The Southern Nevada Health District (SNHD) has released its latest Community Health Assessment Report (CHA). It includes data the district began gathering in 2024.
The report, which comes out every three to five years, identified eight areas of public health concern in Southern Nevada: social determinants of health, access to care, mental health, chronic disease, public health funding, environmental factors, substance use, and infectious disease.
From these, public health officials and community members chose three areas of focus for its Health Implementation Plan. They were chronic disease, access to care, and public health funding — similar to the priorities chosen in the last two assessments, done in 2015 and 2020/2021.
Jessica Johnson, SNHD’s health education supervisor, said that continuity of focus across reports is important.
“What we know is that there's been progress made,” she said. “And they're interrelated, so there's continued opportunity for us to grow in our assessment and impact across these areas.”
Despite this, she said the report doesn’t limit SNHD’s ability to address other public health concerns that might surface before 2030.
“Our epidemiologists are annually looking at these different priorities, and our leadership is assessing where we put efforts and collaborations, while not losing focus of these three priorities.”
This year, UNLV’s Nevada Institute for Children’s Research & Policy contributed the three reports that became part of the report.
UNLV Associate Professor Amanda Haboush-Deloye is the organization’s executive director. She said Southern Nevada faces specific challenges in addressing public health issues, especially in areas like chronic and infectious disease, which have a tendency to hinge on consistently healthy lifestyle choices.
Guest: Amanda Haboush-Deloye, associate professor, UNLV's School of Public Health, executive director, Nevada Institute for Children's Research & Policy; Jessica Johnson, health education supervisor, Southern Nevada Health District
