Community health (needs) assessment and community health improvement planning efforts across the US: Early findings on geographic coverage, partnerships, and the use of healthy people 2020

A confluence of factors is producing increased interest and activity in community health assessment (CHA), community health needs assessment (CHNA) and community health improvement planning (CHIP), with the goal to improve the public's health, including the launch of the voluntary, national public health accreditation program in fall 2011; new legal and regulatory requirements for non-profit hospitals to regularly conduct CHNAs and adopt an implementation strategy; and the need to prioritize communities' limited resources due to economic recession. While many communities have been conducting this work for years, these factors may serve as a catalyst for more effective and collaborative community health improvement efforts and presents a prime opportunity for alignment of efforts in communities. This session will describe the conceptual framework for systematically collecting data, through an internet search of existing, publicly posted documents, and methodically inputting them into a Qualtrics-based database. Participants will hear information on attributes and geographic distribution of CHAs, CHNAs and CHIPs across the 50 states and will be provided an overview of the early findings. Attributes of CHAs, CHNAs and CHIPs catalogued include the year published, lead organization(s), models/frameworks used, extent of Healthy People use, third party firms/consultants involved, the number of partnerships, measured by the number or organizations listed in the documents, and the coverage, or lack off, CHAs, CHNAs and CHIP efforts by state. Participants will also hear how these data are relevant to the practice of public health and inform more effective and collaborative community health improvement efforts.