The Public Health Foundation (PHF) strives to create opportunities to achieve public health and health care system alignment to improve community health. With this in mind, PHF is partnering with the Association for Community Health Improvement (ACHI) to provide technical assistance and training to hospitals and health systems, and their community partners, that will advance population health objectives. Both ACHI and PHF are hearing from hospitals that after completing a community health needs assessment (CHNA), it is difficult to transition into improvement planning, sustained actions, and making real improvements.
ACHI has a legacy and expertise meeting the needs of hospitals in community benefit and community health. PHF has used time-tested tools and methods to help hundreds of health departments improve the processes they use to address health improvement challenges, and has developed innovative approaches for public health and health care to work together (e.g. Population Health Driver Diagrams). By combining the experience, expertise, and innovative approaches of two organizations focused on improving population health, ACHI and PHF are well-situated to help hospitals and health systems address their needs today and in the future.
The technical assistance and training services will help hospitals and health systems:
- Meet community benefit requirements
- Integrate population health into hospital strategic initiatives
- Create meaningful partnerships to achieve population health objectives
- Apply quality improvement methods and tools to address the root causes of entrenched problems
- Develop a workforce to meet current and future health system needs
- Communicate effectively within and across organizations, and with the public
- Support the shift to integrated, accountable care
- Improve operations, service delivery, and health outcomes
- Eliminate waste and inefficiency
Services for Hospitals and Health Systems, and Their Community Partners
PHF and ACHI are jointly offering nine services to move organizations from improvement planning, to effective implementation, to achieving objectives -- all to strengthen population health and collaborative endeavors. Services include:
- Defining & Prioritizing Improvement Goals
- Scoping Specific Health Issues
- Partnering to Plan and Implement Change
- Implementing Solutions
- Tracking, Measuring & Evaluating Progress
- Documenting Impact
- Strategic Communications
- Developing the Population Health Workforce
- Training in Quality Improvement
ACHI and PHF have jointly produced two webinars related to improving community health:
PHF is participating in ACHI's national conferences:
In February 2015, the Institute of Medicine published a discussion paper titled "Using a Population Health Driver Diagram to Support Health Care and Public Health Collaboration." Written by PHF's Ron Bialek, Jack Moran, and Micaela Kirshy, the paper describes the value of new frameworks for to address challenges at the crossroads of public health and health care in any community. PHF's collaboration with ACHI provides new opportunities to do just that.
All of this work supports public health and health system alignment to achieve community health objectives. To learn more about PHF's partnership with ACHI, to explore services offered that can be tailored to your needs, please contact Margie Beaudry at (202)218-4415 or mbeaudry@phf.org. You can also submit your information online.