healthprograms

Community health programs are expanding access to care

Initiatives spearheaded by Parkland Health and a coalition of local partners are chipping away at the health disparities in Dallas County, but there’s still a long way to go until health care access becomes more equitable, public health experts say.
Parkland, the county’s public hospital system, and Dallas County Health and Human Services presented to the county’s commissioners on Tuesday their evaluation of nine initiatives used to respond to the results of the 2019 Community Health Needs Assessment.
County health experts conduct the CHNA to identify which people are most at-risk because of medically-underserved regions of the county and existing health disparities. In 2019, the last published survey, the county identified nine major health program targets, including health care access, behavioral health, diabetes, maternal and child health and pediatric asthma.
Many of the programs met the goals set out by the CHNA Implementation Plan or made positive progress in the last three years, even as the county navigated the COVID-19 pandemic. The numbers from 2022 included only data from the start of the year through October.
“To have a county as large as Dallas make the shift and really see improvements in some of these ZIP codes, it will take years for us to see them. But, it is really nice for those that we are currently touching that we can see our metrics move in the right direction,” said Jessica Hernandez, vice president for community integrated health at Parkland.

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