| NATIONAL PUBLIC HEALTH WEEK  | | Preventive health means making choices now that keep you healthy in the future. It's like defensive driving for health — taking simple steps to avoid illness today saves you the suffering and cost of living with disease later. | Today's focus is on public health's most important strategy: preventing illness and injury before it happens. You're a major part of that effort! Living with prevention in mind is a choice that makes a profound difference in your future. Real Life Examples - Heart disease kills more Mississippians before their time than any other cause. Yet early death from heart disease is almost entirely preventable.
- Diabetes is one of the state's leading chronic diseases. It causes gradual deterioration of the body's organs over time, leads to disability and death, and is costly to live with. Like heart disease, the lifestyle choices you make can dramatically reduce your risk of diabetes.
The Mississippi Department of Health's Preventive Health programs are dedicated to helping you avoid chronic disease and stay healthy for life. They're here to educate, train and enable you to live your best life, no matter who you are. That keeps you healthy, builds healthier and better communities, and creates a stronger Mississippi. Here's How Each day, our Preventive Health programs are working for you and the people around you by:  | | Educating you on the value of lifestyle choices that build health, such as staying active, eating wisely, and maintaining a healthy weight. |  | | Working with schools and communities to create surroundings that help promote your health. That includes easier availability of fresh foods where you live, areas for walking, safe biking programs for kids, and easier access to regular health checkups. |  | | Screening for disease by testing for early signs of problems that can indicate heart disease, diabetes and cancer. Without screening, staying healthy would be like driving at night without headlights. The sooner you know about a possible problem, the easier it is to avoid it. |  | | Training people to living smarter with a chronic disease so they can manage their condition better and improve day-to-day living (as well as lower their medical costs). We offer injury prevention training as well to help older Mississippians avoid falls, protect the youngest Mississippians with proper car seats, safeguard athletes from concussions, and live more safely at home from fires and other risks. |  | | Monitoring the frequency of illness and injury across the state to see where health improvements are needed most, who could benefit more, and whether there are groups at a health disadvantage because of social causes like language, race or age. | It's a Broad Effort To understand just how wide an effort this is, and the importance of preventive health to your future, here's a partial list of our ongoing programs: - Chronic Disease Prevention, including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure and obesity.
- Breast and Cervical Cancer Prevention, which also helps at-risk women receive regular cancer screening if they do not have insurance to cover it.
- Chronic Disease Self-Management Programs
- Physical activity and Nutrition Promotion, and Obesity Prevention
- Free health screenings for blood pressure and blood sugar at any county health department.
- Injury and Violence Prevention
- Oral Health promotion, helping young Mississippians guard against tooth decay and the problems it brings.
- Food Safety
- Healthy Aging
- Community Health Workers to help bring better health to local settings, and identify problems unique to local communities or towns.
- Tobacco Control, including vaping, and programs to help tobacco and nicotine users quit.
- Worksite Wellness to help make the places you work a positive force for your health.
Not all Mississippians have an equal opportunity to live a healthy life. We're changing that. The Office of Health Equity's mission is to promote equitable social, economic and environmental conditions to create a culture of health and well-being for all Mississippians. Our programs work to reduce inequalities and disparities in health due to race, ethnicity and linguistic ability. Our efforts include: - Transportation to Health: Providing transportation services to MSDH patients, ensuring access to county health departments and offices for health services.
- Language Access Division: Ensuring effective communication with individuals across in the health setting, particularly those with Limited English Proficiency (LEP) or who are deaf or hard of hearing and who use American Sign Language (ASL).
- Community Interpreter Training: Community interpreters help overcome language barriers in health and other specialized settings, creating a bridge to services for all members of the community.
- Language Access Training: Helping MSDH staff communicate effectively across languages in the services we offer, and by translation of documents.
- Health Equity Training: Series of modules aimed at developing the capacity to advance health equity in everyday work activities. These modules cover topics such as defining social determinants of health, navigating cultural competency, and addressing unconscious bias.
- Cultural Competency Training: Aimed at reducing disparities in access to public and community services by increasing the cultural responsiveness of healthcare providers.
- Health Ambassadors: Engaging community leaders to promote healthy behaviors, raise awareness about public health concerns, and address issues related to COVID-19 mitigation efforts.
- Building Partnerships: We can't do it alone, so we connect with business, community organizations and local government to make equitable health a reality. We're also expanding health ministries in churches to enhance preventive health knowledge and address the needs of congregates and the broader community.
- Data Collection: Identifying areas with poor health outcomes that are due to social determinants of health. This data guides our efforts to bring positive change.
The Jackson Heart Study's Community Engagement Center (CEC) supports the Jackson Heart Study's efforts to promote heart health in targeted communities in the greater Jackson metropolitan area. With our Community Health Workers (CHWs) and Community Health Advocates (CHAs) programs, CEC works to more effectively promote heart disease prevention by basing them on evidence gathered from the ongoing Jackson Heart Study — a major, multi-year study of the causes of heart disease. Our CHWs/CHAs include not just CEC staff, but important community partners from public housing, faith-based organizations, municipalities and businesses. This wide range of partnerships helps conduct health screenings, provide education, and promote health awareness and healthy lifestyles. |
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