Orange City, Iowa — Last week we told you that the Sioux County public health department, known as Community Health Partners, or “CHP” has been awarded a grant to implement the State Innovation Model or “SIM” initiative in Sioux County. CHP is one of only 6 grant recipients state-wide.
We had a chance to talk with Angela Kroeze Visser about the grant. She says that through the SIM program CHP will collaborate over the next 3 years with the 4 hospitals in the county, as well as community partners and community members, to integrate public health and primary medical care to “transform the health care delivery system, with the goal of a healthier population and decreased health care costs.” She says the focus will be on prevention.
She tells us what that coalition will be doing.
She says they hope to have a community care coordinator at each of the hospitals in the county and at the Community Health Partners office. She says there is already a community care coordinator at Promise Community Health Center in Sioux Center. She says the idea there is for a doctor or other provider to refer patients in need of help in the grant’s focus areas of obesity, tobacco use and chronic diseases like diabetes to the community care coordinator, who can help the patient find available resources.
Kroeze Visser says the SIM grant will allow CHP and its partners to continue our efforts to make Sioux County a healthy place for all to live, work, play and learn.
She says the $179,000 grant from the Iowa Department of Public Health will include staffing all of the positions around the county.
State officials expect future funding from these grants will reach all counties in the state.
