North Penn Community Health Foundation Awards $75,000 Grant for Community
Resource Directory
The North Penn Community Health Foundation Board of Directors is pleased
to announce the award of a $75,000 grant to The Montgomery County Development
Corporation in support of the development and redeployment of a comprehensive,
county-wide, web-based community resource directory.
Russell Johnson, Executive Director of the North Penn Community Health Foundation
noted, “The Foundation’s 2002-2003 community health needs assessment,
developed by Philadelphia Health Management Corporation, described as its
first identified problem, “a lack of knowledge of existence and means
of accessing needed social and health care services” in the North Penn
community. More recently, the Greater North Penn Regional Collaborative for
Health and Human Services hosted a community day event where more than 75
community leaders and residents indicated their number one community need
as an accessible, easy to use community resource directory.
Working with the staffs of the Montgomery County Economic and Workforce Development
Department and the Montgomery County Information Technology Department, the
Foundation is providing support to improve upon the existing www.montcoworks.org
website. Using new web architecture supporting E-government, the updated resource
directory will enable businesses, non-profit organizations and other organizations
providing health and human services to list the name and contact of their
business or organization and link it to the site-specific services and information
needed by residents to access these services. Listed entities with multiple
sites will be able, for the first time, to list their unique services by site
and include fees and accessibility information unique to each site. Moreover,
each listed entity will be able to update its own information (on demand)
using a unique user identification and password enhancing the ease to maintain
and update data in the resource directory.
Once the new prototype is completed, a series of workshops for end users
will be provided free-of-charge to North Penn community businesses and non-profit
organizations. These workshops will provide hands-on assistance to set up
user accounts and passwords, load data, and train staff on protocols to maintain
the accuracy and timeliness of information available on the directory.
The new system will utilize technologies designed to support people with
disabilities. Linkages to other health and human services websites will be
available such as links to various pharmaceutical assistance programs.
The enhanced resource directory is expected to be ready for data input early
in 2005. Russell Johnson, Executive Director of the North Penn Community Health
Foundation noted, “The web-based directory will provide an opportunity
for the North Penn and Indian Valley communities (and Montgomery County as
a whole) to identify their health and human services resources. Once the data
is input to the database, provider organizations, consumers and others will
have access to the information any time a need arises. Additionally, special
print options will be available to anyone desiring to download data using
various sort parameters such as school district, zip code and/or type of service.
This customized, on-demand print capability will afford a very cost-effective
approach to the dissemination of information.”
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