Winners of Healthy Communities Achievement Award Announced
Berkeley, California (PRWEB) March 13, 2014 -- Healthy Communities Institute(HCI), the leading provider of technologies and services for community health analysis, population risk profiling, and evidence-based health improvement programs, announced the winners of their annual Healthy Communities Achievement Awards. Children’s National Health System/ D.C. Health Matters in Washington, D.C. and Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services in New Albany, Indiana, received the recognition at the Association for Community Health Improvement 2014 National Conference in Orlando, Florida. Both programs demonstrate how data can be effective in driving strategic vision, identifying at-risk populations, prioritizing local health needs, building effective partnerships and strategically targeting resources where they can have the greatest impact within the community.
Children’s National Health System is a founding member of the District of Columbia Healthy Communities Collaborative and their interactive web portal, DC Health Matters (http://www.dchealthmatters.com). The portal was launched in June 2013 via the Collaborative, a creative partnership among four hospitals and four community health centers. The Collaborative is driven by a community-engaged approach to population health that holds local providers accountable. An endorsement of the DC Health Matters site by Todd Park, United States Chief Technology Officer, has elevated the work of the Collaborative.
“One of our goals for the DC Health Matters portal is to provide an easily accessible platform for validated, actionable information that facilitates community health improvement in the District of Columbia,” said Children’s National’s Chaya Merrill, DrPH. “Our Collaborative members share responsibility, resources, outcomes and accountability in assessing and addressing community health. The portal has been instrumental in this effort by increasing transparency of community health information and facilitating collaboration among many local organizations.”
Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services serves more than six counties in Indiana with their primary community benefit focus in Floyd County, a community of 75,000. Over the past two years Floyd Memorial has dramatically shifted their approach to community health improvement. In the past, programs focused mainly on screenings and booths at local health fairs. Now, fueling the hospital’s strategic direction, they have completed a community health needs assessment (floydfoundation.org/community-assessment/), identified priority areas, launched targeted action plans, engaged community coalitions and funded a grant-giving program aligned with focus areas.
“Our county ranks 83 out of 92 counties in Indiana for tobacco use and we knew that by diving into the data we would identify related at-risk populations for intensifying our health improvement efforts,” said Shannon Carroll, RN, Coordinator of Healthier Community Initiative for Floyd Memorial Hospital and Health Services. “We saw in many cases that resources were being applied to populations with relatively good health indicators. With our new approach and a mini-grant funding program we were able to launch three community-based coalitions specifically chartered to make a measurable impact: Physical Activity, Improving Nutrition and Tobacco Prevention & Cessation. The resulting programs and activities have gained the respect of both the Board of Trustees and the community for making a proactive, positive difference in addressing-top priority health needs.”
Three additional programs were cited at the awards ceremony for their exceptional contributions in their communities: The Healthy Orange Florida Collaboration (Healthy Measures for East Central Florida), Health Council of South Florida (Miami Matters), and St. Vincent Health & The Partnership for a Healthier Carroll County, Inc. (St. Vincent Health and Healthy Carroll).
“The submissions we received this year illustrate how rapidly our clients are transitioning to support population health initiatives through their community-based programs,” said Deryk Van Brunt, DrPH, president of Healthy Communities Institute. “Our winners represent the forefront of innovative approaches for integrating data-driven planning, collaborative partnerships and evidence-based programs to make measurable community health improvements.”
About the Healthy Communities Institute
Headquartered in Berkeley, Calif., the Healthy Communities Institute (HCI) provides the leading web-based platform to support health departments, community collaborations, hospitals and health systems with community health improvement strategies. The web-based HCI Platform provides health indicator dashboards, access to thousands of nationally recognized promising practices, analytic and reporting tools and other features that support community health improvement planning, evaluation and reporting. The platform is in use in 35 states and covers over 100 million lives across the United States. The company’s multi-disciplinary team is comprised of healthcare information technology veterans, academicians, health informatics experts, epidemiologists, urban planners and Internet developers. HCI began its work in 2002 in concert with the growth of the Healthy Cities Movement co-founded at the University of California, Berkeley.
Robert Murphy, Healthy Communities Institute, http://www.healthycommunitiesinstitute.com, (415) 830-3435, [email protected]
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