The Center for Rural Health Development’s Wild, Wonderful, & Healthy West Virginia Initiative
Without IP3 ASSESS, the Vital Conditions framework, and the built-in benchmarks for comparison to the state and Nation, we wouldn’t be able to leverage the Vital Conditions to improve communities the way we do.” - Sharon Landsdale, President/CEO of the Center for Rural Health Development
The Center for Rural Health Development (Center) works to improve the health of West Virginians and strengthen West Virginia’s healthcare delivery system, especially in rural communities. The Center’s Wild, Wonderful and Healthy West Virginia program leverages IP3 ASSESS to introduce and norm the use of the Vital Conditions for Well-Being framework throughout the state. Exploring data organized by the framework provides more alignment across communities and enables local stakeholders to identify community priorities and areas for investment to address health and economic disparities and advance equitable well-being.
The Center for Rural Health Development’s Wild, Wonderful, Healthy West Virginia (WWHWV) is a program of the Center for Rural Health Development that aims to improve the health and well-being of all West Virginians. West Virginia experiences stark health disparities and WWHWV brings together and supports collaboration among diverse stakeholders needed to address the challenge in communities throughout the state.
Challenge
WWHWV needed a new approach to old problems. Collaboration among stakeholders representing different sectors, like healthcare, public health, education, business, and local government is difficult. Conducting needs assessments and making decisions about collective action became ever more difficult in an increasingly polarized climate. When conducting local assessments, stakeholders and residents were overwhelmed by hundreds of data points—people were unsure of how to prioritize efforts and take action. Additionally, key stakeholders for the Center are members of the business community, many of whom struggled to see their role in the Center’s work through traditional frameworks, like the Social Determinants of Health.
Solution
The Center used IP3 ASSESS to introduce and norm stakeholders, partners, and community members to Vital Conditions for Well-Being. Use of the framework itself simplified multi-sector community engagement, and prioritization of efforts and areas was made easier through the automatic prioritization in the platform’s data output on the frameworks screen (red and green). IP3 worked with the Center to configure shareable data reports highlighting the Vital Conditions, and our data team also sourced additional indicators from state data sources in WV, which was of particular value, since stakeholders were used to viewing data from those state sources.
IP3 ASSESS and the Vital Conditions for Well-Being framework help inspire collective action among collaboratives throughout West Virginia. Now, each sector is able to identify its role in addressing disparities identify tangible steps forward in advancing equitable well-being throughout the state in their community. The framework has proven useful for presenting needs in a holistic, human-centered way. IP3 configured IP3 ASSESS for all counties in WV (and some specific communities) and organized data by frameworks, all of which offered a shift in perspective and a new approach that was needed to unstick and inspire each community.