Jennifer Lefelar, Public Information Officer for the Department of Health in Monroe County, joined Good Morning Keys on KeysTalk 96.9/102.5FM this morning to talk about surveys.
Public input is critical for the Department of Health.
Lefelar said, “We do take our surveys very seriously and we try to make them easy for participation with being translated into multiple languages and different formats. Then we’ve got to follow through and share the data with transparency and let people see how we’re using the data to try to keep Monroe County healthy and safe.”
The final report of the Stock Island Community Health Survey has been published on the website.
Lefelar said, “We’re very excited. We’ve been working on the survey report, and Dr. Carla Fry and I are going to be presenting the official results at the Monroe County Board of County Commissioners regular meeting on May 15. So we’re really looking forward to that opportunity. The full report is on the Department of Health website and for anyone who would like to get an official hardcopy of the final survey book, they can just send an email to our Main Department of Health email address. We’d be happy to get them a copy of the report.”
There were findings in the report that will be helpful in charting the course of healthcare going forward.
Lefelar said, “It definitely revealed some challenges for the people who live and work on Stock Island. I mean, one of the things that has been identified with the data is that Stock Island certainly meets the qualifications for a food desert. The people there have indicated that they would really like to have a bigger grocery store. That’s not a surprise, but that was something that came out loud and clear in the data and also in the write in comments.”
The well being survey for 2024 has been going on for the past few months and your voice would still like to be heard.
Lefelar said, “This survey is available to everyone. We have been pleased with the fact that surveys are coming in all the way from Key West up to Key Largo. We’ve seen good participation from people taking the survey in Spanish and Haitian Creole. As of Friday, we surpassed the goal of 1,000 surveys which took a lot of collective effort. Not just people working at the health department, but a lot of our community partners just really, really helped us get the word out and get the survey to the people.”
The well being survey officially closes on May 15.
Lefelar said, “We have two more weeks and anybody who hasn’t taken the survey, we strongly encourage participation. It only takes, maybe five to 10 minutes, depending on how much thought people want to put into the questions. It is available front and center on the Department of Health website.”
The customer satisfaction survey provides additional input.
Lefelar said, “Back on March 1, we actually enhanced and kind of revamped our customer satisfaction survey. This is for people who are coming into our clinics and who are meeting either in person or over the phone with representatives of the Department of Health for the various programs and services that we provide. That feedback, it’s very important to us helps with quality improvement initiatives. It’s also an expectation for accreditation. We feel it’s important. We make these surveys as easy and welcoming as possible for our clients. So we actually partnered with a company in the UK called Survey App to redesign our old survey and then introduce these standalone kiosks in all of our locations to really make it simple and easy for people.”
There are eight languages available.
Lefelar said, “It was really really fun to work with professional translators and get the survey available not just in English, Spanish and Haitian Creole, which is our usual, but we’ve been able for this survey to expand to Russian, Ukrainian polish, Czech and Portuguese. We just want to really make it easy for the people that we are serving to let us know how we did.”
The customer service survey is quite short.
Lefelar said, “It’s five questions, and we’re basically trying to find out how was our service today? Why was our service good, bad, other? Which service area did the person experience and then who, on that particular team, helped the person and then may we contact them to follow up? The survey is anonymous unless somebody opts in to provide us with a name and contact information. One of the ways that we are trying to make it easy for people with various literacy levels is to incorporate emojis with was the service, excellent, good, terrible, there’s emojis to represent those feelings about their service. We’ve got graphics to support some of the words and then we have staff pictures in the surveys. So who helped you today, depending on which department they experienced, it brings up a team and there’s the names and there’s the faces and it’s really easy to give a pat on the back or to give a suggestion for future improvement, based on the people that helped them.”
Willow is an AI assistant with the Department of Health for the WIC program.
Lefelar said Willow is “getting smarter every day, every question that she gets asked, she gets smarter. She speaks multiple languages too.”
For more information on any of the surveys or what the Department does, click here: https://monroe.floridahealth.gov/