Knox Community Hospital

Volunteers remained active in specific areas of the hospital, providing needed services such assisting visitors at the front desks of the hospital's three main buildings, assisting patients in surgery waiting, managing the two gift shops and assisting in the center for cancer care. funds raised through the gift shops provide health care scholarships to local students. a total of 62 volunteers served 10,661 hours during the year.

Kch has strong partnerships with the nursing schools in the area colleges/universities, and toward that end, provided clinical supervision and precepting for students. the total number of students' clinical hours in 2024 was 15,196, with additional 2,234 hours of job shadowing, as well. since kch is the only hospital in the county, this is critical to help support these students' goals and to help meet the shortage of nursing staff that is evident both locally and across the country.

According to the community health assessment conducted in 2024, 23% of respondents rank chronic diseases (diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, cancer, and strokes) as a top community health concern. one community member stated, "most people don't know they have heart disease." respondents reported that they believe the top issues for chronic diseases are poor diet/obesity; alcohol/tobacco/substance use; lack of affordability; older homes.to help increase awareness of possible heart disease and access to care, knox community hospital conducted 20-minute heart checks for a total of 46 community members, at a greatly reduced fee of $20 per person. in addition, to increase cancer awareness and prevention, one of our efforts included a campaign regarding the importance of colon cancer screenings. held during march, colorectal cancer awareness month, the hospital used website, social media, press release, flyers and more to encourage the community to pick up free colon cancer screening kits and return the samples for testing in our labs. a total of 400 kits were picked up and 215 kits were tested in the lab.clinical staff from both diabetes education and stroke prevention programs shared educational resources with 150+ senior citizens at the senior resource day held in september 2024. the half-day community event was sponsored by knox county task force for older adults. information was shared about cancer, diabetes prevention, heart disease prevention, substance abuse, stroke awareness, and more during the city of mount vernon's "first friday" events (held monthly from june through september). during november, diabetes awareness month, the following methods were used to increase awareness and educate our community: social media posts, press release sent to media and published on website, streetlamp banners in downtown mount vernon. obesity is an ongoing problem for the community according the community health needs assessment, and often becomes more challenging when combined with one of the above-mentioned chronic diseases. in an effort to reduce this number and support the local schools' athletic programs, kch provided athletic training during the school year in 2024 for a nominal fee at danville, utica,, fredericktown, east knox, mount vernon and centerburg while also donating $221,776 worth of our trainers' time. in the fall of 2024, kch also donated $7,000 toward the purchase of bikes, a bike rack and helmets for local grade schools through a united way of knox county program called all kids bike. this partnership includes a training program for the gym teachers of those schools to help teach kids bike use and safety.mental health and substance abuse continue to be a top priority concerns identified through the community health assessment. when kch see patients with a mental health or behavioral health condition and/or diagnosis, we often collaborate with other organizations to serve this population. for example, through our emergency department, once a patient has completed the necessary medical