Reaching Across the Community to Improve Health: The United Way Example

In many places across the U.S., the United Way Worldwide – one of the national partners working with the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps – is focusing on community impact. Using its mission of improving lives by mobilizing the caring power of communities around the world to advance the common good, United Ways are leveraging their connections, partnerships, and relationships in communities to improve educational, income and health opportunities for everyone.

In the Greater Toledo (Ohio) area, the local United Way rolled out a recent effort to improve graduation rates through a health initiative. The United Way of Greater Toledo recognized that it had to pull in resources from across the community to get the effort going.

“It will take a community coming together to solve the big issues,” Kate Sommerfeld, Area Director of the United Way of Greater Toledo, said in a recent County Health Rankings & Roadmaps webinar .

The effort was sparked in part by the release of the 2010 County Health Rankings, which ranked the local county as 72 out of 88 in the state. “It created a sense of urgency in us to act,” Sommerfeld said. The Rankings became a tool to talk about the role economic and social factors have on health, Sommerfeld added, leading to a drive to improve graduation rates and see the impact that would have on other health factors.

Working across the whole community, the organization mobilized the local health department, medical professionals and the business community to create, fund and roll out full vision screenings for select students in 30 schools. The initial year of the effort served 500 students; it doubled that number for the most recently completed school year. Students receive eye exams and sometimes glasses as a result of the screenings.

“Without question, we accomplished more as a partnership,” Sommerfeld said.

Sommerfeld said the tools and resources of the County Health Rankings & Roadmaps Action Center were key in getting the effort off the ground. “We didn’t want to recreate the wheel,” she said.

For more on how the United Way of Greater Toledo utilizes its connections in the community and lessons learned, watch a recording of the webinar.