Hi! I work at a place-based health funder in the US. My team is undergoing a community health assessment (CHA) to understand the health issues affecting the cities and towns that we fund. In some ways this will be an update of a recent CHA - here in the US, hospitals have to engage in community health assessments periodically, which my organization has been involved with multiple times over the years, so we are using those as a starting point (and importantly, this is what folks in our communities will have as reference as well).
However, our restrictions and rewards are a little different than past CHAs and we are in a place where we, as a funder, hold a lot of power. We have the opportunity to make this report more equitable. Has anyone else tried this using We All Count lessons? Any similar reports or resources you could direct me to as models?
Some additional info - we intend to review data sources and engage in our own data collection (tools TBD but likely informant interviews, surveys, other) with grantees and the broader public to understand what health issues are most pressing to folks. Ultimately we will share our findings with our stakeholders though the medium is TBD (traditionally the CHAs have been 65pg+ docs).
In the past, the top health issues have typically been identified via the loudest voices, and there was incentive to identify a handful of top issues and develop a community health improvement plan (CHIP) because then funding would be made available to address those issues (not from us - from other sources / hospitals/ government). Visually, its like all the voices are put into a funnel, with only a few coming out the bottom.
My team has the ability to really play with the format of the end product because we are not participating in the āCHIP pipelineā. I am trying to wrap my head around how we can present our findings without trying to wrap them up nicely with a bow. We live in a predominantly white, wealthy area, and demographic data summaries mask disparities at play.
Would love some other thoughts on this! Thanks very much.
Hi Kate,
Iām not sure if this is exactly what youāre looking for, but I thought Iād share some of the ways our clients have shared their CHAs and CHIPs. Iām with Conduent Healthy Communities Institute (HCI) and we provide web-based platforms that act as online hubs for our clientsā CHAs. We also have consulting services to help facilitate the CHA/CHIP process.
Here are links to a few client sites I think did a really great job of showing CHA/CHNA findings on their web platform as well as in their reports. I thought this might give you some ideas: Healthy Williamson County CHA Hope Rising CHNA Milwaukee CHNA. They also have a Racial and Health Equity page that highlights some data from their CHNA.
Good luck! Feel free to message me back if this isnāt exactly what you were thinking or if you want to chat further. We might have other client examples that are helpful.
No problem, Kate! I realized that my link to the Milwaukee Racial and Health Equity page was incorrect so I re-linked it here. Also, I thought Iād add one more example from Ventura County with recently completed CHNA and CHIP. Good luck to you all on this journey!
Hi @kbaker, I just joined the community and was excited to see your post. Iāve been reviewing CHAs/CHIPs and other regional/community assessments for our area to help inform my work. Iād like to recommend the publications by Common Ground Health for your review. While they can be lengthy, you might find the approach and data visualizations helpful. Although I am not directly connected with them, I also aware that their members of their team have gone through the WAC training so I am looking forward to see how that will impact their future reports.
This Common Ground Health report is long, but might be a helpful perspective: The Color of Health. A lot of the data in this report comes from a large survey CGH completed in 2018 called āMy Health Story.ā This survey intended to hear directly from individuals and capture what is important to them regarding their health. CGH completed another āMy Health Storyā survey at the end of 2022, so Iām interested to see what comes of that, and if/how WAC principles may have been incorporated.