Healthy Valley 2000

A third of a billion dollars is spent on health care annually in Mahoning County, but can we say that we are truly healthier for it?

Every year in Mahoning County more than a thousand people die of diseases and injuries caused by smoking, alcohol abuse, poor diet, lack of exercise, and violence, or because they didn't get an immunization, screening test, or seek health care soon enough. With so many preventable diseases and premature deaths in our communities—up to one half of all deaths by some estimates—a reasonable person could ask, "Do we, the community, enjoy the best possible health for our investment?"

Just the Beginning . . .

In 1995, community institutions—the Mahoning County and City of Youngstown Boards of Health, Forum Health and St. Elizabeth Health Center, the Lake to River Health Care Coalition, the Mahoning County Medical Society, the Youngstown/Mahoning Valley United Way, and YSU College of Health & Human Services—agreed that they had a common interest in planning for healthier communities. Not one of these institutions alone could gather all the information and other resources necessary to make a thorough study of the determinants of health and illness in Mahoning County, nor could any one of them alone present a credible proposal to establish goals for health in this community. Through the combined efforts of these institutions, Healthy Valley 2000 was created.

A National Initiative

Healthy Valley 2000 is built upon Healthy People 2000, a national initiative that has created a vision for improved health for all Americans. In a process that brought together local, state, and federal public health agencies and more than 300 professional groups and health-related organizations, Healthy People 2000 shaped a national health plan in 1990.

Most states have launched health plans tailored and targeted to their own populations from the Healthy People 2000 objectives. In 1996, the Ohio Department of Health submitted to the Ohio General Assembly a State Resources Health Plan, the result of collaboration with a large group of health care providers, consumers, and public health experts. This State Plan and the national Healthy People 2000 objectives became the building blocks for Mahoning County's Healthy Valley 2000 initiative for a healthier community.

A Local Collaboration

It was a public health leadership development program sponsored by the Ohio Department of Health and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that inspired a Mahoning County team of participants to envision a local alliance for community health planning. The four-member team, comprised of the Mahoning County and Youngstown City health commissioners and leaders from the community's two largest hospitals, mobilized a Healthy Valley 2000 steering committee.

This volunteer coalition examined the work of other successful community planning efforts, especially Akron's Healthy Summit 2000. It adopted a health planning framework popular in many U.S. communities, called APEXPH, which provided the "how to" for shaping a meaningful community health plan, suggested workplans and techniques for gathering essential data, and strategies for gaining broad community input and involvement.

From the start, the steering committee recognized the value of playing a supportive role to a broader group of citizens charged with setting the priorities and drafting a health plan for Mahoning County. It turned to Leadership Mahoning Valley, widely recognized for building a strong and diverse regional leadership base, to select the best candidates for the two-year community health planning process. Healthy Valley 2000 received 80 applications from citizens responding to public announcements about this initiative. From those applicants, 25 concerned citizens representing a cross-section of the community's population and its business, education, health services, and public agencies were chosen to work together as the Commission for Community Health.

Mission Statement

Boards of health, health care institutions, and other community organizations seek to improve the health of our citizens by developing and implementing a plan to:

To achieve these goals, these institutions supported the formation and work of a representative group of lay citizens known as the Commission for Community Health, which is responsible for:

Learning Together

The steering committee set the stage for productive learning sessions of the new Commission, whose members reviewed months of research that had been compiled by staff of the Mahoning County Board of Health. Medical and community researchers employed by the founding organizations added their expertise. Profiles of the community were created to illustrate three issues: Who We Are, How We Live, How We Die. What emerged was a panorama of local information for the Commission to probe and discuss such as demographics, trends in health and use of health services and mortality patterns.

Choosing Priorities

The Commission spent its early months examining various sources of health information and learning together as citizens committed to developing a shared understanding of the major health issues in Mahoning County. Commission leaders were elected to coordinate the work ahead. More targeted studies of the 22 national priority areas in Healthy People 2000 were performed at the county level through assessment of needs, existing resources, and the overall impact of the disease or risk factor on the community's health. Only then was the Commission ready to select a handful of the most important health problems facing Mahoning County. At the end of the first year, the Commission agreed that a "health promotion-disease prevention paradigm" would best serve the community planning process and selected these:

Five Priority Areas for Mahoning County

Exercise for Wellness

  • Increase the proportion of people who engage regularly in light to moderate physical activity.

    Health Screenings

  • Increase the proportion of people who seek regular physical exams, including mammograms, pap smears, prostate and colorectal cancer screening, high blood pressure checks, and high cholesterol screenings.

    Substance Use Among Youth

  • Reduce the incidence of alcohol, tobacco, and other drug use by persons under age 18.

    Unintended Pregnancy

  • Reduce the proportion of all pregnancies that are unintended.

    Violent Death

  • Decrease the incidence of violent death, particularly among the age category of 15-24.

    Upon completion of this selection process, five active work committees were established and dedicated to a specific health priority area. Each committee focused on assessing Mahoning County resources and on gathering extensive input from organizations and populations most affected by the particular health issue. Community forums, mail surveys, as well as interviews with public agencies and knowledgeable citizens, became the tools for further learning through continued research. The committees became keenly aware of the efforts of many groups and individuals tackling some facet of each complex community health issue. Each committee discovered champions and model programs and heard many voices and perspectives, concerns and frustrations. Most importantly, each committee found much common ground and a collective hope for greater community collaboration in tackling these five health problems.

    Healthy Valley 2000 created a community health plan by the community and for the community. Now that the foundation has been laid, we must continue the work through implementation and evaluation of the strategies and recommendations in this report. We are asking you, the community, to join us and help Mahoning County further reach these goals.


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