BENNINGTON, Vt. â Southwestern Vermont Medical Center in Bennington, Vt., has launched a comprehensive health assessment of the communities it serves in three states, seeking feedback through a short, anonymous survey, open to all.
SVMC is encouraging residents in Bennington and Windham counties of Vermont, eastern Rensselaer and Washington counties of New York and northern Berkshire County in Massachusetts to take the brief survey, now available at SVMC.org.
In addition to the digital survey, SVMC will be conducting in-person community outreach to collect responses.
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âThe voices of our patients and community at large help set SVMCâs priorities over the next three years,â said Pamela Duchene, the medical centerâs chief nursing officer and vice president of Patient Care Services. âThatâs why it is vitally important we hear from all community members, at every level, to ensure we understand the challenges they are facing and the ways our health system can make an impact.â
The online survey includes questions about the personâs general health, the reasons someone might not be able to access health care when needed; issues in affording adequate food or paying for utilities; access to transportation and opportunities for physical activity; whether the person feels safe, lonely or anxious, or is struggling with addiction; has access to health insurance; their level or education or training; and whether the person is employed full- or part-time or self-employed.
Every three years
Conducted every three years, the institutionâs Community Health Needs Assessment process allows SVMC, a member of Dartmouth Health, to understand the current health needs of its region, assess the services available to residents and identify where and how improvements can be made.
Community leaders throughout SVMCâs tri-state region will also receive a Leadership Scan, requesting insight on the needs of populations these leaders work with and serve.
The health assessment will be open through early spring 2024.
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2022 assessment
In a report on the most recent needs assessment survey in 2021-22, the medical center collected community health and wellness data, gathered from a variety of sources, including a digital survey, a series of community forums and secondary data sources, such as the U.S. Census Bureau and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The survey process from that assessment identified the following priority health needs categories, to be addressed over the next three years: mental health supports; promotion of healthy behaviors and primary prevention activities; accessibility of high-quality, convenient and affordable care; and substance use prevention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery Resources.
Assessment results in the prior report revealed that some populations are more likely to face negative outcomes relating to the social, environmental and economic determinants of health.
âThe data clearly indicated that people of color, individuals aged 13 to 34 years old, and the LGBTQ+ population are facing modifiable health disparities relating to all four of the priority health needs,â a hospital spokesperson said in 2022. âOur efforts to meet those needs in the coming years, while broadly focused across our entire service area, will additionally seek to address the unique challenges experienced by minority, marginalized and vulnerable populations.â
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SVMC includes Southwestern Vermont Regional Cancer Center, the SVHC Foundation, as well as 25 primary and specialty care practices.
Thomas P. Salmon, who served as the 23rd president of the University of Vermont and who was twice elected governor of the Green Mountain State, died Tuesday, January 14, in a convalescent home in Brattleboro. He was 92.
Born in Cleveland, Ohio, in1932, Salmon was raised in…
USA TODAY TV critic Kelly Lawler shares her top 5 TV shows she is most excited for this year
It’s time to hit the books: one of Vermont’s most popular colleges may be one that doesn’t exist.
The Jan. 15 New York Times mini crossword game hinted at a fictional Vermont college that’s used as the setting of the show “The Sex Lives of College Girls.”
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The show, which was co-created by New Englander Mindy Kaling, follows a group of women in college as they navigate relationships, school and adulthood.
“The Sex Lives of College Girls” first premiered on Max, formerly HBO Max, in 2021. Its third season was released in November 2024.
Here’s what to know about the show’s fictional setting.
What is the fictional college in ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’?
“The Sex Lives of College Girls” takes place at a fictional prestigious college in Vermont called Essex College.
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According to Vulture, Essex College was developed by the show’s co-creators, Kaling and Justin Noble, based on real colleges like their respective alma maters, Dartmouth College and Yale University.
“Right before COVID hit, we planned a research trip to the East Coast and set meetings with all these different groups of young women at these colleges and chatted about what their experiences were,” Noble told the outlet in 2021.
Kaling also said in an interview with Parade that she and Noble ventured to their alma maters because they “both, in some ways, fit this East Coast story” that is depicted in the show.
Where is ‘The Sex Lives of College Girls’ filmed?
Although “The Sex Lives of College Girls” features a New England college, the show wasn’t filmed in the area.
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The show’s first season was filmed in Los Angeles, while some of the campus scenes were shot at Vassar College in Poughkeepsie, New York. The second season was partially filmed at the University of Washington in Seattle, Washington.
When Vermont Democrats lacked a gubernatorial candidate the afternoon of the primary deadline in August 1972, Rockingham lawyer Tom Salmon, in the most last-minute of Hail Mary passes, threw his hat in the ring.
“There could be a whale of a big surprise,” Salmon was quoted as saying by skeptical reporters who knew the former local legislator had been soundly beached in his first try for state office two years earlier.
Then a Moby Dick of a shock came on Election Day, spurring the Burlington Free Press to deem Salmon’s Nov. 7, 1972, victory over the now late Republican businessman Luther “Fred” Hackett “the biggest political upset in Vermont history.”
Salmon, who served two terms as governor, continued to defy the odds in subsequent decades, be it by overcoming a losing 1976 U.S. Senate bid to become president of the University of Vermont, or by entering a Brattleboro convalescent home in 2022, only to confound doctors by living nearly three more years until his death Tuesday.
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Salmon, surrounded by family, died just before sundown at the Pine Heights Center for Nursing and Rehabilitation at age 92, his children announced shortly after.
“Your man Winston Churchill always said, ‘Never, never, never, never give up,” Salmon’s son, former state Auditor Thomas M. Salmon, recalled telling his father in his last days, “and Dad, you’ve demonstrated that.”
Born in the Midwest and raised in Massachusetts, Thomas P. Salmon graduated from Boston College Law School before moving to Rockingham in 1958 to work as an attorney, a municipal judge from 1963 to 1965, and a state representative from 1965 to 1971.
Salmon capped his legislative tenure as House minority leader. But his political career hit a wall in 1970 when he lost a race for attorney general by 17 points to incumbent Jim Jeffords, the now late maverick Republican who’d go on to serve in the U.S. House and Senate before his seismic 2001 party switch.
Vermont had made national news in 1962 when the now late Philip Hoff became the first Democrat to win popular election as governor since the founding of the Republican Party in 1854. But the GOP had a vise-grip on the rest of the ballot, held two-thirds of all seats in the Legislature and took back the executive chamber when the now deceased insurance executive Deane Davis won after Hoff stepped down in 1968.
As Republican President Richard Nixon campaigned for reelection in 1972, Democrats were split over whether to support former Vice President Hubert Humphrey or U.S. senators George McGovern or Edmund Muskie. The Vermont party was so divided, it couldn’t field a full slate of aspirants to run for state office.
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“The reason that we can’t get candidates this year is that people don’t want to get caught in the struggle,” Hoff told reporters at the time. “The right kind of Democrat could have a good chance for the governorship this year, but we have yet to see him.”
Enter Salmon. Two years after his trouncing, he had every reason not to run again. Then he attended the Miami presidential convention that nominated McGovern.
“I listened to the leadership of the Democratic Party committed to tilting at windmills against what seemed to be the almost certain reelection of President Nixon,” Salmon recalled in a 1989 PBS interview with journalist Chris Graff. “That very night I made up my mind I was going to make the effort despite the odds.”
Before Vermont moved its primaries to August in 2010, party voting took place in September. That’s why Salmon could wait until hours before the Aug. 2, 1972, filing deadline to place his name on the ballot.
“Most Democratic leaders conceded that Salmon’s chances of nailing down the state’s top job are quite dim,” wrote the Rutland Herald and Times Argus, reporting that Salmon was favored by no more than 18% of those surveyed.
(Gov. Davis’ preferred successor, Hackett, was the front-runner. A then-unknown Liberty Union Party candidate — Bernie Sanders — rounded out the race.)
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“We agreed that there was no chance of our winning the election unless the campaign stood for something,” Salmon said in his 1989 PBS interview. “Namely, addressed real issues that people in Vermont cared about.”
Salmon proposed to support average residents by reforming the property tax and restricting unplanned development, offering the motto “Vermont is not for sale.” In contrast, his Republican opponent called for repealing the state’s then-new litter-decreasing bottle-deposit law, while a Rutland County representative to the GOP’s National Committee, Roland Seward, told reporters, “What are we saving the environment for, the animals?”
As Republicans crowded into a Montpelier ballroom on election night, Salmon stayed home in the Rockingham village of Bellows Falls — the better to watch his then 9-year-old namesake son join a dozen friends in breaking a garage window during an impromptu football game, the press would report.
At 10:20 p.m., CBS news anchor Walter Cronkite interrupted news of a Nixon landslide to announce, “It looks like there’s an upset in the making in Vermont.”
The Rutland Herald and Times Argus summed up Salmon’s “winning combination” (he scored 56% of the vote) as “the image of an underdog fighting ‘the machine’” and “an appeal to the pocketbook on taxes and electric power.”
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Outgoing Gov. Davis would later write in his autobiography that the Democrat was “an extremely intelligent, articulate, handsome individual with loads of charm.”
“Salmon accepted a challenge which several other Democrats had turned down,” the Free Press added in an unusual front-page editorial of congratulations. “He then accomplished what almost all observers saw as a virtual impossibility.”
As governor, Salmon pushed for the prohibition of phosphates in state waters and the formation of the Agency of Transportation. Stepping down after four years to run for U.S. Senate in 1976, he was defeated by incumbent Republican Robert Stafford, the now late namesake of the Stafford federal guaranteed student loan program.
Salmon went on to serve as president of the University of Vermont and chair of the board of Green Mountain Power. In his 1977 gubernatorial farewell address, he summed up his challenges — and said he had no regrets.
“A friend asked me the other day if it was all worth it,” Salmon said. “Wasn’t I owed more than I received with the energy crisis, Watergate, inflation, recession, natural disasters, no money, no snow, a tax revolt, and the anxiety of our people over government’s capacity to respond to their needs? My answer was this: I came to this state in 1958 with barely enough money in my pocket to pay for an overnight room. In 14 short years I became governor. The people of Vermont owe me nothing. I owe them everything for the privilege of serving two terms in the highest office Vermont can confer on one of its citizens.”