Community asked to help improve Hill County's health

A coalition of health care providers is asking Hill County residents to help prepare a plan to improve the health of county residents.

The groups drafting the Hill County Health Improvement Plan have invited people to a forum Thursday, Aug. 29, from 8:30 a.m. to 3 p.m. to discuss the 2013 Hill County Community Health Needs Assessment Report and help identify the top three priorities in health needs to be addressed in a community health improvement plan.

The forum is sponsored by Northern Montana Health Care, Bullhook Community Health Center and the Hill County Health Department, three agencies required under the Affordable Care Act — the health care reform law passed in 2009 — to periodically perform community health assessments.

People planning to attend the forum are asked to look over the 2013 Hill County Community Health Needs Assessment Report and the Early Childhood Investment Team 2012 Community Needs Assessment available online at the Northern Montana Health Care website at http://www.nmhcare.org/?id=950.

A similar assessment early last decade led to the creation of Bullhook Community Health Center, now erecting a $7.2 million facility across from Havre City Hall to house its medical, dental and mental health services.

A coalition was formed in June 2012, the North Central Montana Healthy Communities, to develop a process to conduct community assessments across the region that meet the requirements of the medical facilities conducting those assessments.

The 2013 assessment in which 50 of 500 families surveyed responded will be discussed at the Aug. 29 forum. The report found several areas of higher concern in Hill County than across north-central Montana or the state as a whole. Some of those were through the responses of the families surveyed and some were identified using data listing health issues in the county.

More of the respondents felt that the overall health of the county was not good, with 30 percent responding that they believed the county was healthy and 42 responding that they did not. Another 22 percent did not respond to that question.

One area of concern noted in the report was that the percentage of children and of adults ages 18 to 64 living under the federal poverty level, along with the percentage using the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, formerly food stamps, was higher than the percentage for the state.

The most serious concern for Hill County residents who participated was alcohol abuse, followed by cancer, illegal drug abuse, weight and obesity, and dental care.

Binge drinking and tobacco use both were listed at a higher rate than for the state overall.

Another significant issue, the report says, is the health of people on the Indian reservations in the area, with the Rocky Boy’s Indian Reservation in Hill County and Chouteau counties, and the Fort Belknap Indian Reservation.

On Montana Indian reservations, which typically have a much higher rate of unemployment and poverty than in the state overall, Native Americans tend to have much higher rates of health problems and mortality. Using the most current data available, the report lists that Montana Native Americans are almost three times as likely as non-Native Americans to die of diabetes, more than twice as likely to die of influenza or pneumonia, and 42 percent more likely to die of cancer.

The report also noted in its section discussing social issues and mental health disorders that several criminal indicators are higher for Hill County. The three-year rate of family offenses, defined as nonviolent acts threatening physical, mental, emotional or economic well being or morals of family members, is more than three times higher than for Montana overall, with the three-year domestic abuse rate — described as someone causing apprehension of or actually causing physical harm — double that of Montana overall. The three-year rate of sex offenses and rape in Hill County is also higher than Montana overall, although the suicide rate is lower in Hill County.

The report says that, after the community forum, the next step will be to develop a community health improvement plan to help guide the Hill County community in addressing the top three health priority needs. That will be done by identifying specific objectives or actions over the next three years and identifying ways to measure those needs to determine the impact of actions the community takes.