Summit County Health Department employees are finalizing data from the county’s first community health assessment in years, but preliminary information indicates that lack of health insurance, language barriers and climate change are some takeaways for the county.
“It’s a foundational tool. It’s really one of those public health 101 items,” said Summit County Epidemiologist Nancy Porter about the community health assessment. “It helps us focus on health priorities and identify and plan different interventions that we can use to be more efficient with our time and our money and make the most out of everything.”
Porter, who led the initiative, presented a preliminary analysis to the Summit County Board of Health on Monday. However, the analysis only included data from electronic responses — approximately 1,100 of the 1,700 surveys that the Health Department collected. As she analyzes paper responses, the assessment’s key takeaways could shift in the coming months, Porter said.
“We made sure that it was in multiple languages and formats,” Porter explained. “We had it available in Spanish and English. It was available electronically, on paper and, not only on paper, but we had large print ones available and small print, making sure we hit everything we could.”
The 62-question survey opened in May and closed in November. All residents were welcome to respond to the survey, but Porter said marketing and outreach efforts targeted underserved populations within the county, such as the Latino community and East Side residents.
“One of the goals of this key health assessment was to really make sure that we were using a health equity focus, that we were identifying and addressing health disparities and providing a more comprehensive view of our community,” Porter said.
According to Porter, 76% of respondents to the electronic survey were white, 16% were Hispanic, and 8% were “other.” Respondents were also well educated, with 77% holding at least a college degree. Roughly 40% had a household income of $100,000 or more.
“We are close to our county demographics with this,” Porter said. “We have a higher rate of Hispanic and Latino respondents than we do in the county, which is great. We really wanted to try to oversample so that we have that statistical power to stratify our results and be able to look at things by race and ethnicity.”
Nearly a quarter of respondents said that they spoke a language other than English at home, indicating a need for interpretation and translation services within the county, Porter said.
Most of those non-English speakers, however, reported little difficulty with translation services in health-care settings and instead cited recreation and public transportation as most inaccessible.
“That’s actionable,” Porter told the board. “These are things that we can help with. Our town is focused on recreation, and we have a handful of people who are really struggling to get interpretation and translation services to participate in those activities.”
The preliminary data also showed that most residents are seeking primary health-care services in Summit County rather than driving to the Salt Lake area. One concerning piece of information, though, was that about 17% of respondents said they did not have health insurance, either because it’s not offered by their employer or because it’s too expensive.
“There was a very low percentage of these people that didn’t have insurance because they were unemployed,” Porter said. “A lot of this is the affordability factor, which is something to think about.”
The survey also asked about climate change. Approximately 60% of electronic respondents said that they were very concerned about climate change, while 12% said that they weren’t concerned about it at all.
“White individuals are almost two times more likely to report being very concerned about climate change,” Porter said. “Those with a college degree are more likely to be concerned about climate change than those with a high school degree or less.”
Specifically, respondents with a college degree were three times more likely to be concerned about climate change. Respondents who lived in Park City were also three times more likely to be concerned than residents of the East Side, according to Porter.
“Something to think about, too, is within these results, 66% are from Park City,” Porter clarified. “Some of these things might change.”
Residents were concerned about senior care within the community, as well as affordable housing, but mentioned outdoor recreation, low crime rates and child-friendly environments as benefits for Summit County families.
Porter will have her final preliminary report finished in March. In April, the Board of Health will be asked to adopt the community health assessment as “the guiding assessment for the department moving forward,” according to Summit County Health Director Phil Bondurant. From there, the Health Department will begin to use the data to guide its programs and marketing efforts.
“We’ve been innovative. We’ve been the tip of the spear in public health in the state asking some of the questions that we’ve asked,” Bondurant said. “We’ve even had other health departments that saw what we were doing with our community health assessment stop theirs and start over to include some of the questions that Nancy created. Major kudos. Thank you, Nancy, for driving this process, getting us this data. I am really excited for what’s going to come from this. I’m proud of the product.”