The campus will receive $180,000 over two years from the Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina. The grant will fund the start-up of the Salkehatchie Healthy Communities Collaborative, which will use the resources of the campus and the other collaborative partners to address the county’s health needs. Plans include the creation of a community education and wellness center that will focus on disease prevention and health maintenance in the community.

“We wanted to look at USC Salkehatchie’s role in the health and wellness concerns in the counties we serve,” said Ann Carmichael, USC Salkehatchie dean. “In small, rural, primarily poor areas, there are usually some additional challenges we’re faced with that some other communities in metropolitan areas don’t have.”

USC Salkehatchie already has identified an existing facility that could be adapted for use as the wellness center and collaborative staff offices. Also, the current walking trail could be outfitted as a fitness trail that could benefit all citizens of the county.

Those plans, and others, were developed with the input of more than 20 area health care providers who helped Salkehatchie identify areas where the campus could be of assistance to them in their daily practices. Carmichael said those ideas repeatedly broke down into three categories: education, research, and disease prevention.

The wellness center and fitness trail address directly disease prevention. In addition to providing a fitness facility that could be accessed by the entire community for a nominal fee, the collaborative also wants to provide fitness services to patients referred by physicians for specific needs. The collaborative also is interested in broadening the dental services offered in the local schools to include comprehensive health care to K–12.

The Smiles for a Lifetime Dental Clinic was the inspiration for the collaborative. Carmichael said that community partnership had worked so well—and had such an immediate impact on the community—that talks began to find other areas that could be similarly addressed.

Carmichael envisions USC Salkehatchie addressing the education aspect by helping local health care providers educate residents about health issues, as well as serve as a center collection and dissemination point for health information. The campus would work with area technical colleges and hospitals to expand its program offerings in health-related fields at the Allendale campus. The existing Helping Hands program, funded by the Duke Endowment, already is working to train certified nursing assistants and emergency medical technicians. Using those programs as building blocks, USC Salkehatchie and the collaborative would recruit additional people interested in pursuing medical occupations.

Concerning research, Carmichael said the campus’ role will likely take the form of researching existing programs, identifying gaps, and helping local providers identify the programs and efforts that are most effective. The collaborative will partner with the USC Columbia School of Public Health, allowing graduate students to assess the effectiveness of those programs.

“This grant is a major mile marker for us in our health education efforts, and it is a good first step,” Carmichael said. “We are so grateful to the Sisters of Charity Foundation of South Carolina for their support of this project and sharing in the vision of what the collaborative can accomplish in this region.”

The $180,000 is a starting point for the collaborative, the seed money that will allow it to get established, hire personnel, and begin seeking additional funding to take its projects from plans to reality. USC Salkehatchie personnel already have begun seeking grant funding for the walking trail, fitness center, and other efforts.

Partners in this Collaborative, in addition to USC Salkehatchie, include Healthy Learners, Allendale County ALIVE, Low Country Health Care System, Allendale County Hospital, Columbia Urban League, Allendale County Schools, and the S.C. Department of Education. Other representatives from the S.C. Rural Access Program, local health departments, various clinics, and AHEC also served on an advisory committee.

“We’re thrilled with the support we have received from the Sisters of Charity Foundation, but also the level of interest those involved in health care have expressed in Salkehatchie’s involvement,” Carmichael said. “Had we not received that kind of support and shared vision, we wouldn’t have been as successful in this first phase.”

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