First Grow Lee, now Heal Lee

With the winter sports season in the rearview mirror, there’s time for some late night thoughts without running out to this high school or that.
My thoughts are centered around efforts currently underway to address families struggling with economic and social issues in Lee County. This includes addictions, poverty, substance abuse, child care.
It’s no surprise that Lee County has struggled with generational poverty and child neglect and abuse, but it’s also no surprise that we’ve been climbing the mountain for at least 10 years. Lee County Economic Development Group's former CEO  Dennis Fraise used to give the analogy of the duck that looks calm on the surface, but working like crazy underneath to move.
Lee County is working like crazy to address these issues and there are so many different cohorts in the mix that maybe, at some point, some collaboration of messaging needs to happen.
They’re all doing great work, including the new Thrive Restore Hope alliance that’s just getting underway in the county. Lee County was specifically selected for the grant program, which funds the program for three years, because of the county’s data sets around poverty, unemployment, and children neglect and abuse.
The county also has a Bridges Out of Poverty program that’s been in place for almost a decade. There’s also Children First and other children advocacy efforts, there is birth-to-death health intervention services through the Lee County Health Department, and now we have about $3 million in the county to address opioid and co-occurring substance abuse disorders. Lee County is set up to receive close to $2 million total with $1.3 million yet to come and Community Health Centers of Southeast Iowa just received a $1 million grant to increase services to low-income individuals and families dealing with substance abuse. This doesn’t even include the services of support of people like ADDS and Counseling Associates and SEI Regional Medical Center campuses where support has been around for a long time.
The key to more people who need help actually seeking help may be in coordinating the messaging of these services and putting them in the right place – whether that be the frustrating world of television streaming, radio, pamphlets, social media, and just old reliable word of mouth. It would obviously start with overcoming the stigma of getting help and that goes not only for substance abuse, but also for addressing the generational struggles.
I would suppose that in most circles, once a program works for someone struggling, it spreads to others. But the real key is the individual actually wanting to get help and taking the first step – and the real positive news that goes with it is that there is funding and programming in place right here.
So what does the communication look like. CHC is just getting going with extended hours and services and has staff to hire to work the grant. Lee County’s opioid group is funding infrastructure, and the other agencies are boots on the ground ready to help. But coordinating the message and putting it in the right place may be the biggest challenge of all.
The biggest message is that for anyone struggling to move from the desolation of these circumstance through life to a better place where happiness and contentment exist, help is here. Lee County, again, is doing things that could become templates for other rural counties in the state. We did with Economic Development and took a spot on not just the state and national landscape, but the global landscape. And people took notice.
There’s no reason Lee County can’t be a model, regionally, for effective transitioning of the most challenged of our communities.
It will be an interesting year as Thrive and other area support and advocacy groups, the opioid groups, Lee County Health Department’s new Hub program of coordinated health services, and the other groups, all get their engines running behind the infrastructure in place, including the brand new Meller Family Health Center.
As Lee County grew exponentially in terms of economic development efforts in the county under the Grow Lee program, maybe 2027 will become the start of Heal Lee. We can, and should, hope that everyone works together to create a unified voice to give superpower to what’s already been building.
And since we brought up television streaming, I was almost to the point where I just went back to cable because of the amount companies are continuing to charge for those services. I gotta have HBO Max for West Wing but the constant logging in and passwords, and geofencing, just was getting to be too much. But then my uncle sent me a new thingamajig that is now on the market that you buy one time and get most of the channels you were subscribing to. So we’re gonna let that sit in see how it works. I’m sure it will tick me off sooner than later – But That’s Beside  Point.
Chuck Vandenberg is editor and co-owner of Pen City Current and can be reached at Charles.V@PenCityCurrent.com.