Healthy Adams County

Description

Healthy Adams County started in 1996 as a community-wide initiative to improve the health of residents in rural Adams County, Pennsylvania. The idea for the initiative stemmed from a survey conducted by the Council that identified local health disparities.

The Council, made up of community members, has continued to spearhead this effort to include widespread community involvement to address and solve social determinants of health throughout the region. Efforts are taken to develop short-term, high-impact projects as well as long-term, systems-level change.

Partners and funders for Healthy Adams County include:

• WellSpan Health and Gettysburg Hospital
• Collaborating for Youth
• Family First Health
• Healthy York County Coalition
• United Way of Adams County

Services offered

Healthy Adams County community task forces include:

• Adams County Womens Cancer Coalition
  • Promotes education, screening, and early detection of breast cancer. Coalition members have personal experiences with breast cancer.
  • Supports the Adams County Mammography Help Fund, which has decreased the annual screening mammogram cost for uninsured women over 40 years of age.
• Adams County Food Policy Council
  • Awarded a 2016-2017 USDA Food Insecurity Nutrition Incentive Grant, continued with funding from the Gettysburg Hospital Foundation, for a Fruit and Veggie Bucks incentive program.
  • Recipients can redeem coupons at 2 grocery store locations in the county.
  • Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) recipients receive a 50 cent on the dollar incentive when purchasing produce.
  • The program encourages the sale of local produce and promotes farm-to-institution initiatives.
• Behavioral Health Task Force
  • Educates community members how to cultivate an environment that can improve mental/behavioral health and quality of life.
  • Improves access to behavioral health services.
  • Provides education to the community regarding mental/behavioral health issues and trends, including Mental Health First Aid, Question, Persuade, Refer (QPR) and Trauma Informed Trainings.
  • Partners with the Lebanon VA to provide Suicide Prevention Campaign materials.
• Health Literacy Task Force
  • Utilizes the University of North Carolina Medical School's Health Literacy Universal Precautions Toolkit, which provides tools for connecting with patients who have different literacy levels.
  • Helps providers understand cultural barriers and how to use plain language when speaking with patients.
  • Conducts focus groups to research gaps in navigating services and education for residents ages 30-60 applying for disability assistance.
  • Provides classes on Insurance Literacy.
• Oral Health Task Force
  • Works with the Adams Dental Center to offer dental care to Head Start students, Migrant Head Start students, and those in the county foster care program.
  • Works with Family First Health, a Federally Qualified Health Center to bring dental care to uninsured and underinsured residents.
• Tobacco Prevention Task Force
  • Works to reduce air pollution and nicotine addition in Adams County.

In addition, a collaborative called Community Wellness Connections is a 2-year wellness campaign a part of Healthy Adams County that focuses on mind, body, spirit, and community. The collaborative works to educate the community on these dimensions through events that take place every 3 months that provide low-cost opportunities for activities. At these events, community members are eligible for incentives.

For more information on services and upcoming events, visit the Healthy Adams County Facebook page.

Results

Over 300 community volunteers tackle health and human service needs by serving on one of 12 task force teams. A few successes of task force teams include:

• The Behavioral Health Task Force partnered with Healthy York County Coalition and WellSpan Health to create a website called Feeling Blue to address depression.
• In 2023, 725 individuals signed up for the Fruit and Veggie Buck SNAP program. Most participants indicated they were able to purchase a greater amount of produce, buy more variety, and eat healthier. View more information about the program on their poster.
• In 2023, Healthy Adams County partnered with WellSpan Health and Gettysburg College on a study to identify gaps in suicide prevention protocols in rural primary care settings. Results were presented at the 2023 American Public Health Association (APHA) Annual Meeting in Atlanta.
• The Adams Dental Center sees over 300 children annually and an average of 650 visits are made per year. The collaboration with Family First Health has led to increased access to medical and dental care.

For more detailed results:

• Dailey et al. (2015). Healthy Options: A Community-Based Program to Address Food Insecurity. Journal of Prevention & Intervention in the Community, 43(2), 83-94.
• Dailey et al. (2021). Responding to Food Insecurity and Community Crises through Food Policy Council Partnerships in a Rural Setting. Progress in Community Health Partnerships: Research, Education and Action, 16(2).

Awards and Recognition:

• Healthy Adams County Executive Director Kathy Gaskin won the 2014 Community Rural Health Leader of the Year Award.
• Gaskin and Dr. Amy Dailey, a professor of health sciences at Gettysburg College, were selected to attend the Detroit URC: Community-Based Participatory Research (CBPR) Partnership Academy for 2016-2017.

Replication

Healthy Adams County utilizes health needs assessments in order to accurately identify the most prominent health risks and leading causes of illness and death throughout the community. This dictates the implementation of topic-specific task forces.

The most recent 2022 Community Health Needs Assessment for Adams County and four other counties in the region was a means of finding these health disparities and subsequent costs and concerns.

Items that are specifically looked at in these assessments include:

• Access to healthcare
• Health-related behavioral risks
• Prevention behaviors and context

Contact Information

Kathy Gaskin, Executive Director
Healthy Adams County
717.337.4137
kgaskin@wellspan.org