(Atlantic) Cass County Extension presented to the Cass County Board of Supervisors on Tuesday about the possibility of flexing the part time Wellness Coordinator to full time with the use of ARPA funds for the next couple of years.
Kate Olson with Cass County Extension went over a community health improvement plan which outlined several projects for a Wellness Coordinator to contribute to.
“Up until recently Brigham Hoegh was in that position. She has left to pursue other full-time opportunities now. We were already talking about the possibility of expanding the Wellness Coordinator position before Brigham left. Her leaving increased the pace of what we were hoping to do. Before we re-post for that position we want to know what the possible scope of that would be.”
The Nishna Valley Family YMCA, Cass County Board of Supervisors, Cass County Extension, and Cass County Public Health have funded the position since 2019. Olson says the Wellness Coordinator helps with partnerships, networking, initiating new programs, supporting current programs, and assisting in securing grant funds for a variety of entities. “The role of a Wellness Coordinator has always been kind of designed to flex to take on additional capacity as needed. We feel like with this plan and the potential it has to make a long term impact on Cass County the use of ARPA funds to flex it to full-time for a couple of years is a really good way to do that.”
Supervisor Steve Green asked if there is a way to measure the success or impact of a Wellness Coordinator. Olson responded, “The plan that’s in front of you, we had a better reach on the health improvement survey than we have ever had before. Part of that was because we had the Wellness Coordinator in charge of running that. We have received a lot more grant funding for some of the projects on that list and other projects because we had someone that was dedicated to writing and administering those grants. I would say maybe not on paper, but anecdotally I believe we have a lot larger reach as far as our Healthy Cass County Coalition, the events and activities we’ve hosted, both a media presence and social media presence of people being more aware of the events going on and being able to participate because of the variety of ways that we’ve been reaching them.”
Supervisor Mark O’Brien expressed concern about funding the position as a full-time job in the future if it doesn’t return to part-time after two years. No action was taken on the funding request, it will be considered at a future meeting.
