GIVE YOUR TWO CENTS. Take five minutes and fill out the 2026 Community Health Survey and let the Chippewa Valley's health coalitions know what personal or community concerns you'd like to see prioritized over the next three years.

Once every three years, the wider Chippewa Valley’s healthcare providers and organizations collaborate to identify what the next few years of priorities could entail. One way to gauge community priorities is through a quick online survey, available to take right now through the end of October.

Just shy of a dozen local orgs – including the Chippewa County and Dunn County Health Departments, Eau Claire City-County Health Department, United Way of the Greater Chippewa Valley, among others – partner to conduct the initiative, in compliance with state and federal requirements.

Organizers ask area residents to rank a variety of issues, from local education to healthcare and social issues, as well as a series of demographic questions. It should take about five minutes, a recent media release noted.

“To really understand and improve health in our region, we need to hear directly from the people that live and work here,” Eau Claire City-County Health Dept. Director Lieske Giese said. “Their daily experiences give much-needed context to the health data we use and help identify what health issues need to be highest priority for our community, organizations and local government.”

This survey will be just one of many steps to gather input from the community. Later this fall, conversations with residents will be held across all three counties to discuss individual and community-wide concerns or issues related to health in the Chippewa Valley.

In total, those efforts will take about nine months to complete and conclude with a new Community Health Assessment (CHA) report from each county.

Their respective health departments – in Eau Claire’s case, the joint City-County department – will see those CHA results utilized by their respective county health coalitions and build toward a new Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP).

In Chippewa county, that’s the Chippewa County Healthy Communities; in Dunn county, the Health Dunn Right org; and in the Eau Claire area, the Eau Claire Health Alliance.

Top 5 priorities identified in the 2024 survey and initiative

Chippewa County

1) Alcohol misuse
2) Low-quality or lack of public transportation
3) Health care access difficulty
4) Lack of access to childcare or unaffordable childcare
5) Poor mental health

Dunn County

1) Lack of access to childcare or unaffordable childcare
2) Environment or water pollution
3) Health care is difficult to access
4) Alcohol misuse
5) Lack of safe or affordable housing

Eau Claire County

1) Alcohol misuse
2) Poor mental health
3) Lack of access to childcare or unaffordable childcare
4) Substance misuse
5) Lack of safe or affordable housing

From the 2024 survey results, CHIPs for the 2025-27 timeframe were created in each respective county. In the Eau Claire area, 13 objectives were outlined in that CHIP, all of which will have been worked on by the end of next year, Seifert said.

Some resulting initiatives from the last CHA and CHIP, in Eau Claire, included an alcohol-free family game hosted this summer by the Eau Claire Express and a new task force to educate adults on social norms’ influence on youth alcohol use.

The 2026 Community Health Survey is available online now through October. Learn more about the Chippewa County Healthy Communities, Health Dunn Right and Eau Claire Health Alliance organizations online.