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II. Overview

Report Formats, Print Schedule and Distribution

This 2005 Cortland Counts: An Assessment of the Health and Well Being in Cortland County is available on-line at www.sevenvalleyshealth.org. The comprehensive Cortland Counts is completed every five years and will next be updated in 2010.
 

The 2005 Report Card (Pages 5-12) is also printed as a stand alone report. As an integral part of the Cortland Counts, The Report Card is published annually and used to monitor our progress year to year.
 

Copies of both the 2005 Report Card and the 2005 Cortland Counts are at local libraries and at the Seven Valleys Health Coalition, 10 Kennedy Parkway, Cortland, NY 13045 (607-756-4198). Reactions to this report may be sent to this address and we welcome them.

History of a Grass Roots Project

The original Cortland Counts community assessment in 2001 was initiated by several key community organizations that were routinely conducting such assessments on their own. In an effort to create a more comprehensive and integrated study of the county as a whole, the Seven Valleys Health Coalition, the Cortland Memorial Hospital, the Cortland County Health Department, the United Way for Cortland County, and the Community Outreach Partnership Center (COPC) of SUNY Cortland combined their resources. Along with the gathering of objective data and indicators, subjective information was obtained through interviews with key informants, surveys of agencies and the general public, focus groups, community presentations, community visioning sessions with different service groups and a listening tour. The community was very interested in the compilation of these data. Again and again, members of the CAT Listening Tour heard that people wanted to create a plan for the future and an annual report card to show progress towards the goals and objectives devised from the data.

In December 2002, the Blue Ribbon Committee (BRC), a broad-based group of citizens, using Cortland Counts and community feedback as guides, set community priorities and objectives and fit them into three tracks: Economic, Health and Youth. It also identified the parties responsible for the carrying out the activities to meet the established priorities. Every December since 2002, the Blue Ribbon Committee, with its evolving membership, meets at the Holiday Inn to check progress and update the goals and objectives set the previous year. The December 2004 Blue Ribbon Committee Report can be seen on pages 13-17. The entire community is invited to participate in the Blue Ribbon Committee meeting each December.
 

Over the past four years, the lead investigator (Andrea Rankin) has continually researched pertinent local demographic, health, economic, social and educational data. She was assisted with this research by the students from Dr. Kendrick’s Methods of Social Research II classes at SUNY Cortland. (See Appendix 2 for student conducted survey.)
 

This Cortland Counts document brings together a great deal of research and the opinions of many Cortland residents. In May 2005, the Seven Valleys Health Coalition asked the general public at the Business Showcase to identify their top three concerns for the county, out of nineteen areas of need identified by the Blue Ribbon Committee in 2002. Nearly 700 people voted, and the results are posted in Appendix 3. Additionally, the opinions expressed and recorded at eleven different focus groups are provided in Appendix 4. Thus, this assessment provides a strong base for a comprehensive plan for Cortland County.

The Community Assessment Report

Cortland Counts: An Assessment of Health and Well Being of Cortland County offers:

The Report Card

The eight-page Report Card, which follows, gives a set of indicators by which we can compare our data with other localities. Beyond the indicators, there is Healthy People 2010 Goals, established by the federal government and a column in which we have inserted either an apple symbol to indicate a favorable status for the particular indicator or a magnifying glass to indicate a potential problem area. The arrows in the last column, “Cortland County Goal,” indicate the “favorable” direction desired for that indicator. The data from the Report Card and the Cortland Counts Assessment are divided into five sections:

Your Feedback is Important

The Cortland Counts Assessment is updated every five years. This is your report. Please complete the evaluation at the end of this document so we will have even greater community participation in 2010. Together we can better chart the future for Cortland County. You can make it happen!

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