Community Health Assessment available

By Matt Echelberry

Inquirer Reporter

The 2012 Com­mu­nity Health Assess­ment, com­mis­sioned by Avita Health Sys­tem, has been com­pleted and is ready for review. It can be assessed online at www.avitahealth.healthforecast.net/index-1.html.

A fol­low up to the assess­ment con­ducted in 2010, this 147-page report is a “sys­tem­atic, data-driven approach to deter­min­ing the health sta­tus, behav­iors and needs of res­i­dents in the ser­vice area of Avita Health Sys­tem. Sub­se­quently, this infor­ma­tion may be used to inform deci­sions and guide efforts to improve com­mu­nity health and wellness.”

The assess­ment is bro­ken into sev­eral cat­e­gories: over­all health, men­tal health, dis­ease and chronic con­di­tions, injury and vio­lence, mod­i­fi­able health risks, access to health ser­vices, and health edu­ca­tion and out­reach. It is intended to serve as a tool for reach­ing three goals:

1) To improve res­i­dents’ health sta­tus, increase their life spans, and ele­vate their over­all qual­ity of life.

2) To reduce the health dis­par­i­ties among res­i­dents. By gath­er­ing demo­graphic infor­ma­tion along with health sta­tus and behav­ior data, it will be pos­si­ble to iden­tify pop­u­la­tion seg­ments that are most at-risk for var­i­ous dis­eases and injuries.

3) To increase acces­si­bil­ity to pre­ven­tive ser­vices for all com­mu­nity res­i­dents. More acces­si­ble pre­ven­tive ser­vices will prove ben­e­fi­cial in accom­plish­ing the first goal (improv­ing health sta­tus, increas­ing life spans,

and ele­vat­ing the qual­ity of life), as well as low­er­ing the costs asso­ci­ated with car­ing for late-stage dis­eases result­ing from a lack of pre­ven­tive care.

To col­lect the data, a ran­dom sam­ple of 400 res­i­dents, age 18 or older, were inter­viewed and the results were weighted in pro­por­tion to the actual pop­u­la­tion dis­tri­b­u­tion. A focus group was also held in Octo­ber of 2012, con­sist­ing of 11 key infor­mants, includ­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives from pub­lic health; social ser­vice providers, and other com­mu­nity lead­ers. In addi­tion to the key infor­mant focus group, tele­phone inter­views with 10 local physi­cians about local health issues were conducted.

The top-ranked pri­or­i­ties iden­ti­fied among those inter­viewed were (in order of most fre­quent): sub­stance abuse, obe­sity and nutri­tion, tobacco use (tied), men­tal health (tied) and chronic dis­ease con­di­tions. Other areas of con­cern noted by par­tic­i­pants were an aging pop­u­la­tion and sub­stan­dard housing.

In the report, the data is pre­sented in the form of charts and graphs and com­pared with state and national sta­tis­tics. The infor­ma­tion will be used to assist local com­mit­tees in pri­or­i­tiz­ing the health needs of the com­mu­nity and how best to address them. The Inquirer will pro­vide more infor­ma­tion as pri­or­i­tiz­ing develops.

The assess­ment was con­ducted on behalf of Avita Health Sys­tem by Pro­fes­sional Research Con­sul­tants, Inc. (PRC). PRC is a nationally-recognized health­care con­sult­ing firm with exten­sive expe­ri­ence con­duct­ing Com­mu­nity Health Needs Assess­ments such as this in hun­dreds of com­mu­ni­ties across the United States since 1994.

Posted by Matt Echelberry on Mar 19 2013. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.