Written by: Scott Hoke, Samantha Shaak, Hannah Clark, Hasshan Batts Surveys can help us understand a lot about our community. From capturing community concerns about changes in our neighborhoods to identifying future opportunities, recent survey efforts by organizations across Allentown … Continued
Written by: Ronald C. Dendas, MS, Samantha A. Shaak, PhD , Sherri Brokopp Binder, PhD, Carmen Guzman-McLaughlin, MPH Since 2010, the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation have released the County Health Rankings and … Continued
American Foundation for Suicide Prevention Established in 1987, the American Foundation for Suicide Prevention (AFSP) is a voluntary health organization that gives those affected by suicide a nationwide community empowered by research, education and advocacy to take action against this … Continued
Conducted by The Lehigh County Suicide Prevention Task Force Introduction Periodically, high profile tragic events bring the issue of suicide into the national spotlight. These events confirm that suicide is an alarming public health problem that is highly misunderstood and … Continued
By Layne Turner, Lehigh County Drug & Alcohol Administrator When considering the interplay between Substance Use Disorder (SUD) and Opioid Use Disorder (OUD), we are trying to solve an eco-system problem, in which everything is interconnected and requires a complete … Continued
By Layne Turner, Julia Kocis, and Samantha Shaak Lehigh County is at, or exceeds state averages in the number of overdose deaths, treatment admissions, and use of naloxone. This is striking, given the fact that the overdose death rate in … Continued
By Dr. Scott Hoke, Cedar Crest College One of the difficult parts of evaluating any community-based problem or potential solution is making sense of the data that are collected for analysis. What makes this so challenging is that although a … Continued
The initial goals of our collaborative group was to determine how to share information that is typically not shared and to develop or find a platform in which to do that. Much of the information that is collected by government, non-profit, … Continued
Community Gathering Report For a nine month period, seven of Allentown’s nonprofit leaders participated in the Rider-Pool Foundation’s Collective Impact Action Learning Fellowship, and discovered ways to work together to impact positive change in the city of Allentown. The organizations represented … Continued
COLLECTIVE IMPACT LEHIGH VALLEY REGIONAL DATA WHITE PAPER Introduction The Lehigh Valley, the fastest growing and third most populous area in Pennsylvania, has experienced remarkable economic and development successes in recent years. Yet in spite of growth, urgent challenges remain. Today, … Continued