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Organization Categories: Business, Civic & Government, Education & Schools, Health & Wellness, Healthcare & Hospital, Nonprofit, Service Clubs
Community Served: Adults, General Population, Men, People Who Are Food Insecure, People Who Are Uninsured, People Who Are Underinsured, People Who Are Unhoused, People With Developmental Disabilities, People With Medicaid, People With Low-Incomes, Women, Youth
| Logo | Name of Organization | Address | Phone | Website | Description of Services or Mission | OrganizationCategory | CommunityServed | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| $322K Grant to Boost Access to Produce | A $322,000 federal grant announced at Monday’s Clallam County commissioner meeting will make Peninsula-grown fruits and vegetables more accessible to low-income Clallam County … | |||||||
| 2019 5210 Challenge Wrap Up | This July, community leaders from across Clallam County embarked on a month-long challenge to live healthier lives, and build new habits or change old ones. Nineteen leaders were challenged to adopt the “Live 5-2-1-0” principles promoted by the Olympic Peninsula Healthy Community Coalition, a county-wide non-profit working to decrease chronic disease in our … | |||||||
| 4/20/2022 Meeting Recap | You may also View this PDF in a separate window. There are clickable links to take you right where you want to go! Click … | |||||||
| 5/18/2022 Meeting Recap – KSQM in Sequim | You may also View this PDF in a separate window. (This allows you to see the entire page at one time and not have to scroll down on each page.) To view here on this website, click the arrow on the right hand side of the page below to flip through the pages of the PDF. There are clickable links to take you right where you want to go! Click away~ 5/18/2022 Sequim Meeting Recap by Nicolina … | |||||||
| 6/15/2022 Meeting Recap – NOLS in Forks | You may also View this PDF in a separate window. (This allows you to see the entire page at one time and not have to scroll down on each page.) To view here on this website, click the arrow on the right hand side of the page below to flip through the pages of the PDF. There are clickable links to take you right where you want to go! Click away~ 6/15/2022 FORKS Meeting Recap by Nicolina … | |||||||
| 7/20/2022 Meeting Recap – Shore Aquatic Center in Port Angeles | You may also View this PDF in a separate window. (This allows you to see the entire page at one time and not have to scroll down on each page.) To view here on this website, click the arrow on the right hand side of the page below to flip through the pages of the PDF. There are clickable links to take you right where you want to go! Click away~ 7/20/2022 PA Meeting Recap by Nicolina … | |||||||
| Attitude of Gratitude? | By Dr. Monica Dixon It was a cold, rainy spring morning, and I had hit the trail for my morning jaunt when I crossed paths with a neighbor. “Can you believe how cold it is, and this rain? I wish I’d stayed in Arizona a lot longer. This is awful!” he whined. “Hey,” I said, “You COULD think about it this way; It’s Monday, you’re retired and not going to work, you have a beautiful home that’s not being shelled by Russians, you’re healthy enough to be out walking and best of all, this cold is protecting that snow in our mountains from an early melt!” “Hmmmmph” he muttered, and walked on. So where is your glass; half full or half empty? Are you joyful for the things you have, or do you bemoan those you don’t? Research continues to suggest that people who focus on the present, and on the gifts they do have in life, rather than what might be missing, live healthier, much happier and potentially longer lives. There are many ways to develop a gratitude lens in your life, even though in the beginning it may feel unfamiliar. The past few years, with COVID, political issues, inflation and major changes in many of our lives, hasn’t always left us with an upbeat frame of mind. However, it’s exactly what’s needed during our most trying times in life. Or we end up suffering higher rates of depression, anxiety, loneliness or substance abuse. One amazing research study asked 411 people to write a thank you letter to someone who’d helped them at some point in their lives and to mail or email it to this previously un-thanked person. A similar sized control group was used in comparison. And still a MONTH later, those who wrote the thank you’s were significantly happier than the control group who did nothing! There ya go! One way to begin to experience gratitude is to write that letter to someone who’s influenced your life! Or even just to say “Thank you” to those you meet daily who lend you a hand. You can also start a gratitude journal, just an old notebook where you can jot those things you’re grateful for throughout your day. Take an important step to your own health today and look for the joy rather than the sorrow! I prefer practicing a nightly inventory, when I list the 5 things I’m most thankful for from that day, as my head hits my pillow. Even leaving voice memos to yourself on your phone can serve as reminders of those things you’re grateful for when life gets rough. Take an important step to your own health today and look for the joy rather than the … | |||||||
| Beer Bellies Brew Trouble | It’s no secret that obesity is widespread — nearly three out of every four men are either overweight or obese, according to the Centers for Disease Control, but that “beer bell” may cause men more problems beyond just buying a larger pair of … | |||||||
| Being Nimble During a Pandemic | Pre-COVID When 2020 began, the Olympic Peninsula Healthy Community Coalition (OPHCC) was working full-steam ahead on parallel tracks: actively building and organizing a broad coalition of community partners to focus on reducing chronic illness through healthy lifestyle choices, building an organization capable of assisting others with programmatic and policy change in support of improved health, and building contractual relationships with health care providers to support their important efforts to reduce the terrible impacts of chronic illness on local residents. The cumulative impact of these efforts include the successful launch and implementation of the Ready-Set-Go 5210 program throughout our community which promotes the four most impactful evidence-based strategies we can all adopt to improve our health: 5 or more servings of fruit and veggies each day, 2 hours of less of recreational screen time, 1 hour of physical activity and 0 sugar-added beverages. OPHCC’s Executive Director Leslee Francis supports this work by doing a little bit of everything ranging from staffing the “smoothie bike” activity at school events, to organizing and implementing regular meetings of the 50+ member OPHCC, to meeting with the CEOs of local hospitals and health clinics to develop programming specific to their staff and their needs, to reporting on contractual obligations to the Olympic Community of Health as the OPHCC supports the Medicare transformation project. Suddenly COVID and the Need for an Expanded Resource Line OPHCC and Leslee have pivoted priorities on a dime in order to help meet the need created by the COVID-19 pandemic. As Clallam County began planning its response to this pandemic it became apparent that many residents would soon find themselves in need of connection to assistance: Maybe to inquire about getting food from a local food bank for the first time; maybe looking for child care when asked to work extra shifts at the hospital; maybe looking for help with new feelings of anxiety, or in search of help due to isolation. While the “211 Help Line” has historically served as the go-to resource for getting answers to these questions, it was apparent this existing resource would not be enough to meet the new need. When County Commissioner Mark Ozias wondered how to bolster this resource he thought of Leslee Francis. She was the one person who had already built OPHCC’s vast network of partners and who had the tenacity to get big things done quickly. When Mark called Leslee to ask for help, without hesitation she said “yes.” When presented with an unexpected, unknown and complex challenge most of us would hesitate. We would say maybe. We would ask for time to think it over. We would think of the barriers. Leslee said “yes” and got to work. The end result? A comprehensive, real-time-updated, locally-staffed improvement to Clallam County’ traditional 211 service and a conversation with other 211 partners about making this COVID-driven project permanent given its … | |||||||
| Coalition Partners Create Face Mask Challenge | As COVID-19 began reaching the North Olympic Peninsula, face mask supplies became scarce. Olympic Peninsula Healthy Community (OPHCC) partners answered the call from the County Public Health Officer to supply homemade face masks. OPHCC Co-founder Monica Dixon and OPHCC Partner Jim Stoffer jumped into action and created the Facebook group Sequim Face Masks Challenge. Practically overnight, they activated an army of people to sew masks, along with coordinators, suppliers and drivers, almost exclusively due to prior relationships established through partnerships in OPHCC. They worked for months to provide thousands of cloth face masks and dozens of cloth hospital gowns to Clallam County Emergency Management for distribution throughout the county. Our model was so effective that representatives from larger urban areas in Seattle, Portland and San Francisco contacted us to learn more about how we were able to mobilize a rural county so rapidly and how prior relationship-building became so critical during this … | |||||||
| Community Thanksgiving | Imagine bringing together the lonely, the isolated, the hungry, or just the “I don’t feel like cooking today” in order to enjoy a meal together celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday. That’s exactly the vision that began last year as OPHCC partners began to talk about putting together the first ever Thanksgiving Community dinner. Recognizing that the beautiful Sequim Boys and Girls Club sat empty over the holiday, and that only a few blocks down the street, the Sequim Food Bank filled hundreds of holiday meal boxes to hand out to those needing a lift, the idea began to germinate of pulling together all in our wonderful community in order to celebrate our gratitude, to enjoy good food and to laugh and connect to one another. Once the word was out, the generosity from our incredible community poured … | |||||||
| Do YOU have an “Oh Shit” Handle? | by Dr. Monica Dixon Warning: Foul Language! It’s that handle right above your head in your car, the one you forget is there until suddenly, you need it! Your crazy friend takes you out for a ride in their new wheels and takes the corners far too fast, so you quickly grab that handle above your head. Or, you come careening up to a stop light that’s just changed red while you’re cruising along at 40 MPH and you quickly reach for that grab handle to prevent you from flying through the windshield. That’s your “Oh Shit” handle, according to the Urban Dictionary! Build a “tool box” to provide you solace during life’s trying times. Dr. Monica Dixon Yet it’s not enough to just have one in your car; as life takes on increasingly more complex problems that loom far out of our individual control, we each need our own designated “Oh Shit” handle as our life seems to careen out of control. For many of us, our “Oh Shit” handle may in fact be something not so healthy for us; grabbing a few beers when we’ve had a tough day at work, snarfing down a large fry after an argument with our spouse or soothing our broken heart after a break up with our partner with a giant bin of Twizzlers. It is especially important during these difficult times to have a “tool box” of sorts that help you navigate the challenges, a list of things that can help soothe and protect you rather than further harm your mental or physical health. Perhaps instead, your “Oh Shit” handle becomes: leaving the house for a long walk after a difficult family confrontation,a phone call to a dear friend after getting a lay off notice at work, or heading to bed for a nap when your life feels as if it’s careening for the side of the bridge. For me, my “Oh Shit” handle is a great book. Within moments of experiencing some difficult life event, I can grab my most recent book and quickly be transported far away from what’s bothering me to another world. I use the incredibly awesome Libby app to always have a backup of great books from my local library system awaiting my reading time on my Kindle or phone. A dear friend of mine immediately grabs her giant dog and marches out the door for a several mile walk. Another friend grabs her current knitting project and quickly gets lost in the meditative clicks of her “sticks” as she creates her latest project. Give some time to think about healthy, invigorating and soul-enriching things you can do when life tries to blind-side you, and use them to build that “tool box” to provide you solace during life’s trying … | |||||||
| Dr. Allison Berry Named Community Champion | The Olympic Peninsula Healthy Community Coalition (OPHCC), a non-profit organization in Clallam County with over 50 partners, recently awarded Allison Berry, MD, MPH, Clallam County Health Officer, with a Community Champion Award for her exemplary work to protect our community in the fight against COVID-19. OPHCC Board Director Patty Lebowitz presented the award to Dr. Berry during a virtual OPHCC meeting. Lebowitz thanked Dr. Berry for her inspiring leadership, compassion for our community and discipline to follow the science. “Dr. Berry, your job is one that nobody but you really understands but that everybody has a strong opinion about. While this dynamic makes your work even more difficult, you have led our community with grace and professionalism and have earned the respect of your law enforcement and first responder partners, the emergency management team, health care providers and everyday citizens as you have shepherded the county through this challenging pandemic,” said Mark Ozias, Clallam County commissioner and OPHCC president. Dr. Berry stated, “From the first vaccines received in the county, the goal was to distribute them quickly and equitably. Clallam County’s vaccination rate shot ahead of other counties in the state due in large part to strong partnerships with the tribes and community organizations, but we still have more work to do to get our vaccination rate closer to 70%.” COVID-19 vaccines are free and available. Visit clallam.net/coronavirus or call (360) 417-2430 for locations and … | |||||||
| Face Mask Challenge Continues | Community members continue to answer the call to help make personal protective equipment (PPEs) during the COVID-19 pandemic. Clallam County Emergency Management Team announced they’ve received more than 5,200 cloth masks from volunteers as of … | |||||||
| Food as the Connection Between Health, Education, and Economic Development | On August 16th, 2017, OPHCC sponsored a leadership forum for Olympic Peninsula leaders to: Learn from speakers from other areas how they are developing innovative solutions to the problems of hopelessness, reduced access to healthy foods and youth engagement; Share resources and relationships that help foster a collaborative framework for addressing these areas, and; Help to develop actionable steps that we can take here to begin to address these issues in Clallam County. Nearly 60 attendees representing government, non-profits, youth programming, school districts, healthcare, economic development, and land use took part in the half-day forum and engaged in a lively discussion generating new ideas and the sharing of resources to begin helping our county. Speakers included: Katie Rains, Executive Director of GRuB, Growing Food, People and Communities, Olympia, WA Stacey Larsen, Food Service Director, Port Townsend School District Karen Obermeyer, Health Educator, Jefferson County Health District Wally Endicott, Executive Director, Kids at Hope Northwest Thank you to all who attended, and our generous sponsors, Molina Health Care, Olympic Medical Center, Shipley Center and the City of Sequim! Watch over the coming months as we launch plans for some new, county-wide … | |||||||
| Getting Healthy Together | Community health is declining countywide, but partners of the freshly formed Healthy Community Coalition hope to reverse the trend starting with the Sequim-Dungeness … | |||||||
| Healthy Living Special Edition | OPHCC is in the news! Thank you to Catherine McKinney at Clallam Mosaic for writing the piece on OPHCC and our Coalition Partners. Read about BE WELL, partnership goals, and also see activities of our partners. Read the Digital Special Edition in a larger window with … | |||||||
| Join our Community-Wide 5-2-1-0 Challenge! | Take our October 2016 “Ready, Set, Go 5-2-1-0!” Challenge for great prizes and even better health for you and your family! Download the 5210 CHALLANGE, then work on eating 5 servings of fruits and vegetables, getting 2 hours or less of recreational screen time, 1 hour of physical activity and drinking 0 sugar-sweetened beverages every day this month. Bring your completed Challenge sheets to the new Sequim YMCA desk either Saturday, October 29th, or join us for the Grand Opening Sunday, October 30th from noon to 3 PM, and receive your FREE T-shirt just for participating! In addition, you’ll be entered into drawings for a free year-long family membership, swimming lessons, free class certificates, new bikes and other great prizes! All ages are welcome to participate, and you can jump into the Challenge at any … | |||||||
| Kids Get Their Days at the Market | Sequim Farmers Market shared the 5210 message during Kid’s Day at the … | |||||||
| Kindness Jars Support Behavioral Health Workers during COVID | Recognizing the tremendous burden that the COVID pandemic has placed on front line workers in the behavioral health arena, Olympic Peninsula Healthy Community Coalition (OPHCC) reached out to lift their spirits. OPHCC’s Executive Director Leslee Francis dreamed up the idea of “kindness jars” filled with inspirational quotes and heartfelt notes of appreciation provided by notable community dignitaries. Leslee then worked to identify every non-profit provider of behavioral health services in Clallam County. They span 16 agencies…342 employees…each receiving a festive glass jar filled with 31 different messages of thanks and support, one for each day of the month. She also included one of 342 gift cards purchased from local businesses across the county from Sequim to Neah Bay. OPHCC received numerous thank you notes from surprised, delighted, overwhelmed and appreciative people who never expected to be acknowledged in such a heartfelt and meaningful way.Especially during this pandemic, the Olympic Peninsula Healthy Community Coalition continues its work to improve the health of our community, moving beyond the more traditional definitions of physical health to encompass the broader needs of our community’s for connection and emotional wellness during this difficult … | |||||||
| Leaders Looking to Inspire Healthy Choice | Regional leaders from across Clallam County dug into data that shows a high percentage of food insecurity during a food … | |||||||
| Let the Games Begin… | ABOUT DR. M Dr. Monica Dixon, our resident Blogger, has a 30 year history of work in the worlds of nutrition, physical activity, and helping to make communities healthier. Though health information abounds on the internet, much of it is ill-founded and not based in the good science that tells us what really works and what doesn’t. Dr. M is a registered dietitian, culinary nutritionist, and a health psychologist. Okay, Sequim and the Dungeness Valley, it’s time to get REAL. It’s time to have fun. It’s time to tell a new story for our community, one which revels in how healthy, energetic, active, fun, engaged and committed we are. I LOVE living here, and look to those mountains every single day and count my blessings that I’ve settled in such an incredible wonderland. Hike, ski, bike, walk, run, kayak, swim (ok, we’ll get SARC back at it soon!), garden, yoga, and sometimes all in the same day. A day in paradise is one in which my husband and I go snowshoeing on Hurricane Ridge and come home to mow the lawn. Share THAT story with your friends! We live in some of the richest farmland in the country and are surrounded by the riches of Clark farms, the Sequim-Dungeness Valley Creamery, Nash’s amazing farmland, and Sunny Farms. Unlike when I was growing up in the Midwest, we have no excuse whatsoever for not choosing from our cornucopia of healthy, local food every day. And I’m going to teach you how to prepare it. I plan to challenge you here, on every level; to walk one more block than you did yesterday, to share your time with those in our community less fortunate, to add one more serving of our abundant fruits and vegetables in your meals every day, to put down that sugar-rich beverage and grab a big glass of unsweetened iced tea, to push yourself away from that computer (what am I doing here?) and move it. We’ll have guest posts from our partners. You’ll learn how Nourish Restaurant actually manages to provide such wonderful food from those gardens right outside the restaurant, how Dungeness Valley Health and Wellness Clinic successfully eeks out every penny of a dollar to provide health care to our most needy, and how our little rural Boys and Girl’s Club manages to capture the attention of the big shots in D.C. with their USDA Summer Food Program and how our Sequim Food Bank has connected across the Olympic Peninsula to feed our hungry with gusto and love. Our partners will talk and share their stories, in order to help us ALL change our … | |||||||
| Little Free Pantries Increase Access to Food | Community access to food just got better. The Little Free Pantry is one of several projects to combat hunger and the first of its kind in Port … | |||||||
| Living with Good Stress and Bad Stress | by Shelley Stratton, Registered Nurse, Registered Yoga Teacher and Owner of Bodhi Tree Yoga We have two kinds of stress in our lives: Eustress and distress. Which one are you living in most of the time? Eustress is the good stress you experience when you ride a roller coaster or watch a scary movie. Distress is the “bad” stress that might occur when you lose a job or with the death of a loved one. It’s completely normal for people to move through both eustress and distress in our daily lives. But there are some that find they visit distress for a more prolonged stay. Prolonged distress causes anxiety and prevents us from moving forward in our world and leads us into negative effects mentally, physically and emotionally. We all witness prolonged distress. As an example we can all relate to: “the pandemic”. It’s important to become aware of techniques that help us to get out of distress and become more aware of our state of mind. Our life is shaped by our mind, for we become what we think. BUDDHA MINDFUL BREATHING:Take longer, deeper breaths through the nose by timing yourself.1. Inhale for 4 counts2. Pause and hold your breath for 4 counts3. Exhale for 4 counts4. Repeat this process at least 7 times. This helps to calm the mind and can also also be useful for those sleepless nights! COMMUNICATION:Speech is practically synonymous with being human, and yet we often find ourselves isolating when in distress. 1. Make a point to reach out to a friend! You are not in it alone.2. Join a class or group to start a change in your environment. Start to create connections and ease in your life, especially with those closest to you. Our Peninsula is abundant with community resources! NATURE WALK:Walk as much as you can outside, and keep your love for nature close to your heart, as it helps settle the mind.MAKE THE TIME. It helps. As we become more aware of ourselves, we’ll notice how our body, mind, and heart feel. We always have a choice: either to run away from an unpleasant experience by distracting ourselves or to confront the truth of our experience by becoming mindfully present. The Month of May is Mental Health Awareness Month. Mental health awareness is the recognition that our psychological well-being is an important part of our own health, productivity, happiness, and the well-being of our … | |||||||
| Local Leaders Manage Monthlong Challenge to Live Healthier Lives | For most of us, making even one lifestyle change can be difficult to weave into our busy lives. But this past July, 12 community leaders took on the challenge to make four major lifestyle changes each day for the entire … |