Community Health & Well-Being

Area of Focus: Community Health & Well-Being

A culture that prioritizes community health, wellness, and safety with equitable access to a range of high-quality, holistic resources enabling everyone to lead productive, fulfilling lives.

Polk Vision Community Health & Well-Being Initiatives:

• Exploring Behavioral Health
• Food Security Council

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Exploring Behavioral Health

The 2019 Community Health Assessment conducted by the Florida Department of Health in Polk County ranked mental health as the most important health problem facing our community. With a reported rise in the numbers of suicides, hospitalizations, mental disorders, and self-inflicted injuries, the call for collaborative action became clear.  

In response, Polk Vision convened a Team focused on exploring how we might best address the Behavioral Health needs in our community. Following a period of review and consideration, Polk Vision secured the services of a qualified firm, Crescendo Consulting Group, to complete a resource map, gap analysis, and to facilitate the development of a comprehensive strategic plan addressing Behavioral Health service gaps in Polk County.

Project Goals: 

• Improve the quality of life of Polk County residents by addressing the behavioral health needs in the community. 
• Develop a comprehensive behavioral health strategic plan and behavioral health system access and process mapping. Identify system/resources that are valued and working well; help determine how they may work together more efficiently.
• Identify and prioritize system gaps and community needs.
• Engage a broad set of stakeholders; build consensus around results and actions.
• Use resources more efficiently – focusing on a finite set of objectives, establishing a timeline for results, and “working with the willing” to achieve results.

Project Activities and Timeline: 

2021 Behavioral Health Study

Click Here to Access the Study

Behavioral Health Team

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Food Security Council

The Polk County Food Security Council is a collaborative group of cross-sector representatives dedicated to ensuring that everyone in our community has equitable access to sufficient quantities of consistently available healthy, nutritious food. 

Committed to the principles of equity, diversity, and inclusivity, the Council works to achieve its mission through innovative thought leadership and the implementation of strategically aligned hunger relief activities aimed at achieving sustained improvement.   

Did you know?

Now in 2021, we are able to see the longer lasting effects, with the missing meal count increasing by 17% to a state average of 19,808,725 meals per week. Learn more!

Food Insecurity in Polk County

Food insecurity is one way to measure and assess the risk of hunger.

Food insecurity refers to the USDA’s measure of the lack of access, at times, to enough food for an active, healthy life for all household members and the limited or uncertain availability of nutritionally adequate foods. Food-insecure households are not necessarily food insecure all the time.  Food insecurity may reflect a household’s need to make trade-offs between important basic needs, such as housing or medical bills, and purchasing nutritionally adequate foods³.  

 ³ Feeding America

Build Collaboration and Alignment between Programs:
The Council strengthens communication and collaboration between public and private groups working to increase food security in Polk County.

Council Sub Committees:
The development of sub-committees allows the Council as a whole to address issues more completely. Each Council member is asked to serve on one committee. FSC Steering Committee – appointed – Responsible for annual Food Security Summit, Food Security Council charter, quarterly council meetings, GIS map, Tactical Plan development, subcommittee commissioning, monthly reporting to Polk Vision Operating Board.

Agriculture:
The FSC Agriculture Committee researches current local food systems that address food insecurity and catalogues options for residents and community-based food distributors. The committee works to connect local agriculture producers to food insecurity issues that may be addressed within Polk County and neighboring counties.

Disaster Preparedness/Response:
The Disaster Preparedness Committee educates itself on food resources and assets made available during times of disaster, researches and documents successes and challenges of past responses, identifies increased capacity of storage and transportation resources during events, and is available to work closely with Polk Emergency Management in assisting where needed pre- and post-event.

2nd Annual Hunger Action Summit

Food Security Council