With every person in a community having a different definition of health and everyone requiring different resources to fulfill their health needs, Centra Health, the Centra Foundation and the Community Access Network have teamed up with local partners to initiate an expanded, more community-involved Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA).
Every three years, the Internal Revenue Service requires Centra to conduct the assessment to evaluate the health needs of the communities it serves through surveys, focus groups, one-on-one conversations and other ways.
Completing the assessment and “successful implementation” of the action plan that results from the assessment will allow Centra to be in compliance with CHNA requirements for tax-exempt hospitals. The survey portions of the assessment are specific to the three regions in which Centra provides services: Bedford County, the town of Farmville and Lynchburg. Bedford County’s assessment includes the county and the town of Bedford.
Farmville’s assessment includes the town and Buckingham, Charlotte, Cumberland, Lunenburg, Nottoway and Prince Edward counties. Lynchburg’s assessment includes the city and Amherst, Appomattox, Campbell and Pittsylvania counties.
Partnership for Healthy Communities, the name of the partnership between Centra and other local organizations working to complete the assessment, is surveying people to see what their needs are, what resources can be used to address those needs and how to address any gaps in service.
Other local organizations in the Partnership for Healthy Communities include the Piedmont Health District, Central Virginia Health District, the Greater Lynchburg Community Health Foundation, the Bedford Community Health Foundation and the United Way of Central Virginia.
“They’re all making decisions on how they are utilizing their resources, and they all have a stake in knowing what this data is on the outcome side so they can make decisions about what their organizations will do to meet some of the needs that are identified and prioritized,” said Lisa Taylor, partner engagement director at Community Access Network. Last week, the group launched the online surveys, which will continue to be available until June 15. Paper surveys also will be available at certain locations such as health department district offices, social services locations, medical provider waiting areas, food distribution sites and several others.
“We’re actually going to go out and talk to people. We’re going to have focus groups with our stakeholders, and we’re going to have focus groups with community members or what we call our target population,” said Pat Young, a Community Networks consultant and project manager for Partnership for Healthy Communities. “We’re listening to the community, we’re getting their voices, and then we’re backing up what they’re telling us with data that’s been collected from solid sources.”
The 40-question surveys are confidential and should only be taken once. People should take surveys that correspond to the locality in which they live. Only people ages 18 or older can take the survey. Young said it takes about 15 minutes to complete the survey, and the questions on the surveys are aligned to national benchmarks so the group can compare each locality to regional, statewide and national perspectives.
“There is sure to be some overlap in the content of the survey [from past years], but this is a 2018 version, with questions revised and vetted by the Partnership’s core team, community members and data professionals,” Taylor said in an email.
“The survey appears to be a little long, but at the end of the day, the information gathered is so incredibly important to us in terms of the decisions we make,” Young said.
Although the assessment will evaluate the general population, there will be a focus on “the medically underserved, low-income and/or minority populations as well as those suffering from chronic disease.”
“Part of the objective of the whole process is to reach those in our community with the highest need and to find out what they see as the greatest challenges that affect their health. Of course, we want and will encourage everyone to take the survey, but we will be making a special and concerted effort, with the help of our stakeholders and organizational partners, to reach those populations that face the greatest barriers to a healthy life, so that at the end of the process, we are taking action to address those needs,” Taylor said in an email. With the assessment, Centra spokesperson Diane Ludwig said she hopes the resources people may use are “better than they’ve ever been before” and residents will learn about new ones.
After data collection is completed in June, the group will identify the greatest needs, begin prioritizing them and take inventory of available community resources in September.
In January 2019, the different stakeholders all will use the same information from the assessment to decide how to best address needs.
“Ultimately, the finished product belongs to the entire community so everyone that is asking for grant funding or everyone making those funding decisions will be utilizing the same data. We really are intentionally targeting the needs the community itself identified as the highest need,” Taylor said.