Boone County creates Boone County Access to Care Team with support from P3RC Leadership for Change Learning Institute
Boone County Health Department (BCHD), which represents a rural county in Illinois, identified major gaps in access to care, transportation, and the proportion of healthcare information provided in patient’s primary language while conducting their 2018 community health assessment, or IPLAN. They also identified behavioral health, maternal and child health, and chronic disease as important health priorities in their county. To address these issues, the BCHD IPLAN includes goals and objectives that promote health equity, access to care, and utilizes trauma informed approaches.
A current version of the BHCD IPLAN can be accessed here.
With support from the UIC P3RC Leadership for Change Learning Institute, Boone County was able to create the Boone County Access to Care Team. The team is comprised of community leaders from the recreation, health, business, faith, and education sectors. The team focused on implementing a policy, systems, and environmental change to address both access to care and chronic disease by leveraging a partnered healthcare organization’s mobile medical van that served a neighboring county. Throughout the Leadership Institute, the Boone County Access to Care Team worked to add Boone County locations to the mobile unit’s regular. Once launched in Boone County, the mobile van will focus on diabetes prevention and management initiatives and will be parked at locations such as food pantries and transition homes to target some of Boone County’s most vulnerable and underserved populations.