The Flathead City-Council Health Department recently launched an online community health planning tool known as Flathead Forward — a digital platform designed to streamline resources in the valley for different health-related groups and the general public.

The website, flatheadforward.com, includes four major sections: community economic, environmental, health and education plans, an events calendar, a data “warehouse” and links to various groups in the valley, including ones for mental health, contagious disease and county air quality.

“This is a place for groups to share the good work they are doing and also a place to identify and find some new partners that they haven’t worked with previously,” said Molly Neu, a health promotion specialist with the health department. “We need to move people and organizations out of silos and this gives them the opportunity to coordinate and share resources.”

Flathead County residents have the opportunity to register for free and join groups where they can receive overarching information, raw data, documents, community updates and join conversation threads. For example, in a group labeled “contagious disease,” one can find raw data on pertussis or hepatitis cases or ask questions related to specific outbreaks.

According to Heather Murray, public health nurse with the health department, there are currently 27 groups from the valley on the website.

“We think of health very broadly, so things like jobs, transportation, sports, those are things we all consider health-related. It’s broad and it’s meant for everyone and we want the tool to kind of organically develops on its own,” Murray said. “We want this to be a community website, not a county website.”

Neu said she hopes the community recognizes Flathead Forward as a source of transparency as well — a platform that better links health resources in the valley to the residents they serve.

“It’s really accountability and transparency. By sharing this data and these documents we [the county and groups] are held accountable for doing the work we say we are going to do. People can put in their input, they can ask questions,” Neu said.

Flathead County was one of five counties nationwide awarded a $15,000 grant to build the website as a replica of an award-winning “digital collaboration framework” originally developed for the Garrett County Health Department in Maryland.

The county received its grant from the Public Health National Center for Innovations. Other counties that were awarded the grant include Medina County in Ohio and Washington, D.C. as a city. The organizations looked at many factors when considering which counties should receive the grants, including diversity in geography and population.

Murray said the award-winning tool was designed as “a digital space created to increase engagement from the community and allow them to help in the health planning process” — something that Flathead County, which is very rural in nature, could benefit from.

In the coming months, the department hopes to expand the tool past the Kalispell and Whitefish areas. According to a press release from the health department, the department plans to “include communities from Polebridge and Hungry Horse, to Swan Lake, Kila and Lakeside. Flathead Forward is a way for all residents of Flathead County to connect and talk about what matters most to them and their community.”

Neu and Murray encourage residents to start their own group on the platform. For more information, those interested can head to the website flatheadforward.com.

Reporter Kianna Gardner can be reached at 758-4439 or [email protected]