Milo

Initiative aimed at helping county residents ‘feel good’

By Stuart Hedstrom 
Staff Writer

    MILO — Using grant funds awarded by the Maine Health Access Foundation, four community conversations are being held around Piscataquis County as part of the Feel Good Piscataquis! initiative to see what residents think would make their and others’ lives healthier. The third of the four dialogues took place at the Milo Town Hall on May 21, with attendees coming from Milo and neighboring Orneville Township, Dover-Foxcroft, Corinth and Lowell.

    The Maine Health Access Foundation awarded grants to both the Charlotte White Center and Piscataquis Regional YMCA, through the Thriving in Place (TIP) Across the Continuum of Care and Healthy Communities program respectively. Charlotte White Center Integrated Health and Senior Services Coordinator Meg Callaway said the TIP grant is “aimed at spending year of doing a very comprehensive review” to help residents stay in their homes. She said this does not include just senior citizens but others who may have chronic health conditions. “Really for anyone who’s vulnerable enough,” she said.
    “The more we can do to get people to stay in their homes the less costly it is for hospitals,” Callaway said about another benefit of what is being looked at under Feel Good Piscataquis! “We are trying to develop a project that really benefits the full range of Piscataquis County, we are looking at what works in Milo and what the town needs.”
    Erin Callaway — who joked that she and Meg Callaway are not related despite having the same uncommon last name — said much of what falls under the TIP grant applies to the Healthy Communities grant, for which she is serving as the project coordinator for the PRYMCA. She said she and Meg Callaway discussed opportunities in which to work together, such as the community conversations on healthy living and what is working, what needs to be improved and how to fill in the gaps.
    “This is a tremendous opportunity to bring them together and dovetail,” she said. “Hopefully to put ourselves in a good position to get that grant money and continue forward.” The two grants awarded are planning grants, running from Nov. 1, 2013 to the end of October, and information gathered will then be used in the application process for larger grant funding to implement the ideas and programs developed between the present time and the fall.
    “We want to cover all the people in our community,” Erin Callaway said, including children who hopefully would learn about the benefits of living a healthy life early on and would therefore not have as many problems later in life. “Whatever ends up happening has to be community-driven,” she said, as another reason why input across the region is being sought.
    Meg Callaway said the improvements to the health of Piscataquis County need to be small enough to be accomplished “but big enough to matter.” Erin Callaway said implemented programs would also need to be sustainable.
    The attendees at the community conversation had several questions to consider in smaller groups based on county health rankings, most of which had Piscataquis County at or near the bottom in areas such as the percentage of the population living in poverty, early loss of life and severe housing problems.
    This led to the conversation participants thinking and coming up with their own answers to questions such as what is already present to help children lead a healthy lifestyle and what more is needed, and what already helps people live and thrive in place and what more is needed. Answers to the questions were written on large pieces of easel-hung sheets of paper by those in attendance, and the ideas were then shared by the group.
    “This is part of an ongoing process,” Erin Callaway said. She added that she and Meg Callaway would be attending events across the region during the summer months, including the Black Fly Festival in Milo on Saturday, June 7. “We are really working to get community input on this,” she said, with a survey being conducted by the UMaine Center on Aging as another component of the larger initiative.
    The fourth and final Feel Good Piscataquis! is scheduled for Wednesday, June 4 from 6-8 p.m. at the Greenville School Learning Center. To RSVP, please contact e.callaway@prymca.org or meg. callaway@charlottewhite.org. More information can be found on the Feel Good Piscataquis! Facebook page.

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