Amy D’Addario and Jason Schulist were guests on Focus Fox Valley with Hayley Tenpas.
Listen to the interview (starting around 19:50) here.
- The Fox Valley Data Exchange is a free, one-stop hub with over 400,000 data points, organized around seven Vital Conditions for Wellbeing; mental health lives under “Basic Needs for Health and Safety.”
- In that section, users can see indicators like depression rates, poor self‑reported mental health (14+ bad mental health days in 30), and related measures such as binge drinking, all viewable down to neighborhood (census tract) level.
- The data show poor self‑reported mental health has worsened since 2017, rising from roughly low‑teens percentages into the mid‑ to high‑teens range, helping make the case that mental health needs are not improving and require focused attention.
- Samaritan Fox Valley’s Wellness Screen program (school-based mental health screening for primarily middle and high school students) uses local data to target where to screen, seek grants, and justify continued funding.
- A Tri-County health coalition (hospitals and public health in Calumet, Outagamie, and Winnebago) is using these metrics plus local surveys to set mental health and belonging/civic-muscIe as top priorities, and to guide new efforts such as expanding screening to adults in workplaces.
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