FAIRMONT — A Covid-19 impact survey is being sent out to members in the community by Public Health and Human Services of Faribault and Martin Counties.

The survey results will be used by the Stronger Together coalition which includes a variety of community partners like the healthcare systems, schools and other service organizations.

Caroline McCourt, Statewide Health Improvement Partnership (SHIP) Community Specialist, stressed that the survey is completely anonymous.

McCourt said public health isn’t required to do the survey, but thought it would be a good way to measure the impact Covid-19 has had on members of the community.

A random sampling has gone out to households in Faribault, Martin and Watonwan counties, which are all under SHIP, so funds were used to spread it out across the three counties.

McCourt said they also will put out a convenience sampling where anyone who wants to complete the survey can do so through a link which will be shared at a later date. That gives people who haven’t filled out the mail-in survey the opportunity to provide their input.

“We will have an adult community needs assessment that is required. That will be coming in a few months,” McCourt added.

The survey focuses on mental health and well-being, financial stress and substance use and abuse over the course of the pandemic.

“The purpose of this will help to direct or dictate where funding is spent or where programs are created or changed,” McCourt explained.

She said they had reached out to several public health programs in other counties and that Olmstead County said they had been able to share the data they collected in a survey with other collaborative partners in their community which allowed them to change some programming and focus funding elsewhere as a result.

As for timing, McCourt said they felt this was a good time as local Covid-19 case numbers are fortunately way down across the three counties.

“Our response has changed a lot. For several months we were doing case investigations and contact tracing, trying to call every positive case that we had to give them information and then we switched over to vaccination clinics,” McCourt said.

She said now the vaccinations clinics are less busy and testing has also significantly decreased so they’re offering it just one day a week. This allows members of public health to focus a portion of their time planning out future moves.

“The information is anonymous. It’s really just trying to understand how people have been impacted over the last two years and to give us ideas on how we should move forward,” McCourt said.