Relationship between Population Level Health Outcomes and Collaborative Partnership of Local Health Department and Hospital

This research seeks to demonstrate the importance of a collaborative relationship between non-profit hospitals and local health departments (LHDs)in activities, aimed to improve and maintain high community health status, such as community health assessment (CHA). This is of importance because of the 2009 Internal Revenue Service Schedule H addition to Form 990 for all non-profit organizations which requires not for profit hospitals to conduct CHA as part of their community benefit requirement. In addition, Schedule H overlaps with the public health accreditation board's pre-requisite for LHDs to conduct a CHA as part of the accreditation process.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the relationship between population-level health outcomes and types of partnerships; and examine the association between hospitals and LHDs partnerships and conducting CHAs in the past three years.

This is a cross-sectional study that links the 2008 NACCHO profile survey of LHDs with the 2009 Community Health Status Indicators(coronary heart disease, obesity, diabetes, stroke, high blood pressure, colon cancer, syphilis, pertussis, low birth weight, and very low birth weight)

Bivariate and multivariate analyzes will be conducted to elucidate relationships between community health outcomes and LHD-hospital partnership. Control variables in the regression models will include LHD jurisdiction characteristics that might influence health at population level: population size, racial and ethnic compositions.