District To Study

Health Needs

By Jan Howard

The Newtown District Department of Health is in the planning stages for an upcoming health needs assessment to be funded through an $8,000 block grant.

The Health Department is also to be the recipient of a $79,000 bioterrorism grant through the Connecticut Department of Public Health (DPH).

The survey of health needs will be conducted in late spring or early summer, according to Health Director Donna McCarthy.

“It will give us good Newtown-based data for health care access,” Ms McCarthy said this week.

The results of the survey would help the department to better tailor health care and health care education to community needs, she said.

Ms McCarthy said she is currently finalizing the contract with a consultant in regard to the bioterrorism grant. She said she has interviewed several applicants through the Housatonic Valley Council of Elected Officials.

Ms McCarthy said a public hearing on Lyme disease by the DPH and the Connecticut attorney general’s office on January 29 was scheduled to hear comments from patients and health care providers. She said it was expected that there would also be discussion about mandatory reporting. In November, she had said that because the state no longer requires reports from labs, and there is less reporting of the disease from doctors, statistics regarding Lyme disease are now less available.