Some area residents say they may not spend much time with their neighbors, but they can count on the folks next door, if they need help. The Affordable Care Act requires all hospitals to assess their community’s health needs every 3 years and develop a strategy to meet those needs. The project focuses on everything from medical to economic issues affecting residents’ lives.
A group of organizations that make up the Healthy Blair County Coalition heads up that survey in areas served by UPMC Altoona, Tyrone Hospital and Nason Hospital. For 2015, on the positive side, 70 percent of people who responded, felt their neighbors trust each other and two-thirds agreed their neighbors help each other out.
When asked about the community’s major concerns, residents zeroed in on an issue that’s a problem nationwide.
Coalition Director Coleen Heim says, they could chose from 30 different issues. “We had 70 percent believe that obesity and a lack of a healthy lifestyle was the greatest concern for Blair County certainly followed by alcohol and other drugs,” Heim says. And she adds that poverty, smoking and mental health issues followed right behind.
She says the Healthy Blair County Coalition is working on a variety of concerns identified by the survey, including obesity, lack of exercise, mental health care, a lack of affordable dental services, and poverty.