Health Dept. launches new online resources to benefit community

In September, we ran a story here in the News Journal announcing two new online resources that would be coming soon courtesy of the Whitley County Health Department. On Tuesday, both of those websites went live.

The first is an online community health assessment, which can be accessed by visiting the URL “dashboards.mysidewalk.com/whitley-county-health-assessment.” I was at the previous Whitley County Board of Health meeting where Public Health Director Marcy Rein offered board members a preview of this site, and now that it has officially launched, I am very much looking forward to sitting down and combing through all of the information that it contains.

There is too much to go over in detail here, but allow me to offer some examples of the different types of stats and data that can be accessed using this new online tool. A brief scan of the site, told me:

• The largest age group in Whitley County is 45-54, with 25-34 being a very close second.

• About 8,000 people, or just over 20 percent, of people in Whitley County have reported living with some type of a disability.

• Whitley County residents in the 25-44 age range are making the most money, with a median household income of $50,461. The 45-64 age range was the second highest-earning group, with a median household income of $45,225.

• Overall, Whitley County’s median household income lags behind the state average. In 2031, the median household income for Kentucky is projected to be at-or-near $73,920 while the county is projected to reach at-or-near $57,653.

• Just above 47 percent of Whitley County’s working-age population (16+) report being employed. This is below the state average, which is 56 percent.

• In terms of education level, high school is by far the highest level completed in Whitley County with 39.2 percent. 18.6 percent have some college education, but no degree. 5.1 percent have obtained an associate’s degree, 9.3 percent have a bachelor’s degree and 10.4 percent have earned a graduate degree. 6.1 percent of people 25-and-over have a less-than-ninth-grade education, while 11.4 percent have some high school education, but no diploma.

I could go on-and-on. We could look at things like Internet access, access to reliable transportation, air quality, housing statistics, access to various health care services, food access, weather hazard statistics, prevalent chronic diseases, and much more. For the sake of time and space availability, however, I will simply encourage you to check the site out for yourselves.

In sum, focus group responses have showed that there are three main public health issues plaguing our local community. Those are: mental health, obesity and substance use/abuse.

To help address the first of those, the Whitley Health Department has also launched an online resource dedicated solely to offering folks guidance when it comes to the various struggles related to mental health.

By visiting “whitley.crediblemind.com” you can check out useful articles, gain access to different community resources, and search for help on specific topics such as anxiety, stress, depression, etc.

One thing that I think is really neat, and that I am hoping to look at more in the coming days, are the many different health assessments that you can take. Some are shorter, some are longer, but there are assessments to help you find out your personality type, evaluate your level of social support, gauge your sleep quality, and more.

Again, there is way too much to go into detail on here, but kudos to the Whitley Health Department for making these new online tools available to the community. I suspect that many people are going to find them useful in the weeks, months and years ahead!