BonnerSprings.com

The Unified Government Public Health Department recently received a $100,000 grant to fund the development of a national learning laboratory within the Healthy Communities Wyandotte organization.

The project, sponsored by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, provides an urban counterpart to the country’s other learning lab, a six-county rural initiative in central Michigan. Both communities will attempt to determine the best strategies for using the County Health Rankings to reverse poor health trends.

Caitlin McMurtry, a former analyst at the Kansas Health Institute, has been named as the learning lab’s full-time program coordinator.

Healthy Communities Wyandotte is the product of Mayor Joe Reardon’s efforts to improve the county’s health rankings. Since 2009, Wyandotte County has placed among the least healthy counties in Kansas. This year, those rankings remain low, as Wyandotte came in 97th out of 100 for health outcomes and dead last for health factors such as social and economic conditions, the physical environment and health behaviors.

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