County Health Officials Release Healthy Montgomery 2023 Goals; First County-Specific Goals Information and Data Available Online

For Immediate Release: Tuesday, September 24, 2019

County health officials today released a plan of action for Montgomery County - Healthy Montgomery 2023 (HM 2023).  The Healthy Montgomery 2023 plan provides six-year objectives for improving the health of all Montgomery County residents, modeling approaches adopted by the federal Healthy People initiative and the Maryland State Health Improvement Process. Healthy Montgomery has monitored population health since its inception in 2009.   

Healthy Montgomery 2023 establishes county-specific benchmarked goals to monitor progress and identify future goals. The goals are evaluated and updated every three years and encourage collaboration across communities and sectors, empower individuals toward making informed health decisions, and measure the impact of prevention activities.  

"Though Montgomery County performs better than state and national averages on most health outcomes, disparities exist among population subgroups on race/ethnicity and geographic areas,” said Dr. Travis Gayles, County health officer and chief of Public Health Services for the County’s Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS).   “It is important to develop and establish community-specific goals for benchmarking and ongoing improvement so that our population health improvement process can be monitored, evaluated, and improved.  Our goal is to evaluate progress made and efforts needed among DHHS’ health programs and partnerships through a data-driven and evidence-based approach that meets the needs and changing population of Montgomery County.”

Highlights of the Healthy Montgomery 2023 plan include:

• Set community-specific goals and measurable objectives to guide evidence-based policies, programs and other actions to improve health and well-being.
• Provide data that is accurate, timely, accessible, and can drive targeted actions to address regions and populations with poor health or at high risk for poor health in the future.
• Foster impact through public and private efforts to improve health and well-being for people of all ages and the communities in which they live.
• Provide tools for the public, programs, policy makers and others to evaluate progress toward improving health and well-being.
• Share and support the implementation of evidence-based programs and policies that are replicable, scalable and sustainable.
• Report progress annually through 2023.
• Stimulate research and innovation toward meeting Healthy Montgomery 2023 goals and highlight critical research, data, and evaluation needs.
• Facilitate development and availability of affordable health promotion, disease prevention, and treatment.

Healthy Montgomery, the County’s Community Health Improvement Process, is an ongoing effort that brings together a broad range of individuals representing County government agencies, the five community hospitals, minority health programs/initiatives, advocacy groups, academic institutions, community-based service providers and the health insurance community to develop action plans to improve the health and well-being of all Montgomery County residents, especially groups most at risk for poor health.  The website www.healthymontgomery.org is a one-stop online source for population-based data and information about community health and the social and environmental determinants of health. The website provides data and information on more than 90 topics related to the health and well- being of the community and its residents and assists County policy makers and partners in identifying key priority areas and helps guide decisions about strategies to meet various needs.

For more information, contact Chunfu Liu at [email protected].

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Media Contact:  Mary Anderson, 240-777-6534

 

 

Release ID: 19-315
Media Contact: Mary Anderson 240-777-6534