Online Program

Oral

Community collaboration, strategic alliances, advocacy, strategic coordination of resources, and public policy development are all components of a strategic approach to addressing health. Under the authority of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010, the IRS requires that non-profit hospitals complete a comprehensive community health needs assessment and implementation strategy every three years to maintain non-profit status. The assessment and planning process must include public health expertise in completing the community health needs assessment and an implementation strategy is required to adhere to the law. Including a broad set of local public health system partners in assessment efforts can help such hospitals meet these requirements, as it can contribute valuable data to a comprehensive needs assessment and provide a forum for local health departments to contribute to the hospitals’ related efforts. As local health departments and non-profit hospitals build partnerships to engage in community health improvement planning efforts, identifying expectations regarding data sharing is important to support this work. This interactive session will provide an overview of community health improvement planning steps and share a story from the field from Norwalk, CT. Representatives from the Norwalk Health Department and Norwalk Hospital will share how they partner to share data in their community health assessment efforts. Participants are encouraged to come with questions and to look forward to a facilitated discussion on data sharing.

Session Objectives: At the end of the session, participants, given the slide set, will be able to: 1. List the steps in community health improvement planning processes 2. List challenges to data sharing 3. List one strategy for data sharing

CE Credits: Medical (CME), Health Education (CHES), Nursing (CNE), Public Health (CPH)