Over the last year, LiveWell Northwest Kansas, with support from the Kansas Health Foundation, have worked to gather stories from families in Northwest Kansas about how they perceive the quality of life in their communities. We organized community conversations, sent out surveys, and connected with families to understand their story.
As we began this journey, we realized we weren't reaching everyone needed to identify an alternative solution to engage families. So, the LiveWell organization reached out to the Department of Education and Kansas University's Center for Public Partnerships and Research. Through a sense-making tool they developed to capture stories, we realized Northwest Kansas was very under-represented with "zero" families having the opportunity to tell their story -- and how they perceived the quality of life in their community. In response to this, we worked with KUCPPR to develop a link for us to begin collecting stories.
Once enough stories are collected, we will partner with KUCPPR to host community meetings with residents to better understand the stories and patterns emerging. We are in the process of developing a model to build resident engagement opportunities following this exercise to address health inequities that emerge. Through this, LiveWell hopes this will begin the process of building connections for residents in each county, and lead to community engagement activities that allow residents to feel less isolated, understand the barriers families face to a better degree, and provide resiliency in residents to lead efforts in their communities.
Now, we need your help. It's simple.
The small amount of time you expend filling out this survey will make a HUGE impact for our community's health, well being and happiness.
If you'd like to go above and beyond, here are other ways you can help:
If you are an educator, home visitor, care giver, private health care provider, you can ask your clients and patients to complete the survey
If you are a community leader or an organizational coordinator, have a computer or tablet available at your next board meeting or community event and ask attendees to fill out the survey
If you work in a school setting, send the link home with your students and ask parents for a moment of their time to fill out the survey
Send the link out to your organizational listservs
If you are a part of a public health department or other healthcare provider, give families a chance to complete the survey