Many of us in the community are working toward a healthier and happier Swain County. Together, we are trying to reduce chronic disease through our high obesity rates.  Swain County Health Department and Swain Community Hospital aim to increase physical activity, nutrition, and mental health through worksite wellness. Why worksite wellness? We spend over 60% of our time at work. We currently provide an employee wellness program to over 100 employees in the Swain County Public School System, and as of the 2018-2019 school year, saw a total of 371-pounds in weight loss, with an average of 6 pounds per person, and a health score increase of roughly 600 points total, averaging 8 points per person.  We want to expand the program to include businesses and employees of the county alike, 18 and older, helping to work toward a healthier and happier Swain. Would you be interested in participating in the program?

Swain Summits was identified by the Community Wellness Action Team (C-WAT) as an action, that when combined with other actions in our community, that has a reasonable chance of making a difference in obesity as it realtes to chronic disease in our community. This is a brand new program in our community.

The priority population/customers for Swain Summits are all residents in Swain County over the age of 18 years old, and Swain Summits aims to make a difference at the individual and county level. Implementation will take place in September housed by Swain Community Hospital and Swain County Health Department.

This addresses health disparties in the following ways:

• Health assessments aid in connection to healthcare and provide free health screenings to the public that includes cholesterol and glucose
• Lifestyle change program will aid in Diabetes education and awareness to impact diabetes 
• Physical activity education and challenges will be aimed to help obesity, heart disease, and diabetes 
• Nutrition education and challenges will be aimed to help obesity, food insecurity, heart disease, diabetes, and COPD
• Stress management/mental health education and challenges will be aimed to help obesity and heart disease

The partners for Swain Summits includes:

Evaluation Plan:

We plan to evaluate the impact of Swain Summits through the use of Results-Based AccountabilityTM to monitor specific performance measures. We will be monitoring How Much, How Well and/or Better Off Performance Measures.

Our evaluation activities will be tracked through the health screenings, through the following performance measures;

• Weight
• Body Fat Percentage
• Cholesterol
• Glucose
• Health scores 

Sustainability Plan:

The following is our sustainability plan for Swain Summits: 

• Sustainability Component 1:
  • During year 1 of Swain Summits, MountainWise is helping to fund the strategy through an ARC grant for two years. The ARC grant is being used to get the program up and running through assistance with tools needed (i.e. Cholestech LDX, Tanita scale, tablecloths, sandwhich boards, and flyers for promotion); Swain County Health Department will store and maintain the supplies provided by the ARC grant. Further, in-kind is being used for leaders of the program for the first year of the program. Swain Community Hospital is providing the sponsorship funding for incentives in the program. 

• Sustainability Component 2: 
  • Swain Summits will continue after the ARC grant funding has ended. Swain County Health Department and Swain Community Hospital will continue to provide leadership via job responsibilites to the program. Swain Community Hospital will supply materials for the Cholestech LDX moving forward, and continue to sponsor the program for incentives.