Grays Harbor County Public Health is finalizing a contract with Rural Health Innovations (RHI) to perform a Community Health Assessment and develop a Community Health Improvement Plan.

The plan will aid in the strategic planning and development of public health programs and services aimed at improving the health of Grays Harbor County communities. This will be the first such community health assessment for the region in the post-COVID-19 era and the first since July of 2022.

“I wanted to have a clean, fresh start in ‘25 to see where we are now post-COVID, in terms of health and health improvement,” said Mike McNickle, director of Grays Harbor County Public Health. “For the first time we’re partnering with Harbor Regional (Health), the Community Wellness Center and with Summit Pacific. This will be a real community health assessment that’s never been tried in any other counties before. We’re going to make a product that meets all of our needs.”

McNickle said the assessment will include factors that drive poor health and that the community will be encouraged to participate.

“We’re going to spend a lot of time asking the community what they think. A survey will come out, we’re going to do some focus groups. We’ll want the community to participate,” McNickle said. “It was hard to do last time because we couldn’t have meetings, everything was online. Now we’re going to do a fresh start. We’ll put together a report and develop our community health improvement plan.”

McNickle said that the consortium of partners will compare data from the last assessment but will also take advantage of fresh data.

“I really want to avoid looking at what was happening during COVID. There’s going to be a marked change in everything,” McNickle said. “We knew back then COVID was the driving issue, so mental health was huge, substance use. … Have we seen any improvement in those? We’ll probably do a comparison, but we want to drive it with the latest data we can get our hands on.”

In recent years, new medications and treatments have hit the market, especially when it comes to obesity and diabetes.

“Diabetes is something that has crept up on us in the last 30 years. It took a long time to get here and now we’ve got to deal with it,” McNickle said. “(Weight loss drugs are) one answer, diabetes awareness, exercise, better health, all the things people should be doing. It’s just one of those things we need to keep working on. It’ll be interesting to see the impact of Ozempic and its use.”

According to McNickle, the goal is to help create better health outcomes for the residents of Grays Harbor County, but it’s ultimately up to the individual to make healthy choices.

“How do you motivate the masses to pick up good habits? In my experience, it takes a health crisis to want to make a change,” McNickle said. “For example, our Mobile Health Van goes out and we take our A1C which is the gold standard for testing for diabetes. They tell you if you’re at risk, or you’re already diabetic, or you’re good to go. You need to know where you’re at and then you need to make a decision. Our job is to say here’s the two pathways, we can’t make you do anything, only you can make change. That’s where Public Health comes in. We provide the data and we encourage.”

Seven organizations in all submitted proposals. RHI’s bid of $37,217 beat out The Center for Social Creativity, Do Tank Do, Health Tech, Horne LLC, KSA and Rede Group. Money from Washington Department of Health Foundational Public Health Services funds will pay for the project.

According to its official website, “Rural Health Innovations, LLC (RHI), founded in 2005 as the for-profit, consulting arm of the National Rural Health Resource Center, offers population health and strategic planning services to rural hospitals and clinics, and rural health networks — with a focus on providing training and hands-on support that’s designed to enhance the quality and performance of healthcare organizations, and improve the health of their communities.

“RHI’s team supports rural organizations across the country in the development of community health needs assessments and community health implementation plans, the formation and maintenance of rural health networks, the design and execution of population health-related projects, and long-term, organizational strategic planning.”