Our Final Days at the Cuyahoga County Board of Health

As we end our Capstone experience at the Cuyahoga County Board of Health, I can't help but be relieved and saddened at the same time. I feel relieved that this chapter of my senior year is over and I am that much closer to graduating but also saddened that the experience is over just as we were getting a hang of our group project and making results. In our last weeks of our efforts in outreach to Lakewood and Parma, we started to change our strategies. For example, we increased our table time at Tri-C, West Campus, from once a week to four times a week. In our evaluation process, we realized that we were seeing many of the same students and felt we could outreach to many new students if we increased our days at Tri-C. In Lakewood, we found that we faced many barriers such as timing when businesses were open and not in the middle of a lunch/dinner rush, or having to return when the manager was present. Thus, we had to plan our routes more efficiently as well as change our timing when we were going to visit each business.

Just as our process evolved, our experience was coming to an end. Nevertheless, we can absolutely say that this was a rewarding experience. We really had to work hard to make things work within the agency, the community of Lakewood and Parma, and especially, each other. As I take a step back and look at our accomplishments, I can say that we really made a difference. We were able to reach our goal of increasing utilization of the Family Planning Clinic as well as the creation of the CCBH Family Planning Clinic website which was non-existent before our arrival.

This experience has given me a greater understanding of the roles public health plays in the health of our community, our patients, and our families. I can say that I will take these experiences to strengthen and apply them to my nursing practice, nursing theory, and personal life as I grow into my nursing profession.

Finally, I can't help but ask everyone to come visit our CCBH Family Planning Clinic web page (www.ccbh.net, under nursing tab) and facebook page. We take great pride in the work of these pages and want to share it all with you!

Outreach Efforts in Parma and Lakewood

We started our venture into public health at The Cuyahoga County Board of Health (CCBH) on June 1, 2011. Elisabeth, Kristin, and I were greeted and welcomed by all the nursing staff. Since then, we have integrated ourselves as part of their team. Out of the many departments that the Board of Health entails, our main goal is to provide interventions within our communities that will increase utilization of The Family Planning Clinic, "My Life, My Body". The Family Planning Clinic's main purpose is to provide low to no cost health services for men and women, 13 years old and up. Some of the services include; contraceptives, STI testing and treatment, HIV testing, pregnancy testing, pap smears, sexual health education and/or counseling. This clinic was established by title X grant to provide sexual health services to prevent unplanned and/or teenage pregnancy as well as STI/HIV prevention. As part of an introduction to community outreaching, we have the opportunity to man a table at Parma's Tri-C, west campus. Once a week, on alternating Mondays/Tuesdays from 10am-2pm and 5pm-7pm, we promote and educate the Tri-C students and staff about sexual health through the use of pamphlets, flyers, booklets and resources. Our end goal was to get the members of the community aware of the services available to them and increase utilization of the clinic. This was a relationship in the community that was already established by our preceptor, Sandi Hoch, and in turn gave us a first hand look at what outreaching in the community was like. We are currently working on a new, updated tented poster that will take place of the old poster board shown and have added some informational sheets such as a map with directions to the clinic, and a Mirena/Paraguard info. sheet, etc.. We also plan to outreach to the Parma day cares/learning centers as part of our efforts.

Parma, Ohio has been targeted mainly for its high rate of teen pregnancies. Many efforts and relationships have already been established within this community. Sandi has granted us the autonomy to work together in finding creative ways to market our promotion to other areas of the county. During our assessment of secondary data of Cuyahoga County, we found that the city of Lakewood would also benefit from these services. Interestingly, Lakewood has a rising, high rate of HIV as well as a lack of nearby title X services. With no community partnership with Lakewood, we started on a blank slate. Thus far, we have set aside time to visit Lakewood on a weekly basis to meet the businesses of the community. We started out with a full, detailed listing of all the businesses in Lakewood and aim to visit all of them. We also started thinking about creating a flyer to pass out throughout the residence of Lakewood as well as meeting a community leader that may aid us in printing an ad in their newsletter.


I can't fail to mention our efforts in improving the technology resources at CCBH. We are still in progress of improving the clinic's website found at http://www.ccbh.net/ and facebook page. Everyone is welcomed to visit our sites in the next few weeks and provide feedback!

Even though it took us time to figure out what was expected of us. I feel the experience couldn't be any better without it. I am anxious to see our hard work pay off and meet the goals we set to aim.