News

By ROBERT PIERCE

• Leader & Times

Born from the COVID-19 pandemic, the KU Medical Center’s Communities Organizing to Promote Equity (COPE) program is funded through a two-year grant from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and the Centers for Disease Control’s national initiative to address health disparities in high-risk and underserved communities.

COPE utilizes Local Health Equity Action Teams (LHEAT) working closely with community health workers to identify needs and build trust and report and establish partnerships and deploy tailored interventions for community members experiencing health inequities.

Clarissa Carrillo, LHEAT Regional Community Leader for Western Kansas, said the program, which recently finished its second year has been a great opportunity to form teams in communities. She added teams are made up of any community members, not just those with titles attached to their name.

“It can just be a community member wanting to talk about their life experiences, also any organizations or stakeholders,” she said. “We need to recognize the organizations that are already doing the work.”

Carrillo said voices need to be heard, and people need to be connected to resources in order to reduce inequities. She likewise said local LHEATs initially received $40,000 for two years, but an extension was given on the project.

“We were able to continue the work even after the two years,” she said. “With that, we also got an additional $10,000. There were guidelines and rules. We couldn’t use the funds to purchase food directly. That really worked to push the teams to think more upstream. How can we get creative and utilize partnerships and what we already have to make the community better?”

In Seward County, LHEATs successfully established valuable partnerships to address community barriers from food access to emergency services to creating events that provided learning and advancement opportunities for community members.

With this, though, Carrillo said challenges came with food insecurity due to the fact grant money could not be used to purchase food.

“What can we do? If we can’t purchase food to make more food boxes, what’s another way we can help to make sure there’s food access for the community?” she said.

After some thought, however, some solutions were found to that problem.

“Some of the food pantries couldn’t take a lot of donations because they didn’t have the freezer to be able to keep it,” Carrillo said. “The LHEAT was like ‘We can invest funds in buying a freezer.’ We ended up purchasing around three freezers or refrigerators. One was for South Church of God. I think another one was for the Southern Baptist church, and there was another one that was purchased.”

Carrillo said she was most proud of the work LHEAT members did during recent weather emergencies.

“There was a time during the cold weather when it got really bad,” she said. “There was collaboration with the shelter. We knew the shelter didn’t have the capacity to take everyone in. The LHEAT was able to use funds to help people being put up at the shelter, being able to offer a stay at one of the motels to make sure no one was out in the freezing temperatures. Also the LHEAT used funds to purchase bedding and blankets for the shelter to make sure they had those available for people.”

An LHEAT also led a project at Sage Mobile Home Park on Bluebell Road to clean up after a tornado in 2023.

“We invited people from the community,” Carrillo said. “The college brought students. It was neat for us to go out and do a cleanup. It’s been a lot of different activities.”

LHEATs likewise offered financial literacy classes through a partnership with local banks.

“We had three local banks come out and were part of the workshop,” Carrillo said. “It was a lot of teaching. What are the resources when it comes to buying a home for the first time, tips on how  to take care of your credit score?”

With the COPE grant focused on COVID, Carrillo said teams had the flexibility to focus on mental health. She added with resources being limited, partnerships, volunteers, feedback and life experiences were a necessary part of what it took to make everything happen in such a short amount of time.

“What are the needs in the community?” she said. “We had the budget there. We had funding there. Now, we can take action steps, but what are the main needs in our community? From there, it was also trying to be very creative on what we can do. Let’s not just put a band-aid on the problem.”

Carrillo oversees much of the work the COPE grant allowed for in Western Kansas. She said about 20 counties in the state have LHEATs, including a few in Western Kansas – Seward County, Grant County, Finney County, Ford County, Sherman County and Thomas County.

Despite being responsible for such a large area, Carrillo said she was excited to do all of the work while being based primarily in Seward County.

“For me, it was a pleasure because I got to work with my community,” she said. “The invitation was out there for people to come join and be part of the conversations, but sometimes, it’s hard to bring people in. It was a lot of building relationships, inviting people, bringing in organizations. It’s not reinventing the wheel, but growing the capacity of what we already have here.”

A Liberal native, Carrillo said she enjoys the rural nature of Western Kansas, and she likewise enjoys being able to work in her hometown and county.

“It’s been wonderful to not necessarily focus on my community, but also go out into our region into counties,” she said. “Every community is unique, and every community is different.”

Carrillo said barriers are not only happening in Seward County, but all over the state, and she said it was nice to see other communities, learn from them and bring ideas back from those towns.

“Our community is different,” she said. “It’s unique, but can we apply any of these strategies, ideas or plans and adjust it to our community. I got to take ideas from here to other counties, and I was to able to bring ideas from other counties to our LHEAT.”

Carrillo said the KU Med Center has great people who keep Southwest Kansas in mind with grants such as COPE, and she said projects will continue to happen even as the grant has come to an end.

“It’s going to be focused on nutrition, physical activity and breastfeeding,” she said. “The LHEATs now will go under a different grant, which is called REACH.”

The new Racial and Ethnic Approaches to Community Health grant will also come from the CDC, and Carrillo said while COPE was broad in its scope, REACH will specifically target nutrition, physical activity and breastfeeding.

As for the legacy two years of work will leave, Carrillo said COPE allows community leaders to plant seeds and have conversations in continued hopes of progress.

“We are aware there are some big barriers,” she said. “Even if we had 10 years, we might still not be able to completely fix the problem, but our hope is to at least leave that little seed behind that is going to help our communities to take a step to become better and make progress in those barriers. More than anything, it’s being able to know with the conversation, some of the action steps will have and have had an impact in the community.”

Carrillo said while some may look at providing a freezer to a food panty a minor item, it means so much more to those who are part of LHEATS and those who benefit from the work the teams do.

“You’re helping us to be able to give out more food boxes or be able to receive more donations to give out more food boxes, and that’s affecting families directly,” she said. “Their work is making progress in the community.”

Community health workers were a large part of COPE, and while the REACH grant will likely only alow for one community health worker, Carrillo said there was something special about the COPE grant and having multiple community health workers.

“We had employees who were helping clients directly, making sure they knew about resources we had in the community,” she said. “That was very impactful from the community workers side. They were able to help and serve several clients. They were able to serve those clients, and that means those clients could have barriers in their life, but those CHWs were able to walk with them by their side and help them connect with resources directly.”

Carrillo said the hope when the COPE grant started was to be able to do strategies or take action steps and not just provide temporary fixes.

“It would be something that would be sustainable and have a long lasting impact,” she said. “I believe when it comes to providing opportunities of education or creating awareness of awareness, it does make a long lasting impact. When people know about what’s out there, it can make a difference, especially when they’re going through difficulties.”

Carrillo said COPE provided opportunities in education that will community members in the long term, and providing items such as freezers will have a lasting impact as well.

“It will be there for years,” she said.

Carrillo said the work of the COPE grant will provide long lasting affects to people and make  a lifetime of difference in their lives.

“We know some of the things will be there for years, and that’s the beauty of it,” she said. “Some of the actions will be there for a long time and continue to impact people, not just for one day, but hopefully for years to come.”

ELLY GRIMM

• Leader & Times

There has been talk among the community for a long time regarding the desire for more public art and soon, that will be one step closer to becoming reality.

Last week, Lieutenant Governor and Secretary of Commerce David Toland announced $1,295,450 was awarded to 108 recipients in the latest round of Kansas Arts Commission (KAC) grant funding. The funds will support museums, arts education, music, dance, visual arts, professional and community theater, creative writing, murals, poetry and other creative projects. Grants were awarded in 42 counties, with funding going to counties in rural locations, including Seward County and the City of Liberal. Public Affairs Director Keeley Moree said the news of the grant is very exciting after so many discussions.

“On the City of Liberal's side, we'd started looking into a mural grant about a year ago. It was something we'd heard about from multiple people in the community, and something we continue to hear about is the desire for more public art and more imagery that's reflective of Liberal,” Moree said. “So we started doing some research and came across this grant, which we applied for in February through the Kansas Arts Commission, and it's part of the program under the Kansas Department of Commerce. We put together some ideas and plans and submitted the application mostly hoping for the best, and Liberal is one of 11 communities awarded with the Public Art Mural Grant – the City of Liberal received $6,165 from the Public Art and Murals Grant, and the Seward County Historical Society received $9,500 from the Arts Everywhere Grant. We did only very recently receive word about the award, so we haven't yet found out what the timeline is for being able to get our paperwork in.”

This grant ties into the city’s goal of increasing public engagement, Moree added. 

“We want to create a piece of art for the community that really reflects what people feel about Liberal and what our community identity is,” Moree said. “Through the process of creating this mural, we'll be going through two different rounds of public engagement and voting – we'll first talk through and present some ideas and solicit feedback for different imagery we'd want to create and some different themes. The entire idea behind the design is the word 'Liberal' spelled out with different scenes painted in each of the letters, and there are so many different themes we can touch on. The first step in the public engagement process is to see what people feel should be represented on that mural, and once we get through that process and identify everything, we'll be working with our artist, Karem Gallo, who will put together a few different concept designs so we can come up with a variety of designs for people to select from, so that second round of voting will concern the overall final design and what will end up getting created.”

Moree said the reaction among her and other staff was very positive upon the news being made official.

“I'm really excited to see this project move forward because again, this is something a lot of people have talked to us about,” Moree said. “Since we started our public engagement around our Comprehensive Plan, there's been a lot of conversations about how people feel about how our town looks and the way we represent ourselves as a community and finding our identity, so this is exactly the type of project that will help us draw that out. I'm very happy to see this moving forward, we're really fortunate to be able to work with the Kansas Arts Commission and the Kansas Department of Commerce. We've never really done anything of this magnitude, so as a community, we're excited to have been awarded this grant money.”

In regard to actually applying for the grant, Moree said there ultimately had to be a bit of a leap of faith made.

“I think probably the biggest challenge for something like this was the question of where we'd put this project. We don't own a building that's got a nice, large, public-facing canvas, so as we continued to consider this kind of project, we were wondering where we could have everything set up, as well as what it would look like,” Moree said. “We wanted this to be easily accessible to the community, so eventually, we started thinking 'What if we just created our own wall?' What we'll be doing is creating a concrete wall in Light Park near Adventure Bay facing Kansas Avenue so it'll be highly visible. The potential location(s) was something that definitely held us back with a project like this, so we decided we would just create our own spot. And something else that will be really neat is people will be able to walk up to it and take in all the details and can take a selfie or something by it. Light Park is very much a focal point for the community, it's centrally located and used for several public events and gatherings, so it felt like the perfect spot. We've been using Polco as our survey tool to help share necessary information to the community and allow everyone to weigh in and share their thoughts, so we'll be using that again with this. We'll also be reaching out with some presentations about the grant and the process, and we'll be talking with people through town hall meetings, and we'll also be reaching out to the schools and various civic organizations. Our main goal is to get this information out into the community so everyone knows what the process is so they can do their part and weigh in.”

Moree also offered congratulations to the Seward County Historical Society for its grant award.

“The historical society's project is separate from the City's project, so I can't speak to what all they'll be doing, but I think it's great how we're all pursuing these grant funds,” Moree said. “It was about a year ago when we were on a conference call with the secretary of commerce, and he had a listening session specifically with Western Kansas and at one point, he asked 'Why aren't you applying for these grants?' and offered a lot of encouragement for us to go after this funding. Seeing two projects in our community get approved is really amazing, and I'm really happy that's how the awards turned out. When you look at the total amounts pulled for Seward County, we're right up there with what was awarded to Finney County and Ford County. We're putting ourselves in that race to be able to say we want these state dollars to come to our community. I'm really proud of the fact that we've gotten some really nice grant money for these types of projects in this community.”

The project should be a very exciting time, Moree said.

“With everything still so new, we're still waiting for the Kansas Arts Commission to give us a timeline. But once we're officially able to get everything started, I imagine the project would be completed within a year,” Moree said. “With the surveys, we'll get that started as soon as we get word from the Kansas Arts Commission, and we'll share that on our social media and some other places, and we'll also be sharing the information at meetings and through presentations, so any information about this project will be VERY difficult to miss. What I'm looking forward to seeing is the ideas we'll get from the community and what kind of imagery they feel best represents Liberal. We continue to look for our community identity, and I feel like this will be a great way to draw that out and represent that identity visually and really say 'THIS is who we are.' The mural will be really visible, which I think is great because when you look at other communities and wonder why they're so neat, it's because they have a lot of public art, so that's something I think could ultimately end up expanding into other areas of the community. We hope to kickstart some of that initiative. And, being in my particular role, I'm just really excited to pull other people into the conversation and allow our residents to feel involved in what we're doing in Liberal. Everything we do is for our residents, so I want to make sure we're engaging them and listening to everyone.”

Overall, Moree said, she is very happy with the project getting started.

“I'm really grateful for the Kansas Arts Commission putting forward this funding for us, this will greatly help what we want to do,” Moree said. “We're also excited to use Karem as our local artist, having someone local was also extremely important when we were going about this project, and she presented some great ideas. We're really looking forward to being able to create something that will be good for the entire community.”

ELLY GRIMM

• Leader & Times

The USD 480 school district now has a new face at the head of its communications department with Darin Clark.

Clark replaces Tyler Parks in the role and as he tells it, communication has been part of his life for a long time.

“For two years, I worked in Galveston, Texas and before that, I'd lived in Perryton, Texas for about 30 years and I'd spent eight years of that time working as the communications director there and helped build up that department,” Clark said. “I really enjoyed that, but my wife and I were looking for something a little different and something closer to home, so we ultimately ended up here in Liberal. And Liberal's great because it allows us to be kind of close to friends and family in Perryton while also having our own lives, so it's a great place. We're really excited and loving USD 480 and the opportunity I have here to help build up the communications department – there's been a lot of great things happening, and a lot of improvements made from the past, from what I've been told, but like anything else, I know we can do better. I want to help get our story out to the community better than we have in the past – I know there's been a lot of good going on, but not everyone knows about it, so I want to help spread that word.”

However, Clark said, his initial interest was sparked well before he made communication his chosen career field.

“Communications, in general, I've been doing since I was about 16 years old when I was working at the radio station in Pampa, Texas, which is where I grew up. Prior to that, however, I'd been playing a DJ in my bedroom since I was about 6 or 7 years old, and I knew that's what I wanted to do,” Clark said. “I worked in radio for a while, then ended up in TV for a little while, and then my wife and I moved to Perryton, where I got involved with the radio station, and I was the general manager there for several years. Radio is rather a difficult market these days, and my wife is a teacher and had been involved in the school district for many years, and the opportunity eventually came up that a communications director position was being created, and it was right up my alley, so I ended up doing that for a while as well.”

Eventually. Clark said, the opportunity came up for he and his wife to make the move to Liberal.

“My wife and I had decided to leave Perryton because again, we wanted to try something new, and we moved to Galveston – we'd been there on our honeymoon and thought it would be cool to go back and live and work there, but it ultimately ended up not being a good fit for us,” Clark said. “So we decided we wanted to be back somewhere closer to home, and we were both applying for jobs here and there, and I came across this position for USD 480 and we both ended up thinking 'THAT'S the perfect one!' I applied and went through the interview process – which we drove up here for – and a few days after the interview, I was offered the job and ended up accepting it, and here I am. My first thought after getting the offer was figuring out where USD 480 stands, what's been going on in regards to the communications side of everything, where does the district want to go from here, and what some of the overall goals were. Another thing was getting to know the community a bit better – having lived in Perryton, I was kind of familiar with Liberal, but now I get the chance to know the town better, which is great. So far, Liberal's been great for us, and my wife and I are looking forward to living here and being part of the community.”

And the work started almost immediately, Clark said.

“A lot of the work I got started on when I came on concerned the new superintendent, who started only a week before I did, so we've been working together on a number of things he needed to share, and we're wanting to get him exposed to the community so everyone knows they can get in touch with him,” Clark said. “He's got a lot of great ideas for the district, and communication is a big part of that, so there's already been quite a bit of collaboration between us so far.”

Even with being rather new to the position, Clark said there are already some goals he has.

“One goal for me is to help get a positive image of the district out to the community and make everyone aware of what's going on. I also want to help the district's faculty and staff to understand the importance of communication and providing any necessary information to be shared with the community,” Clark said. “There are a lot of opportunities available that are sometimes missed out on because everyone's first thought isn't necessarily 'We've GOT to share this with the community!' That can be perceived as us hiding something, but in truth, there's just a lot of work going on and again, everyone's primary thought isn't necessarily about sharing information to everyone. That's where a lot of that community trust comes from, with us being transparent and being as open as possible. Since I'm still so new, we really haven't gotten too far into any specifics about the long term, but like I said earlier, we really just want to make sure we're being more open to the community and sharing more about what's going on throughout the district. And if anyone has any questions about anything going on throughout the district, they are more than welcome to get in touch with me at the Central Office at (620) 604-1000 – just let me know what you're interested in knowing about, and I'll do my best to get together all the information needed.”

And so far, Clark said, things have started in Liberal on a rather positive note, and he expects that to continue.

“So far, there's been a lot of unpacking on my end and getting moved in,” Clark said with a chuckle. “I moved up about a week before my wife joined me, and that was when the hurricane hit, so she had to pack and move in the aftermath of all that mess. She'd had to evacuate to Waco for a few days, but then went back home and had to pack and load the truck and follow me to Liberal. It was tough for both of us because while I was starting to get settled and starting to get to know the office, she was dealing with moving after a hurricane, so we're definitely both ready for a bit of calm. I'm really excited to really get everything going here, and I'm really looking forward to all the opportunities ahead for everyone in USD 480.”

ELLY GRIMM

• Leader & Times

The summer is winding down, meaning back-to-school time will soon be upon the area.

In addition to new backpacks and other school supplies, children throughout USD 480 will also need to make sure they are up to date with their vaccinations, according to Seward County Health Department Clinic Nurse Supervisor Lesha Morlen.

“With back-to-school time coming up, I would say definitely come during our immunization clinic, it'll be a walk-in clinic, and that'll take place from Aug. 5 through 9 during our regular hours at the Seward County Health Department,” Morlen said. “If it's been a while since they've been notified by the school about needing these immunizations, the children might not be able to attend classes until they get their immunizations done, so it's important for parents to get that done before school starts up. Everything's the same for this year as it has been in the past, there's not really anything new as far as required vaccinations.”

Morlen also offered encouragement for families to take part in the immunization clinic.

“I would encourage parents to come in with their children so they're not prevented from attending class when school starts up for this year,” Morlen said. “It's also good peace of mind for the parents so they officially know their kids are up to date with their needed shots, and that physical record is there for them to look at. It's also great to get all that stuff done during the summer because there aren't as many commitments to think about, the kids won't be missing out on anything if they come in during the day, so come in and get all that knocked out before school starts. The clinics are great because they can just walk in here and don't have to worry about setting up a separate appointment with their primary physician somewhere else, and they can walk out all ready to go. If you're not able to come to the clinic, make an appointment and come in as soon as possible. We are booked out several months in advance, so you might not get in as quickly as you need to, so call as soon as you can if circumstances prevent you from making it to our clinic that week.”

Morlen said she and the rest of the staff are playing things rather by eye as far as expectations for the clinic this time around.

“It's honestly hard to say what our expectations are for something like this because it varies from year to year. We already had one clinic earlier this month, which didn't see as many people as we expected, but we did still see quite a few patients,” Morlen said. “I do expect us to maybe see more this time around, because I think parents are more used to these clinics taking place in August, so I'm hoping we see higher turnout.  With the times we'll have these walk-in clinics available, it should give families plenty of time to come in and get done what they need to. But again, if it happens you CAN'T come in during one of those walk-in clinic days, give us a call at the health department and we'll get that appointment set up. I expect we'll be especially busy those first couple days of the clinic and have things taper off as the week goes on, but again, we  have no way of truly predicting what we'll see. It's definitely better to get this done sooner rather than later because if it gets to a certain point too close to the school year, we might not be able to get you in. I know the school district also has guidelines to follow, so it's good to go ahead and get them in order to avoid any delays in enrollment and all of that.”

Morlen also talked about the requirements for families to take part in the clinic, and added she hopes to see lots of students coming in and getting immunized in the coming weeks.

“Those coming to the clinic must bring their insurance card, an ID of some sort, a birth certificate, and their immunization record, because sometimes, the immunizations are not on their record, but a patient did in fact receive it, so if we're reading their record, we might pull it up from the state registry and ultimately give someone a shot or multiple shots they don't actually need,” Morlen said. “The clinic is for everyone 2 months old and up, it's open to everyone. Be sure and bring all the necessary paperwork with you, especially the birth certificate, because if you don't have that and we've never seen you in the clinic, you'll be turned away.”