Promoting a Healthy Idaho Conference Features Public Health Track
 

The Idaho Public Health Association will offer a public health track at the Promoting a Healthy Idaho Conference on September 30, 2011. The conference is a collaboration with the Idaho Nurses Association and Idaho Rural Health Association and will be held at Boise State University.

The keynote speaker is Karen Daley, PhD, MPH, RN, FAAN. She is the president of the American Nurses Association and her topic is "Current Changes and Challenges in Health Care: National Perspectives." Ted Epperly, MD, FAAFP is the plenary speaker. He is past president/current board chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians, CEO of the Family Medicine Residency of Idaho and will speak on "Promoting a Healthy Idaho: Changes and Challenges."

Additional sessions include a presentation on "Healthy People 2020" by Tom Turco, REHS, MS; "Access to Health Care in Idaho" by Denise Chuckovich, executive director of the Idaho Primary Care Association; and "Public Health and Law" and "Public Health Policy and Obesity Prevention" by Jill Krueger, JD, senior attorney with the Public Health Law Network.

For conference information and registration, click here.

The Idaho Public Health Association Annual Meeting and Awards Reception will be held on the Thursday evening before the Friday conference. "Advocacy in Public Health" will be at the Marriott Towne Place Suites from 5:30 to 8:00 pm. The event is free to IPHA members, but registration is required. Hope to see you there!

The County Health Rankings provides a snapshot of a community's health and a starting point for investigating and discussing ways to improve health. Beyond the measures provided in the Snapshot and Additional Measures sections of this website, other community health data are available from national and state organizations. We recommend reviewing the information in your community's snapshot and then identifying key areas where you may wish to look for additional data. (Be sure to check out the Exploring the Data section so that you do not miss any of the information on the site.)

On the County Health Rankings Site:

1. Look at your Health Outcomes ranks and measures:

 How does your county rank and how do your measures compare to your state? To the national benchmarks? Keep in mind that each measure has a confidence interval or error margin surrounding it-if a measure is above the state average AND the state average is beyond the error margin for your county, then further investigation is recommended.

2. Next, look at your four Health Factors ranks:

 Is there one area where the rank is much lower than the others? If so, this may be a good place to start. Keep in mind that each area carries a different weight so before picking a focus area too quickly, consider both your relative rank and the contribution of each factor in our model of population health.

3. If your county has a large enough population, think about other ways to view your data. Most of the data in the County Health Rankings describes your entire adult population. There may be additional data available for you to look at data by age, race/ethnicity, and/or ZIP code or neighborhood.