SALISBURY — Healthy Rowan continues to remain strong as was evidenced by the group of coalition members that came together for their monthly meeting.

More than 30 individuals gathered at St. John’s Lutheran Church on Feb. 27, which according to Courtney Meece, executive director of Healthy Rowan, is representative of what each month looks like “because they’re interested in knowing what we’re doing, who we’re serving, and we’re interested in knowing what they’re doing and who they’re serving as well.”

The coalition has been able to accomplish much over the years and a fact to be celebrated, Meece noted, as she said they have been able to do some wonderful things in the last seven years while they have been funded through the Duke Endowment’s Healthy People, Healthy Carolinas initiative program.

Healthy Rowan was started by a group of women who got together, shared Mayor Karen Alexander, who, along with Dari Caldwell, Krista Wooley, Alyssa Harris, Karen South Jones, Jessica Ijames and Judy Klusman, made up that group of founding members.  

The idea was that this group “would represent both the governmental institutions, the church institutions and the collaborative of the community, all of the health people that were concerned with reaching our goals in terms of mental health, substance abuse mitigation and also quality lifestyles,” Alexander said, which are the three main goals of Healthy Rowan.

The organization was reconstructed and kept the same name and has now been going on seven years, and “we are just very excited about what Healthy Rowan has accomplished,” she noted.

Meece said that the Duke Endowment funding had been received in three different waves — years 1-3, after which Harris applied for the second round of funding in 2019, which was received in 2020, right at the beginning of COVID, Meece added, thus accounting for three more years of funding.

Meece applied for the seventh year of funding when she came on board in 2021, with the endowment wanting the organization to “focus on creating a sustainability plan so when the funding ends what happens, because we don’t want Healthy Rowan to end,” and have therefore, this last year, been focusing on that question of when the money ends, does the work end? No, it doesn’t,” she stressed, pointing to the fact that “Healthy Rowan has kind of been adopted by the Health Department. We’re one in the same, but we are very different,” Meece said. “So we are a coalition that operates out of the health department, and we have really worked with our community partners.”

She continued by telling how the school system has adopted the Daily Mile program where the teachers have their students go and walk a mile, which helps in terms of classroom management and getting exercise.

“They’ve adopted that as one of the programs. So that’s something that’s going to be sustainable through the schools” and, she noted the Main Street Marketplace has taken on a food pharmacy program that they will be running.

Another area the group has focused on was the mental aspect, she said, “especially after COVID, mental health became really prevalent, even more prevalent than it already was, so we wanted to create a program that addressed physical activity and that mental health and social connectivity aspect.”

Therefore, the Rowan Moves physical activity tracker was created, and in the two years since it was started, they have noticed a decrease in inactivity. Participants can go online and create an account, as they “want to encourage our neighbors to continue being physically active,” Meece said.

Noting that not everyone runs, including herself, Meece said, you can go into the account, for example, if you swim an hour and it will convert it to steps.

“It kind of puts everyone on the same playing field because we know not everyone can go out and walk or run, especially individuals who are in wheelchairs or have various different disabilities. So we wanted to make sure it was a program that every one of our Rowan County citizens could participate in.”

They have been able to work with community partners like the city of Salisbury, YMCA and Parks and Recreation Department to promote this particular program, and it is something the health department has taken on and will therefore be sustainable.

And the Adventure Rowan program, which has been a very successful program, has been adopted by another community agency. So that program will continue as well.

When speaking of the funding and the coalition through the years, Meece shared that it has been like “the football has been carried from one person to the next, but it’s held strong. Involvement has not decreased, and one of the things we are very proud of is we have been a really great coalition through the Duke Endowment’s eyes.”

Therefore, the local coalition was chosen to participate in the Endowment’s centennial video as they wanted “to focus on what their investments have been doing in the community, and so we were selected to be one of those,” she said.

Other programs have included one through the Parks and Recreation Department teaching participants who may be facing some obesity issues how to cook, greenways marked to help track walking distances and one called Move With the Mayor promoting moving partnering with some dance groups, like Queens and King, Alexander noted.

“It’s just been really interesting and heartening to see our community can come together, and we’ve aligned it now with our overall county goals, which is mental health, quality of life and substance use prevention,” she said.

Several of the coalition members expressed how Healthy Rowan has been a help to their particular organizations.

Jones’ organization is Youth Services Bureau, which has a substance abuse coalition Wise Up Rowan (YSUP Rowan). This group, she noted, is funded through the federal government, through a drug-free community support program.

She noted that being a part of Healthy Rowan has helped them be able to “find other organizations that either have similar missions or are also working with substance abuse or in mental health that we can join with, we can collaborate with to make our efforts go even further. So it’s kind of the loaves and fishes type of thing that we’re all able to join together and accomplish more than we would individually.”

Those wishing to learn more about YSUP Rowan can visit their website at ysuprowan.org.

Carol Ann Houpe, director of student and family health for the Rowan-Salisbury school system, shared that being a part of this organization has helped them in multiple ways.

One of those is the collaborative needs assessment that it done every couple of years.

“It helps us to see what are the needs of our community and how the school system might be able to address that, and secondly it helps us in that we have all of our community partners meeting at the same place and so, if we are working on a project and a community partner is working on a project, we can see how we can do all that together.”

Houpe concluded by telling that all of the family and students have needs and they as a school system can’t meet them all. 

“We have to have all of our community partners to do that,” she said.

Current Healthy Rowan board members include some from the initial group, Jones, Alexander and Harris, joined by Houpe, Kristen Trexler, Zack Shepherd, Brittney Payne and Jenny Lee.

The monthly meetings provide programming that follows their main goals, along with a time for the coalition members to share what is happening in the various organizations.

During the February meeting, Meece provided information about Public Health Week, which will be April 1-7, encouraging each person to share events they have planned during that week, as she noted they all address public health in some fashion.

Meece reminded the group that February was Heart Health Month and shared various heart health tips and stressed that prevention is the key. She told them it is important to get health screenings and particularly encouraged the women there to focus on their cardiovascular health “because women a lot of times, don’t go out and get our preventative screenings, always something gets pushed to the back.”

CDC Public Health Associate Alexa Rives CHES spoke on communicable diseases pointing out the number of cases of multiple diseases during a five-year span in Rowan County along with sharing various outreach programs and a goal of developing a youth advisory council.

The final presentation was about Medicaid expansion, with two presenters, Ijames with Novant Health and Shepherd with Vaya Health.

During her presentation, Ijames shared that Medicaid expansion was passed by Gov. Cooper at the end of last year, and “we are really excited about this. I think it’s good for people. It’s also good for the healthcare system and public health.”

Some of the topics covered were an explanation of what Medicaid is, the ages that are eligible, which is 19-64, the services covered, who qualifies and how to apply.

It was shared that statewide, by Feb. 1, more than 346,000 North Carolinians had enrolled for Medicaid, and as for Rowan County, enrollment had been around 5,200 by the beginning of the month, with the largest group to enroll in the expansion being the 19-29 demographic, predominantly females but some males as well.

Coalition member were given time to share any upcoming events some of which include:

The Rowan County United Way will be offering a Reaching Into the Light program providing free grief support and education free to Rowan County residents, age 18 and older, who have been impacted by suicide. It will be led by a licensed clinician. Sign up online at bit.ly/reaching-into-the-light. Details regarding the first session will be announced at a later date.

The City of Salisbury’s Planning Department is working on an improvement plan for the South Main Street area and will have a Community Walk on March 16 with residents and business owners invited to offer feedback.

Rowan County Public Health and the City of Salisbury have joined forces to launch a campaign promoting the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline’s new three-digit number, 988. The initiative to place magnets with this number on city police cars and fire trucks to raise awareness of mental health services was shared.

Project Life Rowan is partnering with Livingstone College and invites all the churches to come together to pray to stop human trafficking. Different pastors will be there to lead in prayer. It will be held April 27 from 10 a.m. to noon in the college auditorium.

Wellcare will be sponsoring a Community Resource Fair March 30 at Bell Tower Green from noon to 4 p.m. and a mobile fair May 11 first at Brenner Crossing from 9-11 a.m. and secondly at Clancy Hills from 1-3 p.m.

As for their future, Meece noted they are always looking for new organizations and programs to join the group and they will continue through the health department and will always look for new funding.

“We are going to be fine, we will carry on, but you know there is always funding out there that allows you to do some extra special things,” she shared. “But right now we are being sustained, and it’s great.”

Pointing out the success of the programs, Meece said they want to make sure they “are essentially being adopted by organizations that are going to love them and care for them kind of just like children and that are going to do them justice.”

She concluded by sharing how special Rowan County is and while it is a large county, “we have such a good small town feel because everybody works together and everybody knows everyone. Everyone’s very accessible.”