STRENGTHS:

1. Customer Based Need: The Health Department is required by law to be available to the public. The consumers are always going to be there because the Health Department provides services that you can only receive there.
2. Monetary Resources: Many of the programs at the Health Department are funded by monies received from state and federal funding. They also apply and received many grants that increase the funding available for those programs.
3. Collaboration with Community Partners: They work closely with doctors offices, Dental Clinic North (located in the same building), Community Mental Health, suicide prevention services, the local hospital, maternal and infant organizations, food pantries, churches, builders, and many other local businesses to help increase the awareness of public health.
4. Integrated Services: The Health Department, for many, is a one stop shop for many needs. A client could coordinate visits for dental, reproductive health, and immunizations in one visit if they wanted too.
5. Social Media: The Health Department has Facebook and Twitter pages that is updated multiple times a week.

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WEAKNESSES:

1. Monetary Resources: This is a strength and a weakness. Because the resources stay so steady and consistent, the amount of funds available to make large changes is very constricted.
2. Outdated Technological Resources: The computers, phone systems, and technology used are in need of a desperate upgrade, but because of the inability to increase the budget due to the overall counties budget issue, the resources are not a top priority.
3. Communities Lack of Awareness: As for any service, most people don’t know it is available until they need to use it. This is the same for the Health Department. The services provided by them are under-utilized because the residents don’t know they are available.

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OPPORTUNITIES:

1. Increase Social Media Marketing and Local Advertising: There is opportunities to increase social media marketing by paying to advertise. Along with that they could start a local advertising campaign with buses, billboards, newspaper advertising and e-news advertising.
2. Community Connections: Community Connections is a local resource for individuals who are in need of assistance. It is a coordinated effort between doctors offices and other resources to help aid residents to find services, resources, and programs they are in need of. The Health Department is one of their referral resources.
3. Community Outreach: There are many opportunities to get out into the public eye in Grand Traverse County. There are events scheduled every week during the summer/fall that the Health Department can have booths at. They also have many locations in need of on-site clinics, like local homeless shelters, churches, and food pantries.

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THREATS:

1. County Budget Issues: Grand Traverse County has a debt issue due to its lack of proper payments on its pension debt from over 30 years ago. This is threatening because of the low employee morale due to little to no increase in wages, budget cuts, and stress in the workplace due to not being able to hire additional staffing because of budget constraints.
2. Strong and Vocal Anti-Vaccination Group(s): There is a strong and very vocal anti-vaccination group(s) in the community of Grand Traverse County. This group does utilize social media to spread untruths about vaccines and the Health Department cannot respond back.
3. Changes to the Affordable Care Act: When there are changes to any federally funded program, that has a trickle down effect to federally funded agencies like local Health Departments.