 Welcome to Love Where You Live, your monthly magazine of the best of Sheboygan County from the Sheboygan County Chamber. I'm Betsy Alice, Executive Director of the Sheboygan County Chamber and your host for this program. Thank you for joining us. This morning we are welcoming our two co-chairs of Healthy Sheboygan County 2020. We have with us Elizabeth Libby-Holte. She's the Public Health Educator from the Sheboygan County Department of Public Health and Kristen Blanchard-Sterns, Chief Executive Officer of Lakeshore Community Health Center. Thanks to both of you for being with us today. Let's start with, you know, we always start with history. I'd like you to tell us a little bit about this Healthy Sheboygan County 2020. And it's a community-based initiative. We know, hoping to make positive changes by 2020. It's getting closer. Can you give us just a bit of history on it and like where all this began, who's involved and some of the previous campaigns you've had, like OK to Ask? Well thanks Betsy for having us. We're excited to be here today and excited to talk about Healthy Sheboygan County 2020, which actually started in 1993 as Healthy Sheboygan County 2000, you know. So we keep adding on those years as we go. And really it started as a public-private partnership, really a coalition to focus on the health needs in our community. And it came out of a community health needs assessment. So every couple of years our health department as well as the hospital systems have to do a community health needs assessment. And they identify those needs that are rising to the top that we might have some concerns about so that we can get those initiatives like OK to Ask and really focus on the needs of our community. With our mission really being that everyone is living better, longer, and that's a really great mission for Sheboygan County. You know we have, it's again a coalition, so there's members that are a part of our coalition from our local businesses against the hospital systems, public health, clinics, non-profit organizations. And then some community at large members that just have, you know, feel that the initiatives that we're working on at this point in time really meet some need with them. They want to be a part of it and join a committee and work towards again creating that healthier community. We have a core backbone though, or as you said, Libby and I are co-leaders of of the Sheboygan County 2020. And so we have a backbone of our leadership council members. These are really the decision makers where the strategic plan kind of comes out of for for the the coalition. And that's St. Nicholas Hospital and Prevea, Aurora Health Care, again, public health and Department of Social Services, UW Extension, United Way, and then Lakeshore Community Health Care. So we're all a part of this and some of us have been here longer than others, but right now that's that's our team and we're really, we're really excited to have that. With that though, we've added on the school districts and now the chamber's been joining us. So we're excited to have everybody along. So you asked about our initiatives and how this works and the OK to Ask campaign. And so this was a really great campaign, again, coming out of our community health needs assessment, in which 64% of elderly people in Sheboygan County said that when they leave the doctor's office, they don't always know what medications they are that they're taking. They're not sure what the doctor really talked about. And so we wanted to form a campaign that made it comfortable for people to ask the questions of their medical providers. And so the campaign was initiated, really related to health literacy. How do we talk to our patients in the medical world and and really getting them comfortable again, that it's OK to ask. So we created buttons for everybody, some material that was handed out and presented. We educated our providers in the community on how do we communicate with with our with our patients and that patient population in a way that they will be able to understand and really focusing on, you know, again, for us to have those positive health outcomes. People actually need to know what the doctors and providers are telling them in the office. So that's that's how we did that with health literacy. So we're we're excited. The campaign is running strong. We I still see buttons everywhere I go. So look on your doctor's lapel and what they're wearing. And you might find you might find that pin that says, OK, to ask on it. That's great. And I think participating in your own health care is key. Oh, and it requires that you have that kind of information. So that's great. So Healthy Sheboygan 2020 is made up of four committees. And these were based on those needs that you've talked about within our community. And they appear to be doing a whole lot. So I would like to take them one at a time here if we can do that briefly for each. And let's start by talking about the Sheboygan County Activity and Nutrition Coalition. You know, who's in the group? What's the focus? Those kinds of things. Sure. So the Activity and Nutrition Coalition, they go by the name of SCAN, which stands for Sheboygan County Activity and Nutrition. And that group is a really dynamic group. And they're looking at a lot of different things, trying to hit a lot of different populations in our community. And their focus is really on decreasing rates of obesity in our community while increasing rates of physical activity and increasing the consumption of both fruit and vegetables. So they're doing that with a bunch of different initiatives, really looking at how do we get into each of those kind of population sectors. One of the things that they do every May is Employee Health and Fitness Day. So that's a big initiative where they encourage employers on that day to have some type of event and some of the employers get really creative with having all of their employees participate in this event. And it's been really, really successful and it keeps growing and growing every year. That happens in May. Also in May, in a different kind of demographic is our Senior Health and Fitness Day. So we have the senior community that gets together and they participate in different physical activity things, resource fairs. Really great information to hit that senior demographic. And then looking at participating with youth, we're looking at things like today actually is National Walk and Bike to School Day, which is a really cool, a really cool event. So trying to get schools to encourage their students safe routes to school so that students are able to walk and bike safely to school. And we're also partnering with our Boys and Girls Club to do some activities there, getting their youth really on board with more consumption of fruits and vegetables and making physical activity a key part of their day. Other things that they're working on is they're partnering right now with the local food banks and they're putting together a food bank toolkit. So this is something that we're going to hopefully handle to the community, to businesses to say, hey, when you donate food to a food drive or to a food bank, instead of just going through your cupboards and getting rid of things that are almost expired, really just to kind of provide guidance to the community on if you wouldn't eat it, don't give it to someone else to eat it. So they're making this awesome toolkit that they're putting together to give to community members to say, hey, here are some things that they're really looking for at food banks and partnering with the food banks to say, hey, what are you in need of this month so that we can tell our community so you can get those great things. So those are just some of the really awesome things that that stand or activity and nutrition coalition is really focused on. Excellent. Now the next committee is addressing many of the issues in our community that people have do not have a high level of comfort talking about. And that's unfortunate. And I think that's what they're working on, which is really important. The mental health and substance abuse committee has several subcommittees addressing stigma, mental health, drug abuse and much more. Just can you tell us a little bit about these groups? Yeah, so again, mental health and substance abuse again rise to the top in our community and I'm sure that for the people watching the program, I'm assuming that they realize that we've had a lot of talk, not just locally, but nationally about our heroin epidemic and different things going on. And so we needed to break out our mental health and substance abuse committee. It's a pretty big, broad area for us to look at. So we did form three subcommittees stigma, which really focuses on just how do we reduce stigma about mental health in our community? How do we get, how do we talk about mental health in a way that's going to be supportive for our employers, our families and friends and really focus on eliminating those barriers for individuals with mental health. Mental health is a community health center executive director. I talk about mental health being a disease just like diabetes. And if we look at it that way, you know, we start to eliminate that stigma, those barriers. We have a lot of individuals in our community that feel uncomfortable accessing services. It's sometimes difficult to access services. And so that group is really focusing on how do people access services? Again, eliminating those barriers, they focus on an annual mental health and AODA resource fair so that we can get that for the community at large so that we can get that information into people's hands that really need it. And again, it's just a great group of people hoping to reduce the stigma, reduce suicide prevention things and increase access to mental health. So that's what the stigma group is working on right now. We call our second group, SBIRT. We love acronyms in the world of health care. And so this just goes right along with it. And what SBIRT is, it's a model. It's screening, brief intervention and referral to treatment. And we're looking at doing this model in both our health systems as well as our school systems. And what it allows us to do is screen, do general screenings for individuals in our community to look at things like depression, anxiety, their substance use, so alcohol use and drug use. And it's really to identify early issues with substance use and really focus on that brief intervention. So not full therapy, but taking some time to talk and educate our community and individually on, hey, maybe you're drinking too much and this is affecting these things, especially when it's related to your health. And so this is a great model for health systems. And so we're looking at really focusing on, again, getting this into our health care systems for our providers to assist them. And then the last piece, again, is that referral to treatment. So those individuals that we identify with true substance use issues that we're able to refer them into treatment program. And so we're working with the community to find where are those treatment programs, who can accept those people and really coordinating the care between what we need for mental health and substance abuse. And then the last one, again, I talked a little bit about heroin in the beginning and the epidemic that's definitely in Schwoig and County. And I'm going to say we call it the heroin subcommittee. My guess is as we we we redo our community health needs assessment that will end up being a substance abuse category because there's a lot of stuff in an acronym, right? All right, but there's a lot of things going on there. But but really what the heroin committee is looking at is how to it breaks it down into five pillars. And I'm going to just look so I don't I don't forget here. So there's five different pillars, five focus areas that they're on. One is prevention and education. The next one is harm reduction, treatment, law enforcement and workplace. And how do all those five pieces affect and and and can also really impact the heroin or substance use in our community? So law enforcement does our take back drug days, right? So which I think one is coming up, Olivia. I know you've got the data on that. Yes. So we are having a take back day for any unused, expired, old medications, whether they're over the counter, liquid, prescription, just to get them out of the homes and dispose of them safely. There's two national take back days, one in spring and one in fall. And our fall take back day is coming up on October 22nd. So on that Saturday from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at five different locations, the Usberg municipal building, the Howard's Grove Village Hall, St. Nicholas Hospital, the generations building in Plymouth, as well as the fire department in Random Lake. You can go and bring any unused, expired medications there, and we will dispose of them safely for free. So that's an awesome opportunity that we have in our community. And just another plug, if you don't want to wait for those to take back days each year and you want to routinely make sure that you're getting rid of those medications, we do have by permanent boxes in our community. So you can go to any of the local police departments in Sheboygan County. And during business hours, they have a drop box right there in their lobby that you're able to go any time during business hours. So again, one of those great initiatives really impacting our community. One of the things we know is that, again, the prescription opioids can lead to heroin when you use. And this is one of those initiatives that hopefully will help us reduce reduce those issues. So we're really excited about that. So those are our three subcommittees really focusing and working hard on, again, impacting mental health and substance use in our community. Well, good for you and good for the entire group for looking at these in such depth, because they are very important to our future and to the future of our children. Healthy Sheboygan County 2020 has also got a leadership council. And I think that council overseas contributes toward the overall goals. What can you tell me about this council and what kinds of things are they supporting, right? So the council, again, is that kind of overseer of the coalition. It's, again, a group of high level individuals really kind of focusing on are we meeting our community health needs impact goals? So we have we have a strategic plan. It's like it's goals that we set. And so we want to make sure that we're we're reaching those goals and we're doing it in a meaningful way. And and we look at our priorities and evaluate our priorities and what we'll be focusing on in the future. So we take that community health needs assessment. We take our community input, do a forum, and then we really create. What is our strategy for the for the future? We we also then help in a number of different ways for the for those committees. We help with the development of our coalition and really getting people on those committees to support, again, those initiatives that we're focused on. We do some we do data collection again outcomes. We want to know how we're impacting what we're doing. Is it really impacting? So we do data collection and analysis. We look at sustainability. Some of these programs need financial support. And so we look at how do we become sustainable? How do we how do we impact our community and how can we get the funding to help support some of these programs? So that's another thing. Again, and and for a lot of the leaders in that group, we're also supporting these programs with financial support or other in kind services. So that's another piece to this. And then the last piece really is that community connection, making sure we can come out to things like this, Betsy, be able to talk about what we're doing at Healthy Showing County, really get the community to understand and understand that we're a resource for the community. We have things on our website. We do stuff that are definitely resources. And that's a great segue to our next question, which is all about the website, which I've visited. It's an excellent website. And I think Libby, you were going to talk a little bit about the website or both of you. Yeah, so our website, if anyone would like to visit, it's www.healthycheboygancounty.org. And on that website, there is a ton of different things that you can explore. So Kristen, multiple times has been talking about that community health needs assessment that we put together as these health systems. And you can actually go on our website and find not only that strategic plan that came out of that that she's been talking about, but you can also get access to all of that data that we put together that shows the priorities that we have. So that's available. There's information on what all of the different committees are doing that we're talking about. You can access any of those meeting minutes. If you want to become involved, which I highly suggest that community members, if they're interested, we're always looking for more individuals to join and give different perspectives to what we're doing. So you can get connected there. Another thing that we have is we have an events resource where you can go and look at all the committee events that are happening in Sheboygan County related to a bunch of different health activities. So not just the ones that we put on ourselves, but community members can actually submit their health related events as well. That's on there. And then every week, we have a weekly press article and those go in the press on Wednesdays, but then they're also archived on our website. So if you miss them or if you just want to view them online, you can view those on our website as well. And then under each committee page, there's a section called resources, which we have local, state, and national resources related to things that we've been talking about today, like activity nutrition, local exercise opportunities related to substance abuse and mental health, different things for both parents, students, employers, all of that on there. So I highly encourage community members to go to our website and just dig around and see what you can find and really use it as a resource. Now that's great. And I also want to say I know a little bit about the Well County initiative. We have a pretty active piece of that at the chamber. And we talk a lot about someplacebetter.org, which is all about recruiting people to come and live and enjoy a life here in Sheboygan County. And of course, quality of life, you can't have it without health. So it's very important to have this Well County designation. What can you tell me about where we are in that process? And what it means? Sure. So the Well County designation, that is something that that SCAN group, or that Sheboygan County Activity Nutrition Group, is really focused on. And essentially, we're partnering with the Wellness Council of America. And we have a local chapter called the Wellness Council of Wisconsin that put together this awesome tried and true designation called being a Well County or a Well Workplace. And essentially, what that means is providing best practice worksite wellness as employers. So what it looks at, it looks at, as an employer, things that you can do to make sure that you provide the best worksite wellness programming for the individuals that work for you. So currently, we have our goal in order to achieve this as a community. It is a lot of 20s. So if you just remember the number 20. In order to achieve this. Like 20, 20. Yeah. Like 20, 20. So in order to achieve this designation, we need, as a community, at least 20 employers that employ at least 20% of our workforce that achieve the Well Workplace designation by 2020. So lots of 20s. So something that's really, really exciting is within the past month, we did get our acceptance of our application to work with the Wellness Council of Wisconsin. And we have exceeded that. And currently, we have 21 employers that employ 21% of our workforce in Sheboygan County that have signed on and really committed to working towards this. So it's a really awesome opportunity. And I think the ultimate hope is that we'll have that trickle down effect. So if you are well at your workplace, you will then be well in your community and you'll bring that wellness home to your family. So it's a really awesome opportunity. And just looking at other communities that have done it, nationwide, there are a few, but Wisconsin is definitely ahead of the game. So it's really cool that we can be on kind of the front end of these initiatives. Other communities in Wisconsin that have done it are La Crosse, Racine, Milwaukee, the Fox Cities, Oshkosh, and Fond du Lac. So we will kind of be joining them. And it's awesome because we have great community partnerships with them as well to figure out what works really well for them so that we can kind of partner with that. So we're in good company and at 21 employers, we're one up. Right, we are one up. And this is where we make our plug for it's never too late. Right, that's what I was gonna say. I'm like, so if you're an employer out there and you wanna get involved, we would love to have you on board. So you can still sign up. This is still something that's available. It is just the beginning. Yeah, this was to get our foot in the door. And so it would be wonderful if we had 50 employers who were on this list. Every employer, that would be awesome if we were able to get there. So where do people find out more about Well County? So if they're looking to find out more and get more information, we have an awesome team that is looking at this and we have a task force together, put together that is looking specifically at how do we support our community in this initiative. And again, going to the website, looking under that scan committee, there's a huge section to read more about the Sheboygan Well County initiative as well as how to get involved, how to connect with that co-chair and get some more information. That's wonderful, great, good for you. So what are some of the future events that any of our viewers might wanna participate in? So just to mention really quick, again, we have that drug take back day on October 22nd that we encourage individuals to connect with, looking more into Well County as an employer to echo some of the things that we've already said. And really looking at the events page on our website to see if there's anything that's even missing or one of the things that Kristin and I were just talking about last week is really making sure that everybody in the county knows that they are more than welcome to join our group. It is not an exclusive group that you have to be invited to join. It is a coalition for the community. And if community members are really interested and wanna be at the table in any capacity that they wish, they are more than welcome to do so. So one of the biggest things we would encourage is just don't be afraid to reach out. If you have any suggestions, comments, questions, just really look at it as an opportunity for you to get involved in what you're doing as a community. And I'm gonna just plug one more small piece which is that we'll be starting our new community health needs assessment in January. So people in the community will be getting phone calls. So pick up your phone, take the survey. We really wanna hear from you as community members as where you feel the health of the community is. So not a political phone call. It is not, we've decided to go after the political season just for that reason. But again, it's an opportunity for you to get involved. Oh, that's great. Yep, so pick up your phones. Please take part in this initiative. And I wanna thank both of you, not only for joining us today, but for your work in this valuable area. I mean, it truly is a wonderful thing that you've taken this on as the co-chairs. And to all the others who are involved in this initiative, we appreciate it very much as a community. So all in every corner of Sherwood County. So thank you all listeners. We will be back shortly with some more chamber events that you need to know about. But thanks so much for joining us. Welcome back to Love Where You Live, production of the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce. I'm Betsy Alice. And I just wanna take a couple of minutes to take a look at some things that are happening in the future with the chamber that you might want to be aware of and participate in. First of all, October is manufacturing month. So if it's October right now, you can go to a website called lakeshoremanufacturingrocks.com. And this is a joint effort between chambers and Economic Development Corporations to put all the events of that month in one place. If you'd like to participate in tours of manufacturers and things like that, this is the place to go. But let me spell it for you. It's LakeshoreMFGrocks.com. So please go to that site, check out what's going on to celebrate manufacturing in our area. One of our major, major contributors to our economic picture. Our trip to Australia and New Zealand is happening March 7th through the 21st in 2017. And we have a couple of seats left. So if you're interested in traveling with a fabulous group of people from our area to New Zealand and Australia in March, please contact Lori at Sheboygan.org. That's L-O-R-I at Sheboygan.org. And maybe you can get in on this fabulous trip. It's also a great value and we'll be visiting the top places in both Australia and New Zealand, at least in my opinion. Before the end of the year, we're going to be making an announcement regarding a fall riverboat excursion in Europe, either on the Danube or the Rhine rivers. I can tell you that this is a fabulous experience. It's a wonderful way to travel. You wake up in an exciting, fun town or city each morning without having packed or unpacked. And you're in a wonderful, luxurious room with great food included. So I strongly encourage you to at least look into this possibility. And we're going to have a great crew of people attending this trip as well. It will be in September of 2017. So just look for that announcement. And if you're interested, in fact, in being on a committee that we used to select that actual trip, just contact lori at Sheboygan.org, L-O-R-I. And we'll make sure that you have a seat at that table when we look at the different proposals for these trips. Also, I want you to know that it is, if you are a chamber member, you work for a chamber member company. There are 970 of them, so it's very possible that you do. You can make nominations for our Chamber Champions Awards. If you go to Sheboygan.org, our website, you'll see indicators there for nominations for the Chamber Champions Award. So hopefully you can participate in that. In the meantime, I wish you well, and I hope to see you again at our next program of Love Where You Live from the Sheboygan County Chamber of Commerce. Thanks for joining us.