Community health partnerships address unmet needs, providing services related to transportation, housing, nutrition and behavioral health.
For residents of some locales, community health partnerships (CHP) —alliances between healthcare providers and local organizations to address unmet needs—can mean the difference between surviving and thriving, according to new CHP metrics from the Healthcare Intelligence Network (HIN).
“We could not survive without community partnerships. Our patients thrive because of them. They are critical to help change the culture of poverty that remains in our community,” noted a respondent to HIN’s 2017 survey on Community Health Partnerships.
Partnerships can also mean the difference between housing and homelessness. According to the survey, more than a quarter of community health partnerships (26 percent) address environmental and social determinants of health (SDOH) like housing and transportation that can have a deleterious effect on population health.
“To date, we have housed 49 families/individuals who were formally homeless or near homelessness,” added another respondent.
“Social health determinants are more important than ever to managing care,” said another. “Community health partnerships make a big impact when it comes to rounding out care.”
Motivated to improve population health, healthcare providers are joining forces with community groups such food banks, schools and faith-based organizations to bridge care gaps and deliver needed services. The majority of community health partnerships are designed to improve access to healthcare, say 70 percent of survey respondents.
Eighty-one organizations shared details on community health partnerships, which range from collaborating with a local food bank to educate food pantries on diabetes to the planting of community gardens to launching an asthma population health management program for students.
Seventy-one percent conduct a community health needs assessment (CHNA) to identify potential areas for local health partnerships. Priority candidates for 36 percent of these partnerships are high-risk populations, defined as those having two or more chronic medical conditions.
Overall, the survey found that 95 percent of respondents have initiated community health partnerships, with half of those remaining preparing to launch partnerships in the coming year.
Other community health partnership metrics identified by the 2017 survey include the following:
- Local organizations such as food banks top the list of community health partners, say 79 percent.
- The population health manager typically has primary responsibility for community health partnerships forged by 30 percent of respondents.
- Foundations are the chief funding source for services offered through community health partnerships, say 23 percent. However, funding remains the chief barrier to community health partnerships, say 41 percent.
- Forty-five percent have forged community health partnerships to enhance behavioral health services.
- Two-thirds attributed increases in clinical outcomes and quality of care to community health partnerships.
- Forty-four percent reported a drop in hospital ER visits after launching community health partnerships.
Download an executive summary of results from the 2017 Community Health Partnerships survey.
Tags: CHNA, community health needs assessment, federally qualified health centers, FQHC, homelessness, housing
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