The West Piedmont Health District was honored with a Model Practice Award at the 2017 Annual Conference of the National Association of County and City Health Officials (NACCHO).
The award celebrates local health departments for developing programs that demonstrate exemplary and replicable best practices in response to a critical local public health need. Fight the Bite: Zika Door Hanger Canvassing was the district’s community educational program that received NACCHO’s prestigious Model Practice Award.
Fight the Bite: Zika Door Hanger Canvassing was undertaken by the Henry-Martinsville Health Department, the City of Martinsville Police Department, and the Near Southwest Medical Reserve Corps (NSMRC). To educate City of Martinsville residents on mosquito safety and Zika with a personal touch, MRC volunteers and health department staff rode with Neighborhood Resource Officers in high-risk neighborhoods as part of their regular beats throughout mosquito season.
“We are proud to receive NACCHO’s Model Practice Award,” said West Piedmont Health District Director Dr. Jody Hershey. “The award is evidence of our commitment to developing successful community partnerships, as well as responsive and innovative public health programs that protect and improve the health of local residents.”
“The Martinsville Police Department was pleased to join with the West Piedmont Health District as a coalition partner to bring this valuable information to our citizens,” stated City of Martinsville Chief of Police Eddie Cassady. “This partnership is just the beginning of a long lasting coalition that will serve the citizens of Martinsville/Henry County for many years.”
Since 2003, NACCHO’s Model Practice Awards have honored programs, resources, and tools that demonstrate how local health departments and their community partners can effectively collaborate to address local public health challenges. Each innovative project receiving the Model Practice Award was peer-reviewed and selected from a competitive group of applicants across the nation.
“This award puts West Piedmont Health District in special company with a select group of health departments that exemplify a forward-thinking, proactive approach toward protecting and promoting the health of communities nationwide,” said NACCHO Interim Executive Director and Chief of Government Affairs Laura Hanen, MPP.
Fight the Bite: Zika Door Hanger Canvassing is now part of an online, searchable database of successful public health practices in areas that range from immunization and maternal and child health, to infectious diseases and emergency preparedness.
The NACCHO Model Practice database allows local health departments, public health partners, and other important stakeholders to learn about the good work being done by local health departments across the country. The database also provides users an opportunity to learn from best practices and what resources are needed to implement comparable programs in other jurisdictions that produce results.
Read more about these award-winning programs at:
https://application.naccho.org/Public/Applications/Search.
West Piedmont Health District (WPHD) is one of the Virginia Department of Health’s 35 health districts and consists of four localities: Franklin, Henry, and Patrick counties and the City of Martinsville.
From Smith Mountain Lake to Appalachia, WPHD covers 1,568 square miles of land and 25 square miles of water in Southwest-Central Virginia. The mission of WPHD is to achieve and maintain optimum personal and community health through promotion of health, prevention of disease, and protection of the environment. For more information, visit www.vdh.virginia.gov/lhd/westpied/.
