Ballywho News

Being healthy isn’t just trendy, it’s a way to improve our lives. If we work together as a community, we can improve ourselves, our loved ones and our community in general. We are lucky to have a new resource in Hillsborough County that will help us work toward our goal of being a more healthy community. Hillsborough County Health Department’s Office of Health Equity has combined forces with the Center for Disease Control and Prevention and local leaders from: government, private business as well as community and religious organizations. This group of leaders from all parts of Hillsborough county are working together to create a healthy community by first using a program called CHANGE, to evaluate some of the practices in our community and together we will develop improvements that will benefit all of us.

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CHANGE has been used in other communities and has had great results. It is a tool that we can use to do things like keeping our children at all of our 243 public schools safe from second hand smoke by agreeing on making our schools tobacco free. The truth is, we all need to make some changes to our lifestyles that will make us healthier people. If we work together it will be easier because there is strength in numbers. Before we can make any changes, we need to have a little bit better idea of what we are doing now. We need to decide which of the things that we are already doing are good for us, and which things we should make some changes to in order to better ourselves. This is where the CHANGE tool comes into play. It is an organized plan that we can follow that will help us decide on a plan of action that will make Hillsborough County better for all of us. The CHANGE tool will help us get a clear idea of where we are at and where we need to go. The program is set up so that the people who are responsible for it, work with all sorts of members of the community. There is a plan in place and they begin by dividing the area into five groups.

• Community at Large- These are things that relate to areas all over the community such as shopping centers, grocery stores, parks and other places where people gather for one reason or another. It is a way of making sure that our neighborhoods are set up so that it is easier to be healthy. It includes things like: having public parks and trails set up so that people have places to play and exercise and even working with our grocery stores; asking them to provide us with healthy food options.
• Schools- This includes every school, both public and private, in the area.
• Worksites- Once again we want to include everyone. Anywhere people work; from office buildings to restaurants and even outside work places like construction sites.
• Healthcare- Keeping with the theme of not leaving anyone out, the program includes any place that people can go to for medical care. We mean: hospitals, clinics and any other medical center. It does not matter who owns them or what they specialize in.
• Community Institutions and Organization- This is anyplace that provides a service that is intended to help people. It includes community centers, senior centers, religious institutions and social clubs.

Now that we have divided up the areas to be looked at, it will be easier to see where we are at. The CHANGE tool has a plan that will be used to evaluate these five areas individually. The Hillsborough County Office of Health Equity will work with the community and use the CHANGE tool to make Hillsborough County better and healthier. It will provide us with information that lets us work directly with you, the community, so we can improve our county.