St. Joseph County Commissioners voted unanimously Tuesday to let the health department try some new ways to prevent suicide and drug over doses. The health department also will get some new help spreading the word about their community health workers.
Federal grants are paying for both efforts.
In 2020, early in the pandemic, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control gave the county a grant to hire eight new community health workers. Their long term goal is to improve health outcomes in the county with better primary health care, better diets and prenatal care for pregnant women.
The health department sent the new community health workers out to the county’s poorest census tracts. They formed relationships with anchor institutions in the neighborhoods, such as schools and churches, and they’ve also gone to homes door-to-door. Their mission is to make sure that the poorest households have access to, among other things, healthy food and good primary health care. They have people fill out a needs assessment and they help them navigate community resources.
The health department is hiring a digital marketing firm, South Bend-based Force 5, to market the community health workers in the third and final year of the CDC grant. Force 5 will buy time and space across a variety of media, including social media, display and radio ads, and streaming platforms.
"Now, this last year, it's just really been establishing the rapport with our community residents," Vida said. "We can just see every month our numbers of social needs assessments and resoure navigation go up, which is awesome. We just know that potentially we can reach more people and we want to try this marketing strategy to see if that works."
Under the other grant, the health department will work to identify people who have had “adverse childhood experiences,” with the hope of helping drug abuse and suicide. Adverse childhood experiences can range from suffering abuse and neglect to being raised by parents with mental illness. Studies show people who have had these experiences early in life are more likely to abuse drugs and commit suicide.
The health department has worked on all three societal problems but this will be the first time they’ve worked on all three at the same time.
"It could be physical abuse, emotional abuse, neglect," Vida said. "Did you, under the age of 18, have a parent that was lost to divorce? Did you live with somebody who was incarcerated? Did you live with somebody with a known mental health condition? All of those things go into potential adversities."
