COMMUNITY HEALTH COUNCIL OF WYANDOTTE COUNTY INC
This organization has already been registered
Someone in your organization has already registered and setup an account. would you like to join their team?Profile owner : g****s@w********h.c*m
Mission Statement
The mission of the Community Health Council of Wyandotte County (CHC) is to enhance health outcomes in Wyandotte County (WyCo) through informing, collaborating, aligning, mobilizing and activating organizations, government entities and community members. We serve as a community convener, organizer, and intermediary between decision-makers, providers, and those in need through our collective health improvement efforts. CHC exists to improve the health of Wyandotte County residents, which includes increasing access to health care, primary care, health care quality, and health equity for the 160,000+ individuals that we serve. Over time, the intersectionality of our work has resulted in serving those beyond our county borders - many of our programs serve residents of the broader Kansas City metro, including Miami, Leavenworth, Johnson, Jackson, and Wyandotte counties.
About This Cause
CHC is committed to community and to creating space for residents to lead efforts in the issues that matter most to them. CHC was founded to improve health for the uninsured, to enhance health maintenance and prevention of health problems, and to facilitate coordination of community health services. Since 2002, CHC has engaged the community in identifying and addressing health inequities. In 2013, CHC expanded its mission: improved access to healthcare became the improvement of all health for all in Wyandotte County. Shortly after securing a new director to support this expanded mission, CHC launched Enroll Wyandotte, a collaborative, grassroots educational outreach and enrollment assistance campaign to reduce the ranks of Wyandotte County’s uninsured population. Wyandotte County’s population of residents without health insurance has been drastically reduced by over 40% since Fall of 2013. In 2014, CHC became the lead agency to direct the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) grant to reduce obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and stroke in Wyandotte County. In 2015, CHC launched its Community Health Worker (CHW) Initiative in partnership with KC Care Health Center. During the three-year demonstration project, we assisted more than 2,000 health seekers and were successful in placing 91% of those without a medical home into one. This clinical-community partnership also reduced emergency room utilization among the cohort of health seekers. In 2016, CHC identified concentrations of vulnerable populations facing multiple barriers to health in the HEAT Report. CHC engaged residents in community design projects to improve self-efficacy, self-advocacy, and civic engagement around key issues, including neighborhood safety and walkability. Five neighborhoods have conducted walk audits, identified infrastructure needs, and are advocating for safe and walkable neighborhoods. From 2016-2018, CHC connected 1500+ residents with Community Health Workers, achieving health plan goals, reducing ER trips, and establishing medical homes. In 2018, CHC launched Cradle KC - an initiative created to facilitate collective action to improve maternal and infant health in the Kansas City region. In addition to a collective of more than 40 regional groups, Cradle KC has a Community Action Board, a Steering Committee, and three Workstream groups focused on prematurity, family support, and preconception care. With continued focus on maternal child health (MCH) injustice, we have introduced a CHW maternal pathway (MCHW), adding more than 200 additional training hours to provide specialized support for families with children up to age four. In 2020, Cradle KC successfully created and launched the Maternal Health Data Sharing Network. The Cradle KC Data Sharing Network collects 72 indicators in 10 key areas that impact families in our region, and will be analyzed and reported on a geographical level. Also in 2020, we began responding to our world’s most critical public health crisis - the COVID-19 virus - by increasing the amount of time allocated to coordination of rapid response initiatives, reallocating funding to support increased response by our front-line Community Health Workers, and recognizing a need to secure vital food resources for an increasing crisis in food insecurity within our community. Through this crisis, using human-centered design principles, CHC volunteers formed a grassroots community group to organize mutual aid efforts and engage community members to address gaps in equity that were highlighted during the COVID health crisis. Today CHC is leading five community health improvement projects - Kansas Assistance Network (KAN), Chronic Disease Management Project, the HEAT (Health, Equity and Action for Transformation) Project (which includes the Mutual Aid Initiative), the Community Health Worker (CHW) Initiative (including COVID Response & Vaccine Equity), and Cradle Kansas City and Every Baby to 1. Many of these programs have expanded their scope to include other counties across the Kansas City metro and the state of Kansas as a whole. CHC staff members each are managing multi-year funded collaborations aimed at reducing the rate of uninsured residents in WyCo, reducing Emergency Department visits and hospital readmissions, ameliorating social determinants of health, advocating for policies that affect health, fostering and supporting the development of future Wyandotte leadership, as well as reducing diabetes, heart disease and stroke. CHC is a founding partner of the Healthy Communities Wyandotte Coalition, and is a key partner to the Health Services and Fetal Infant Mortality Review Community Action Team, Policy Action Team, and Health Equity Alliance. CHC understands that health is affected by many factors. The Center for Health and Learning reports that 70% of the factors affecting our health are related to socioeconomic and behavioral factors, while access to medical care accounts for only 10% of health outcomes. History and policy play a key role in what socioeconomic opportunities, health infrastructure, and environment look like in our present time. Based on the HEAT report, Wyandotte’s current alarming conditions are the result of historic policies that were rooted in racism, redlining, and discrimination leading to devastating social results. CHC continues to focus on strategies to improve overall health quality across the human lifecycle and throughout our service area.