With Early Success, Plainville-Southington Health District Building for the Future

Southington’s health department is doing more with less these days, thanks in large part to a 2011 merger with neighboring Plainville to regionalize services, but Health Director Shane Lockwood and his staff have bigger plans – and it starts with the recent launch of a new website.

The Plainville-Southington Regional Health Department last week launched www.pshd.org, an all encompassing website designed to enhance services, expand the department’s reach and provide a building block in preparing for the future.

“We’ve established ourselves in the area but with two towns involved in this partnership, we wanted to do something to help set-up our own identity,” Lockwood said. “This provides us an all new tool to serve residents in both communities and to expand our reach in delivering important health information to the public.”

The website was launched just over a week ago and features a wide variety of information, forms for services and more.

Residents can learn about environmental health programs, research and learn the latest on seasonal health issues, reach out to staff and board members and more. The site also provides users a chance to print out the forms they need and email staff for basic needs to expedite the services already provided by the department.

Southington Councilwoman Stephanie Urillo, a member of the board overseeing the health department, said she was impressed with the initiative taken by department staff. She said she sees the website as a start to really serve the community in a better way, both now and in the future.

“It’s a phenomenal website and it’s only going to improve services throughout the community,” Urillo said.

Lockwood said the site won’t take away from what already exists – links to the health district will still be included on both the Plainville and Southington websites – but is an important step in the right direction. The site also already has a mobile version and is built to allow for future expansion.

“The most important aspect of this is we can build on what we now have,” Lockwood said. “In the future, we will look to accept payments and the site will be used as a central place for information in the event of a public emergency.”

“By 2014, it is estimated that half of all website visits will be through mobile, tablet or non-traditional devices. With this, we can now reach out and serve anyone, anywhere,” he said.

Be sure to check out the new site by clicking the link provided.

Make sure to like Southington Patch on Facebook and follow on Twitter for breaking news, daily updates and more!