Stockyard Road, Siler City, North Carolina, Chatham County : a community assessment including secondary and qualitative data collection and analysis

Stockyard Road , a small, rural community in Southwestern Chatham County, North Carolina, is located three miles west of Siler City. We first met the residents of this community in August of 1997 when, as five first-year master’s students at the School of Public Health, we were assigned to Stockyard Road to conduct a “community diagnosis:” A community diagnosis... aims to understand many facets of a community including culture, values and norms, leadership and power structure, means of communication, helping patterns, important community institutions and history. A good diagnosis suggests what it is like to live in a community, what the important health problems in a community are, what interventions are most likely to be efficacious, and how the program would be best evaluated (Steuart, GW and Kark, SL, 1962). As we researched secondary data and talked with residents of Stockyard Road, we frequently struggled with the question of how to define the geographic and social boundaries of this community. None of the service providers that we spoke with actually described Stockyard Road as a "community." The residents themselves rarely used the term community to refer to Stockyard Road unless they were responding to one of our questions about it. Nonetheless, it is apparent that the residents who live here have a unified sense of where their community begins and ends, both in terms of physical and psychological boundaries. As one community member said, "I would say it's this area from highway 64 up to, ya know that intersection I told ya about [Bish Road]. It's not the whole Stockyard Road to me. Further up, that's a different community to me." Said another resident in regard to community boundaries "It's like the White and Black are separated and the people around the curve are separated." Although the primary concern of a community diagnosis is the health of the community, the process recognizes other aspects of a community that impact its wellness. Our team assessed the Stockyard Road community over the course of two semesters, collecting secondary data and interviewing 25 community members and service providers. In the fall, the major focus was on collecting quantitative data from a number of county, state and national sources. However, the conclusions we can draw from this data are limited. This limitation is partly due to the fact that most of the data were only available at the county level, and the demographics of Stockyard Road differ from other parts of Chatham County; namely, it is a small, predominantly African-American neighborhood. Thus, we have placed greater emphasis on the primary data collected during the spring semester through interviews with community members. During the course of interviewing, Stockyard Road residents graciously shared their thoughts and experiences with our team. The following summarizes several important findings that have emerged through observations and conversations with community members and service providers. Stockyard Road is comprised of primarily African American residents. Estimates suggest that there are approximately 60-70 individuals living within this community. Many of the community members have lived in the community all their lives and have extended family in the area. Two churches are located in the Stockyard Road community, the Unity Powerhouse Holiness Church and the Mt. Cavalry Holiness Church. Together these two churches offer a variety of activities and programs to residents. These include adult choirs, children’s choirs, women’s groups and weekly worship services. Stockyard Road residents have many individual talents and skills to offer the community. Residents play musical instruments, sing in the church choir, stake out vegetable gardens and run small businesses. Others find time to volunteer at local civic organizations and schools. The Stockyard Road community is located in an Extra Territorial Jurisdiction and is therefore not within the Siler City limits. This has both political implications and implications in terms of residents’ access to services (mail delivery, trash, sewage and water hook-up, etc.) In recent years, housing conditions in Stockyard Road have deteriorated. On March 10, 1998, ten homes in the area were officially condemned and occupants were issued eviction notices. Many residents in Stockyard Road lack indoor plumbing. As a result, some residents are forced to use neighbors’ facilities or one of two functioning outhouses. Crime and safety are also a major concern to residents of Stockyard Road. Some residents blame rising crime on a recent influx of inexpensive rental housing. Transportation is an issue for the many residents that do not own cars because there is no public transportation system in Chatham County. Many depend on neighbors to drive them to work, to buy groceries, or to receive medical care. Compared to nearby Siler City, there are few economic opportunities available to residents of Stockyard Road. Most of the employees who work at the Carolina Stockyards, located within the community, are from neighboring towns. Residents of Stockyard Road face many barriers to receiving adequate health care. These include lack of insurance, dissatisfaction with the quality of service and inaccessibility to services located in Pittsboro, Greensboro and Chapel Hill. Historically, Stockyard Road is a community that has garnered very little attention within Chatham County. Nonetheless, the complex social, economic and political issues facing this community pose serious challenges for Stockyard Road residents. By utilizing some of the existing resources and developing new ones, Stockyard Road can continue to strengthen community ties and move towards increased community cohesion.Master of Public Healt