Collaboration for community health assessment and planning: What are the determinants?

Background:  To adequately address community-level health issues and influence the health of the community, local health departments (LHDs) conduct community health assessments to determine the needs and develop strategies to address the needs.  Partnerships and collaborations can improve LHDs effectiveness and efficiencies in serving their communities, including quality of comprehensive community health assessments.  Objective/Purpose:  The purpose of this study is to identify determinants of collaboration for community health assessment and planning for local health departments.  Methods: Data pulled from The National Association of County and City Health Officials’ 2013 Profile of Local Health Departments was used.  Bivariate and descriptive analyses were performed. Results:  Forty-two percent of LHDs had networked, coordinated, or cooperated with a community organization to complete a CHA, 44% had collaboration, and 11% reported no involvement or program.  Significant predictors (p<.001) of variation in the level of LHD collaboration with community organizations included type of governance, expenditure category (quartile), per capita expenditures, presence of a local board of health, work status and gender of top executive, accreditation category, performance of CHA and/or CHIP in the last five years, and agency-wide strategic plan.  Discussion/Conclusion:  In the post-recession era with shrunk budgets and reduced infrastructural capacity, LHDs need to pool resources and establish collaborations, in order to perform some services such as community health assessments.  LHDs collaborating with other community organizations can be more efficient in providing other public health services, through better community outreach.