight gaps and needs in healthcare across Leon, Wakulla, Gadsden and Jefferson County. That's a population of over 300,000 people and the number of neighbors actually filling out the survey is nowhere near that. I'm Kenya Cardonne in the Northeast Tallahassee neighborhood. One local activist group is working on getting our communities to fill out the survey to ensure full representation of our local healthcare needs.
Dawn Springs, Community Health Manager at Tallahassee Memorial Healthcare - “It is a challenge getting people to complete surveys.”
Dawn Springs with TMH says this survey is a way for you to improve local healthcare using just 10 minutes of your time every three years.
Springs - “Needs change over time. So we have data from our own hospital system and the patients coming here, but sometimes you don't know what you don't know.”
The Community Health Needs Assessment anonymously analyzes neighbors’ experiences and needs with healthcare and the barriers that keep them from accessing it.
More than a thousand people from across our four-county area have filled out this year’s survey, but there are hundreds of thousands more neighbors still left to be heard from.
Madalyn Propst, Neighbor - “We saw a lot of gaps in the South Side, in Frenchtown, in our unhoused population..”
Neighbor Madalyn Propst has spent time looking into 2022’s survey results. Here’s what she’s talking about:
TMH only received information from 2,043 residents; 74% of those residents were white, 96% were insured and only 1% were unhoused.
Propst - “We need to make sure that these people, specifically our poorer communities throughout the South Side, throughout Frenchtown, our unhoused community here in Leon County.. we need to really make sure that they are getting their data represented because they're the people that this is going to help.”
It’s why she and her local activist group called Rising Voices Collective are pitching in.
I’ve seen them sharing the link at protests and Propst says they are planning to canvas underserved communities soon.
Propst - “I bring it with me everywhere.”
A boots-on-the-ground effort that was a pleasant surprise to the folks at TMH when I told them.
Springs - “Maybe straightforward ways of just posting the survey doesn't get out. Maybe it's going person to person and trying to advocate for them taking the survey.”
Springs tells me there’s been a real impact from the assessment, including a partnership at the Apalachee Center where resources for mental health conditions and substance abuse now exist.
Springs - “It’s one thing to collect the data. That is important and the first step, and then to make people aware of what the data showed. But then, what are we going to do with that? What are our priorities? You know, where do we need to work? Who can we partner with in the community? It's not like it just stops after, you know, six months this year and then, oh, we'll see you in 2028. It's an ongoing process.”
Propst says it’s also a powerful set of data to take straight to our local leaders.
Propst - “If you want to be accurately represented in that legislation and those policies that are going to affect you no matter what, then you need to fill out the survey to make sure that you are represented.”
The deadline to fill out the survey is March 31st. Results will come in the fall.
In Northeast Tallahassee, Kenya Cardonne ABC 27
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