MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI – Residents of Muskegon County are being invited to participate in a survey aiming to fill gaps of need in the community.
The Community Life Survey is an anonymous online questionnaire that takes about six minutes to complete. It asks questions about work, food, healthcare and overall financial stability, as well as questions about the individual’s stress or confidence.
“Day to day life is hard,” said Samantha Cornell, chief operations officer for Access Health, nonprofit healthcare organization in Muskegon County, which is conducting the survey. “Employment, income and health are deeply connected. If you’re not healthy you can’t work or are more challenged in working.
“If you don’t have a stable income, you can’t access health coverage or health care, or you’re increasingly challenged to access health care. We know that to really help our community, we need to address those things together.”
The survey can be accessed online until Sept. 28.
Cornell said the survey has been put together over the past 20 months by a group of community leaders, including residents, business owners, local agencies, nonprofits and faith leaders.
The information gathered through this survey is expected to give those leaders more insight on how to further align what they are already doing to meet residents’ needs and meet them where they are.
The results will be shared with the community in early 2026, Cornell said. Solutions are already in the works.
For example, there is a team focused entirely on childcare. They work to assist residents with the cost of childcare but have found through their research that childcare providers themselves are facing financial barriers and hardships.
The team is now working to create a childcare association, which could help advocate and connect providers with resources and support available in the county.
Transportation is another barrier the group is looking at.
Access Health also runs the Livability Lab, an annual survey and group activity to solve community issues, similar to the goals of this new survey.
Each year, community leaders come together and form teams, each with a leader at the forge. They come up with 100-day action plans tied to their ideas, forming programs in the community, such as a group that was focused on racial disparities in birthing outcomes.
That team worked to support an increase in doulas around the county. Cornell said there were two to three doulas when the group formed and there are now more than 32 working in the county.
“We’re working on and partnering with local partners already doing the work and working together to expand the impact,” Cornell said. “Not duplicating the services, making the services we have better.”
The survey cost Access health just under $17,000, and was paid for by grant funding, Cornell said. The survey was created by the Muskegon Health and Economic Think Tank.
The Michigan Public Health Institute nonprofit is responsible for the analysis.
The work was originally going to be funded through the National Institutes of Health, but those funds were cut. The local group forged ahead with the work under the name Muskegon SHIP (Sustainable Health Investment Partnership).