A Healthy Place to Live, Learn, Work and Play

1. A Healthy Place to Live, Learn, Work and Play Understanding Community Health Improvement Processes

2. Outline • Definition of Community Health Improvement Processes • Key Principles • What Makes a Community Healthy • How a Community Can Become Healthier • Best Practices by Phase • Getting Started

3. Definition Community Health Improvement Processes: • Working intentionally, strategically and collaboratively at the local level to improve the health of the community • All-encompassing concept which incorporates: • CHIP & CHA (public health) • CHIPP (public health in Wisconsin) • CHNA (hospitals) • All with similar steps • All with the same goal: to make the community a healthy place to live, learn, work and play

4. Benefits • Increase effectiveness of efforts through collaboration • Reduce duplication of efforts in the community • Increase community engagement and awareness around health issues • Improve health of community • Reduce health care costs (and indirect costs such as lower productivity and absenteeism) • Build the community’s infrastructure

5. Key Principles • Use best practices in community health improvement • Actively engage all stakeholders to make it a community-driven process • Focus on the underlying forces that influence health outcomes • Pay attention to health disparities among groups • Move energetically from data into action • Use evidence-informed strategies • Include policy- and systems-based strategies

6. What Makes a Community Healthy?

7. What Makes a Community Healthy?

8. Health Disparities • Health disparities = the differences between groups in their health status • Be sure to examine disparities in the health factors in your community • Health Equity = striving for the best health for all • Need to address disparities in order to achieve health equity

9. How a Community Can Become Healthier

10. Collaborate with Key Stakeholders Steps to include: • Assure collaborative leadership/sponsorship from all core partners • Assure broad involvement of community representatives throughout the process • Be sure to engage community partners from under-represented groups • Engage new partners as necessary after priority topics are chosen

11. Collaborate with Key Stakeholders Benefits of collaboration: • Gives a more thorough picture of the often complex health needs • Brings resources and perspectives that may be critical to ensure your success • Shared ownership leads to shared responsibility for addressing the issues • Makes for a more focused effort when all are working in one direction together

12. Engage the Community • Include broad participation from the community throughout the process • In particular: • Seek input on community needs and assets • Seek input on the preliminary list of priority topics • Seek commitment to support implementation • Be sure to engage: • Those affected by the issues being addressed • Under-represented or underserved populations

13. Assess Needs & Resources • Collect and analyze community health data • Include data to analyze health disparities • Examine data on the underlying determinants of health • Consider issues and themes identified by the stakeholders and the community • Identify community assets and resources • Get input from community members on health issues and assets

14. Prioritize Strategic Issues • Identify a set of priority community health issues to address • Use a set of criteria for considering priorities • Choose a manageable number of priorities • Use a skilled facilitator • Align the local health improvement plan with state and national priorities • Summarize and disseminate the results of the assessment to the community

15. Action Plan for Impact • Engage partners to plan and implement strategies • Choose effective (evidence-informed) strategies • Have multi-level approaches to change, including policy approaches • Develop a detailed action plan

16. Implement Strategies • Develop an effective organizational structure • Secure needed resources • Use a workplan to organize the steps and actively track progress • Assign accountabilities and reporting processes • Provide ongoing updates to the community • Celebrate successes

17. Evaluate Efforts • Design an evaluation plan at the beginning of the implementation process • Evaluate and monitor the process and the outcomes/indicators • Revise the action plan based on evaluation results • Continually assess and address stakeholder involvement

18. Getting Started • Understand each other’s mission, purpose and requirements • Create a shared vision and goals. • Form an organizational structure that will work for your community • Determine clear roles and responsibilities and levels of authority • Establish protocols for decision making and conflict resolution • Create a communications plan • Secure resources needed to begin • Learn the best practices for community health improvement • Draft a timeline for the steps in your process Association for Community Health Improvement

19. Key Resources • Wisconsin Guidebook on Improving the Health of Local Communities • Healthiest Wisconsin 2020 • Healthy People 2020 • What Works for Health • National Prevention Strategy • County Health Rankings and Roadmaps

20. A Healthy Place to Live, Learn, Work and Play: Understanding Community Health Improvement Processes v 1.0 6/2012 [Final Version due Spring 2014] Wisconsin CHIPP Infrastructure Improvement Project http://www.walhdab.org/CHIPPInfrastructure.htm