Q&A: Linn County Public Health seeks partners

Pramod Dwivedi, director of Linn County Public Health, has a lot of large-scale projects on his plate. Dwivedi — who has overseen the county health department for four years — is tasked with implementing the Community Health Needs Assessment, which focuses on mental health issues, health promotion and social indicators of health, as well as moving the county department into a new $10 million building.

The county first started discussing Linn County Public Health to a new, larger building back in January. Where are you in that process?

We recently hired OPN Architects to design the building. They held a community meeting, which included neighborhood folks, to present the plan and get feedback.

In general, there's a lot of excitement among folks in the neighborhood.

Is the department excited to get into a bigger space?

Our job is to take care of the health and well-being of Linn County and that's exactly what we're doing. We are mandated to do assessments, policy development and assurance ...

So mandated programs are food safety, air quality and healthy homes (assessments).

But in order to do innovative things, we need additional resources, which we do not have. That's always challenging. ...

One thing we can do is connect with other stakeholders. We cover 220,000 people — we can't do everything. It is vital to have these partnerships (with hospitals and cities, for example).

What are the department's big focuses right now?

We were awarded a $250,000 (State Innovation Model) grant, which we are using to better address tobacco use, obesity, diabetes and social indicators of health. This came right at the heels of our Community Health Improvement Plan. We're partnering with area hospitals and the United Way (of East Central Iowa).

It's all about resources and utilizing existing resources or finding others who may be interested. ...

The implementation of the community health plan is being done in phases. Different groups are meeting regularly to talk about our focus areas — health promotion, mental or behavioral health issues and social indicators of health.

We're looking at public health in a holistic way — so we're looking at employment, poverty, access to health care and nutritional food, parks and recreation, walkability. ...

Again, we need partnerships within the community. The social services are there, but people may not always be using them appropriately. Other emerging issues like gun violence and opioid use, there are a number of things that need to be done and we need community engagement.

Health equity is another thing we need to look at, especially within our African-American population. You look at the data, for instance, and see that infant mortality is much higher in this population.

This can't be addressed by the health department alone, we need aggressive engagement by the entire health system.