Healthy Places Nash and Edgecombe Counties
Working in the Twin Counties
Nash and Edgecombe Counties are located in eastern North Carolina between Raleigh and the Outer Banks. The two communities, often called the Twin Counties, are united by the shared city of Rocky Mount. Rocky Mount, which sits on the Tar River, was first built as a destination to mill cotton and later grew into an important tobacco market.
We partner to prompt change.
Since 2015, the Twin Counties and Healthy Places NC have targeted key health issues including obesity, substance misuse, lack of access to behavioral health services, and childhood trauma. Poor health outcomes are also impacted by profound poverty throughout the community. Many of these areas are also vulnerable to natural disasters. Through Healthy Places NC, Twin County residents have identified adverse childhood experiences, obesity reduction, and substance misuse as three key issues to address.
Community Approaches
We support the community in their efforts to achieve the following goals:
Obesity reduction.
Local partners are working to increase healthy eating by:
- Assisting community collaboratives’ work to analyze the food system and develop an action plan to address equitable access to healthy food.
- Implementing a farm-to-childcare model in 15 childcare centers that predominantly serve families with low incomes.
Adverse childhood experiences.
Local partners are working to address childhood trauma for children from neighborhoods with low incomes by:
- Supporting community-based research and education efforts that engage residents in the process to better and understand and grow awareness of adverse childhood experiences.
- Providing evidence-based resilience education to key audiences.
- Implementing resilience teams in the Twin Counties’ school districts to promote trauma-sensitive schools
Substance misuse.
Local partners are working to reduce rates of substance misuse and overdose deaths by:
- Supporting systems change approaches from the community planning process, which may include addressing organizational capacity within health systems, coordination within and across systems, community education and engagement, and advocacy.
- Collecting and analyzing data and measuring progress.
- Expanding behavioral health care to people with low incomes in Federally Qualified Health Center sites.
- Supporting a behavioral health organization embedded in under-resourced communities.