The Barren River District Health Department is hoping the community will help them report on the greatest health needs in our area, and as a result work to improve local health care services and policies, by completing a Community-Wide Survey that’s being distributed by members of the Barren River Community Health Planning Council.

Kathy Thweatt, Health Educator III for the health department, said the report based on the survey could greatly help our area receive services that will improve health care.

“Two programs in Logan County that are direct results from the last community survey (2007) are the permanent medication disposal and the Mobile Dental Unit,” she said. „”We received a grant from Butler-Logan-Simpson KY-ASAP (Agency for Substance Abuse Prevention) to purchase disposal bins for the police station and sheriff’s office in each county. Logan County and Russellville were the first to install their bins, which made us the first permanent medication disposal site in the state of Kentucky.”

In addition, Thweatt said, “the Mobile Dental Unit was funded by a grant from the Foundation for a Healthy Kentucky. The dental unit has provided services for students in every school in Russellville and Logan County. They have also provided services at the Concerned Citizens building. The goal of the dental unit is to identify those students who do not have a dental home and refer them to a local dentist.”

Thweatt also said “Logan County received a grant from the state dental office to establish an oral health coalition,” which “serves as the state model for oral health coalitions.”

This year‚s Barren River Community Health Planning Council Community-Wide Survey is being distributed to school children, who are being asked to take it home for their parents to complete, and to various organizations and individuals.

The council conducting the survey distribution is made up “of more than 50 local leaders from the 10-county region,” according to a statement on the survey. The council values the privacy of those who complete the survey and will not share individual answers, the survey states.

The top health issues addressed on the survey are obesity, diabetes, lung cancer, heart disease and drug abuse and addiction. Those issues were garnered through the use of local data.

If you have not been given or picked up a hard copy of the survey and would like to complete it, you can find it online at http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/brcommunitysurvey.

The completed survey report will be available for the public to view in April at www.barrenriverhealth.org, according to information on the survey.