History
GIVN began with the vision of one newly elected county board member representing two townships in rural Northern Wisconsin. During his meetings with voters in the spring of 2021, a lack of services for older Americans was constantly mentioned. This individual (Richard Logan) discussed this matter with the Town Boards of Presque Isle and Winchester and held discussions with a rural development consultant and grant writer (Dan Peterson) who had recently moved back into the community. They held several meetings about the best approach for improving local services. Mr. Peterson strongly advocated for the formation of a rural health network and said they had proven successful in developing needed services in many similar rural communities nationally. Don’t worry about sounding professional. Sound like you. There are over 1.5 billion websites out there, but your story is what’s going to separate this one from the rest.
In August of 2022, a core group of public officials agreed to form a planning committee for the network. This committee agreed to meet with local providers who might be interested in joining the network. Between September of 2022, and January of 2024, members of the planning committee met with a total of 22 agencies and providers about the need to address the region’s health concerns. These include five hospitals, three tribal health centers, and numerous local health care providers. Most of those who were familiar with health networks agreed it was a worthwhile goal, however only three agreed to join the network. Because many rural residents of Vilas and Iron Counties used services in Michigan, the planning committee decided on a two state service area to include Gogebic County, Michigan would be the best approach. This model has worked well in other states with similar service delivery issues. Thus, the Gogebic, Iron, and Vilas Network or GIVN was established.
During provider meetings, many health care needs were identified. The most significant health care needs identified in the network’s service area in no rank order were: 1.) Services for older Americans including nutrition and home care; 2.) the need to improve access to primary care and especially primary care providers, 3.) Understaffed emergency medical services and emergency rooms with small townships being unable to continue to fund EMS, 4.) Poor access to public transportation for seniors and the disabled person living in many communities, 5.) Poorly funded or nonexistent prevention and community education services, 6.) Poor access to dental care and optometry, 7.) Closures of local hospital services resulting in less access to specialty care, 8.) Inadequate and hard to access behavioral health services, 9.) Limited public health services (Wisconsin ranks 48th for such services nationally), and 10.) Poor funding of local services due to an outdated county funding mechanism.
The GIVN network plans to identify and directly address many if not all these concerns during its first five years of operation. It will use a similar approach to that used by other successful rural health networks nationally. That being to directly collaborate with providers and to fully utilize the resources of its members to address documented gaps in services. These will be identified and verified during the network’s FY 2025 planning grant based on data collection, public meetings (forums), stakeholder meetings, and sharing of information between partners. A network website and meetings with numerous providers and agencies will be used to develop the five-year strategic plan of GIVN. This plan will then be used to design and develop programs needed across the service area. At the same time, the administrative structure of the network will be fully implemented. This will include final approval of by-laws, selection of a permanent board of directors, development of referral agreements and MOUs between partners, and information systems and policy development. This will allow the network to seek funding for and to implement many needed services over the next five years.