NATCHEZ — Natchez and Adams County could soon see a variety of new health care solutions with the goal of improving the health of local residents by 20 percent by 2020.

The Bill, Hillary and Chelsea Clinton Foundation announced Wednesday a multi-year initiative to work with local residents to remove barriers to well being and improve the health of Mississippians.

The initiative stems from a pledge made at the 2014 Clinton Health Matters Initiative conference in January.

Humana and the Clinton Foundation announced at that time the two organizations would jointly select a community to improve health.

“This is one county in the entire country where this is happening, so it’s a very big deal,” said Humana-Mississippi Market Leader Stacey Carter. “What’s very exciting about all of this is that the people of Adams County will get to be a part of something big with this.”

That involvement, Carter said, will begin Dec. 3, when various members of the community will be invited to a meeting dubbed, “Blueprint for Action Day.”

“On that day, we’ll actually all come together and spend the entire day putting this blueprint together for what people in Adams County and the City of Natchez want to see in their community,” Carter said. “That’s when people can tell us, ‘This is what we need, this is what we don’t have and this is what we want.’”

Humana and the Clinton Foundation recently agreed to focus their efforts on Mississippi, a state that faces more health challenges than most.

Adams County continues to demonstrate some of the poorest health outcomes in the state, and like many areas throughout the U.S., the county has seen an increase in the number of people suffering from poor health and facing barriers to improvement.

Gillian Sealy, national director of the Clinton Health Matters Initiative, said she looks forward to sitting down with local residents and leaders to decide what future plans for the project might include.

“We will present them with national and local data and ask them to come to a consensus on action steps they would like to implement over the next several years,” Sealy said. “Once they are able to strategize those, we’ll spend the next six months putting together plans and then presenting it to the community to get feedback.”

The Clinton Foundation partnered with the Coachella Valley community in California for a program called, “Clinton Health Matters Initiative.”

That program, Sealy said, followed some of the same steps the Adams County program will follow, such as creating the blueprint for action.

The California community, for example, chose to include in its blueprint a program to make it easier for residents get tested for HIV and AIDS.

Sealy said meetings with each individual community involved are vital to the process of creating programs specific to that area.

“The needs of Coachella Valley are not going to be the same as those of Adams County, so we can’t take that blueprint and put it somewhere else,” Sealy said. “It would be like putting a round peg in a square hole.”

Natchez Mayor Butch Brown said he was excited the project and what it will entail.

“We’re looking forward to working with Humana and the Clinton Foundation, as well as leveraging our local talent and resources, to empower the people of this community to improve their health and well being,” Brown said.