LEXINGTON, Ky. (FOX 56) — Every five years, dozens of organizations from across the city work to find ways to improve public health.

The Lexington-Fayette County Health Department’s health assessment report was released yesterday.

With 700 responses to the survey, the 2023 community health assessment is designed to give Lexington residents a better understanding of community concerns facing public health and how the city can improve on them.

The survey asked to identify those areas where the city needs to improve, and 19% of people said fighting infectious diseases.

Around 27% of people identified chronic conditions as the most important problem facing the city. In fact, 45% of people who took the survey said they currently have a chronic condition. But the most common answer and the most important health problem they say the community needs to work on is mental health.

Nearly 90% of people listed mental health as the highest concern within the behavioral and physical health categories.

“This is a living document; just because we completed it and we released it doesn’t mean that it’s the end. We always want to have thoughts and suggestions and information sent in from the community consistently because our jobs don’t stop at the five-year mark, or jobs don’t stop when the document is finished,” Christy Nentwick, the quality services coordinator with the Lexington-Fayette County Health Department, told FOX 56.

When asked to identify the number one thing a community needs to be healthy, access to care was the most common answer at 26%. Eighteen percent said access to safe communities and another 15% said economic mobility.

As for areas the city needs to address, 10% highlighted financial stability, while nearly 17% answered adult and youth homelessness.

The most common issue that 20% of Lexington residents want to see addressed is access to affordable housing.

“Affordable housing and homelessness, that all can stem from mental health, from behavioral health and then financial stability and while we know we can’t change living wage for people and we can’t make a difference necessarily in their paycheck, what we can do is we can support other community organizations. We can be present at meetings in places where these policies are discussed, and these policies are decided, and we can be a voice for the community,” said Nentwick.

Leaders at the health department maintain that understanding a community’s health requires getting several perspectives to look at the big picture.

The health department will hold quarterly meetings with their community partners involved in the report. The next meeting will be held in May and is open to the public.