Fairmont State rolling out community health needs assessment this week
Mar. 6—FAIRMONT — Fairmont State is using a routine health assessment survey to glean insight about the community's overall health picture.
"It's to gain information for stakeholders of a health care organization to determine what they need to do and what steps to implement for the community to remain a healthy community," Autumn Durr, one of the graduate students conducting the survey, said. "Some of the questions, like is it a stable place to raise a family? Everybody wants that. Do they have that, and if they don't, what processes are needed to create that?"
Durr, 24, is one of six graduate students assisting Professor Raymond Alvarez, Professor Billy Stone and Eric Pulice in conducting the study. Durr is a healthcare management graduate student.
The survey is one done routinely by the MVA Clinic in Fairmont, and is required by the Internal Revenue Service to maintain their nonprofit status. Among the requirements for the study are an assessment of medically underserved populations within a community, as well as unmet need for health services in areas like primary care, internal medicine, pediatrics or obstetrics and gynecology.
The survey provides an opportunity to not just assess the health needs of the community, but also give Fairmont State students practical experience conducting a real world survey that will have an impact.
"While completing the survey is a federal requirement and would be done either way, why not do it in a way that would actually permit us to glean insight and actually help communities," Claire Leutz, healthcare management graduate student, said. "And, actually make a statistical journey of it. Actually use that quantified data to draw conclusions as to what would better serve the community instead of just completing it for compliance."
Leutz, 28, said one of the areas they are eager to see information on is the rise of telehealth, and its impact on the community. She said a lot has changed with technology evolving exponentially, and the pandemic turbocharged the rise in telehealth services.
The students will compare the results from the 2013 Community Health Needs Assessment, to see what trends have developed. They've also streamlined the assessment, rolling certain categories into one, since Fairmont has a small population. This makes it possible to have a single category function as a wide umbrella for certain data collection while not losing important details in their study.
Once collected, the data will be piped to a tool developed by the project management side of the team. Melania Pellegrino, Angela Villari, Emanuele Muraca and Annalisa Di Marzo developed the tool for use by Durr and Leutz.
"This allows us to be sure that the project we are developing is working and we are controlling every single phase step by step," Pellegrino, 23, said. Her background is in engineering. "So, we can just find out if some tasks are in delay or not. So we are structuring the best as we can."
What makes the project management students significant as well is that they are all transfer students from Italy. One common theme among the four was the lack of practical education in Italy. Although their schooling provided a lot of excellent theoretical information, they haven't had a chance to turn theory into practice until now. The exchange program gives them a chance to work on a real project and develop practical skills they can take back to Italy.
The survey will run through March 30. The team will collect data through physical and digital copies of the survey. Undergraduate students will be used to collect data at community locations like grocery stores. After data collection, the students will process the data for about a month before presenting their findings to MVA Clinic's Board of Directors.
Also, the survey is completely anonymous and confidential. The questions are structured in a way to ensure no personal information is collected. The team is developing a QR code, which will be rolled out on Thursday, March 7. The code will allow assessment participants to scan, download the survey and move on.
The international students are eager to see how their tool will perform in the field under actual real world conditions.
"It's very big challenge for us because we don't do practical, practical things," Emanuele Muraca, 23, said. "So it's very, very beautiful thing, for us to do this stuff."
Reach Esteban at efernandez@timeswv.com
