Purpose: To develop and implement a comprehensive plan to promote the economic stability and prosperity of all Summit County residents, particularly those of working age and their families. This plan will utilize cutting-edge approaches to address long-term, systemic problems that undercut stability and prosperity such as poverty, educational attainment, housing affordability and foreclosures, employment and retraining, and basic financial literacy. This initiative will also promote stability and prosperity by addressing issues unique to special populations such as ex-offender re-entry and children aging out of the foster care system.

Initiatives Under Way: Job Seeker, Employer Resource, and Career Guides, Bridges Out of Poverty initiative, Home Repair Network (HRN) database development, Abandoned and Vacant Property (AVP) database development

Purpose: To develop and implement a comprehensive plan to enhance the early childhood service-delivery system in Summit County. This comprehensive plan will guide acquisition and allocation of resources, integrate new information from research and local experts, set priorities with performance indicators that can be tracked and measured, align local efforts with state initiatives, and build a common community commitment to early care and education.

Initiatives Under Way: First Things First, Neighborhood group education initiatives

Purpose: To develop and implement a comprehensive plan to advocate and build support for change benefiting older adults at the local, state, and national level. SILC’s purpose is to optimize the self-sufficiency and independence of all our older citizens, with an emphasis on alleviating of poverty, reducing the incidence of elder abuse / neglect, and maintaining senior health.

Purpose: To develop and implement a comprehensive plan to promote improved health and reduce health disparities for all Summit County residents. The plan will address such critical, longstanding issues as the cost of and access to health care and medications, coordination of care and/or case management (particularly among those with both behavioral health and physical health issues), as well as individual behaviors that erode the health of the population as a whole. An integral part of this plan will be the construction of a county health assessment system largely based on the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute’s county health rankings reports (a system which relies primarily on well-established social determinants of health to provide insight into the long-term health prospects of communities).

Initiatives Under Way: Office of Minority Health, Summit 2010 Disparities Report, Summit County Re-Entry Network, Minority Health Roundtable, Access To Care, Pharmacutical Access Program

Purpose: The purpose of this initiative is to strengthen collaboration between the county’s major public health and social service systems, and the effectiveness of services they finance or deliver. To fulfill this purpose, this initiative will facilitate the development and implementation by various county agencies and non-profit service providers of a system that links providers in multiple organizations and specialties. These links will help create efficiencies, time and cost savings for both referral initiators and responders, thereby improving the quality of client and patient care. In addition, this initiative will promote increased accountability by the three levy-funded agencies (Summit County Children Services, Summit County Developmental Disabilities Board, and the Summit County Alcohol, Drug, and Mental Health Board). This purpose will be accomplished by providing increased support for the SSAB’s Budget and Levy Review Committee.

Initiatives Under Way: SSAB Budget and Levy Review committee, Levy Funded Agency Financial Condition Indicators report