Foundation lends booster to public health

With a little help, Kay Kindig will protect society from some of its most consistent killers.

“Cardiovascular screening, diabetes screening, smoking cessation – those are the programs we could offer,” Kindig says. “Those are the things that are killing people and we can prevent them.”

The Panhandle Health District doesn’t have the money for such programs, but Kindig is leading a new foundation that eventually will have the money. The nonprofit Panhandle Public Health Foundation started this year to nourish public health programs, many of which are suffering from budget cuts.

The foundation was Kindig’s brainchild in the early 1990s when she directed the health district’s home health program. Demand for services was greater than the health district could afford. Kindig read about a health department in Tulsa, Okla., that had a community foundation. It raised money to help those public health programs that never had enough funding.

Kindig bounced the idea around the district and found plenty of interest. But the foundation didn’t make it past the talking stage until Kindig retired in 2001, after serving for two years as the district’s director. Her passion for public health and the people it reaches motivated her to offer to start a foundation in her new free time. The district accepted her offer.

Public health reaches out to the masses. It protects society with immunizations, vaccines during outbreaks, restaurant inspections, air quality monitoring, drinking-water protection, cancer screening, programs to prevent sexually transmitted diseases and much more. Many of its fees vary by the income level of its clients.

“We know people value public health, but until they get in a situation where they realize what we do, they don’t have enough information to value it,” says Jeanne Bock, the Panhandle Health District’s director now. “It’s kind of like the fire department. You take them for granted until your house is on fire.”

People also tend to believe their tax dollars pay for public health programs, but they’re only slightly right. Only 21 percent of the Panhandle Health District’s budget comes from the state and the five northern counties, which the district serves. The rest of the budget comes from contracts and grants specific to certain programs. For example, the district offers the Women’s, Infant and Children nutrition program for low-income families through a contract with the state’s Division of Health and Department of Agriculture.

As its budget has shrunk, the district has reduced the number of services it can offer.

“We have 200 people on a waiting list in Kootenai County for the Senior Companion program,” says Terri Roeth, the program’s director.

Senior companions help other seniors with rides to doctor appointments, grocery shopping, even writing letters. The Homemaker program has gone the same direction. Homemakers provide light housekeeping to homebound seniors who couldn’t live alone without the help. A federal grant pays for the program, but it hasn’t grown as demand for the service has, Kindig says.

The health district can accept donations, but it can’t ask for them. Kindig set up the foundation separate from the district but with the goal of helping the district’s programs. The foundation also plans to help other nonprofit health-related programs in the five northern counties, for instance the North Idaho AIDS Coalition (NIAC) or the North Idaho Alzheimer’s Association.

“I could see the foundation helping us with prevention work,” says Keith Wolter, NIAC director. “We have no funding anymore for prevention in North Idaho. The $2,000 we have left is to do HIV testing and that comes with a contract.”

Three Cs – Cancer, Community and Charities – is a social group that raises about $40,000 a year for primarily health-related charities in Kootenai County. The Kootenai Medical Center Foundation also raises money for public health, but the money goes to hospital programs. Kindig decided to combine the two ideas for the Panhandle Health District.

“We want to be able to fund some really small programs in the outlying counties,” Kindig says. “Like Hospice in remote areas.”

Hospice provides health support that allows people to die at home.

Other health districts in the state are watching the Panhandle Public Health Foundation’s progress to decide if a foundation could help them.

“We have a senior nutrition program and funding for that has been flat for a number of years. But we have more and more demand, especially from frail seniors,” says Kathy Holley, director of Boise’s Central District Health Department. “We do some fund-raisers. We’re watching the foundation to see if this idea would work for us. It’s exciting what they’re doing.”

Panhandle Health District employees are ready to write grant applications to help their programs as soon as the foundation raises enough money to distribute, Bock says. She figures $5,000 is a good starting amount.

“Community input suggests an endowment fund,” she says.

The foundation is close. It raised $1,800 at a summer banquet and book sale. Last month, the Panhandle Health District’s 163 employees showed their overwhelming support for the idea by supplying items for a silent auction, then bidding among themselves for the items they supplied.

They filled tables at St. Pius Catholic Church in Coeur d’Alene with automotive supplies, Halloween decorations and picnic goods in baskets next to everything from microwave popcorn and wind chimes to containers of northern red spring wheat and a robe for dog lovers. The robe was covered in dog bones. Items ranged from $7 to $150 for a weekend in a cabin at Newman Lake. The auction raised $2,230.

Kindig wants to start an annual physical benefit in the spring, possibly a bike ride on the Trail of the Coeur d’Alenes, and a family event in the fall, such as a hoedown. Both fit the public health philosophy, she says.

She remembers when her home health division awarded money to a senior center to buy a commercial refrigerator for its Meals on Wheels program. The center was so pleased. That’s the kind of help the Panhandle Public Health Foundation could give along with community education programs on such health problems as obesity and cholesterol.

“A little bit of help is like a gift from heaven,” Kindig says. “And with a little education, a crisis could be prevented.”