Public Health Intersection

Every once in a while things just seem to go together. Peanut butter and jelly, peanut butter and chocolate, peanut butter and marshmallow….. Now I'm getting hungry.

So when I saw the Affordable Care Act requiring a community health assessment to be conducted by nonprofit hospitals and the Public Health Accreditation Board requiring state and local health departments to do community health assessments as part of accreditation, I thought it just makes sense to do them together.

Not only would it save time, energy and resources, it would promote cooperation and collaboration at both the local and state level.

In addition, it in all likelihood it would result in improving the health status of those communities and states where such a joint effort was undertaken.

Starting now, PHFE and one of its partner organizations, the Orange County Health Needs Assessment Program, (OCHNA), are embarking on a mission to talk some sense into people.

We are committed to developing the tools and rationale to make it as easy as possible for communities and states to develop a single standard framework for their hospitals and health departments required community health assessments.

In truth, most of the tools are already in place.

In Orange County California, OCHNA has over a decade of experience in conducting community health assessments on behalf of nonprofit hospitals.

Also, there is a large body of research and practice related to community health assessments conducted in and by the governmental public health sector.

It just makes sense to do community health assessment right one time in each community and in each state.

We're going to do our best to make sure that happens.