The Trenton Times published the following article on July 18, 2013. To read the full article, click here.

Trenton Health Team identifies five most important health concerns of city residents

By Jenna Pizzi/The Times of Trenton 
on July 18, 2013 at 8:27 PM, updated July 18, 2013 at 8:36 PM

TRENTON — After years of interviews and public forums, a study has identified the five most important health concerns of city residents: obesity, substance abuse, safety from crime, chronic disease and health literacy, according to a report released yesterday.

The report was conducted by the Trenton Health Team, an organization with representatives from Capital Health, St. Francis Medical Center, the city’s health department, and the Henry J. Austin Health Center.

Representatives for the health team conducted the Community Health Needs Assessment, a requirement to be completed by hospitals and health organizations every three years.

This is the first time that the organizations that make up the health team choose to conduct the assessment together and file one report, which yielded a “richer” and more “qualitative” report, said Dr. Ruth Perry, the executive director of the Trenton Health Team.

“This was the first time that we put all the documents together, got them side by side with each other,” said Christie Stephenson, vice president for strategic and clinical transformation at St. Francis Medical Center.

Stephenson said this year’s needs assessment was conducted similarly to those that St. Francis has done in the past — by interviewing community groups around their target area — but this year, she said they were able to interview many, many more people, and in turn, the results differed slightly.

“As a physician, I never would have said safety and crime was a health issue,” said Dr. Robert Reemstein, the vice president for accountable care at Capital Health. “I would have just said it is kind of a byproduct of poverty or location. It is a health determinant in the city.”

All of the five health concerns are interconnected, Perry said.

Safety and crime impact obesity because people do not feel safe to go out and exercise, people do not feel safe to have their children go out and play

“The priorities listed are not just separate and siloed but they are integrated,” Perry said. “Safety and crime is not just a public health initiative, but safety and crime impact obesity because people do not feel safe to go out and exercise, people do not feel safe to have their children go out and play.”

The group started talking to residents for this report two years ago. They set up meetings with large community groups in churches, senior centers and housing developments to discuss what the residents felt were the areas of concern as far as health in Trenton.

“(The report) really represents the need expressed by the people in the city,” said James Brownlee, the city director of health and human services.

The team spoke to residents ages 18 to 85 in groups ranging from as few as two to as large as 60. They also conducted 300 one-on-one interviews with residents.

“Their very personal input provided a huge perspective that would not necessarily be evident,” Perry said. “That level of granularity and specificity coming up from the people helps better formulate what our community health improvement plan should be.”

Usually, health-care or public-health organizations would look at the statistics that detail the number of people in the area suffering with high blood pressure or diabetes, but this approach, Perry said, allows the team, when moving forward and implementing a Community Health Improvement Plan, to better allocate resources where they know residents need them.

Instead of using hospital resources to do free screenings and have a doctor attend health fairs, the hospitals could focus their efforts to teach residents who said they were not properly educated on how to control their diabetes and might not know what to do when their blood sugar tests come up too high or too low.

To come up with these initiatives, the team formed groups focused on each of the five health concerns that were identified in the report and members of those groups will propose initiatives for the hospitals to fund or provide resources for.

Contact Jenna Pizzi at jpizzi@njtimes.com or (609) 989-5717.