Background: Four years ago, Lehigh Valley (PA) Hospital began a collaboration with a community foundation (Dorothy Rider Pool Health Care Trust) to measurably improve population health of a 2-county region with over 550,000 people. The partnership specifically aims to change the way organizations, programs, and the communities do business to improve health. Health is broadly defined to include social, behavioral, and clinical outcomes. We present how we are assessing the impact of this innovative multidimensional initiative and discuss findings to date. Methods: We applied the University of Kansas system for evaluating community health initiatives. This system includes participatory methods and reliably measures levels of intervention and impact in a community. This retrospective study consisted of document review, semi-structured key informant interviews and surveys of community change (i.e., evidence of new or modified programs, practices and policies). Results: Activities target individuals (e.g., health services), organizations (e.g., campaign to improve youth and family outcomes), community (e.g., community discussion suppers), and policy (e.g., water fluoridation). Over 100 community changes were facilitated during the first 3 years. The impact of the initiatives increased with effective leadership, coherent organizational structure, experience, and clarity of strategic focus. Conclusions: This study suggests that a broad collaborative partnership can improve community health. Measuring community and system change helped identify the overall community impact of this multidimensional initiative as well as the unique contribution of its specific programs. Community collaboration and institutional leadership are critical when implementing effective community health efforts.
Learning Objectives: At the conclusion of the session, the participant (learner) in this session will be able to: 1. Identify the challenges to organizing and evaluating a multidimensional effort for community health improvement. 2. Describe how measures of community and systems change can be used for community health planning
Keywords: Community Health, Outcomes Research
Presenting author's disclosure statement:
Organization/institution whose products or services will be discussed: None
I do not have any significant financial interest/arrangement or affiliation with any organization/institution whose products or services are being discussed in this session.