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A Community Health Needs Assessment, or CHNA, is a formal process to better understand the health needs of a community. CHNAs are typically led by a nonprofit hospital. For healthy community advocates, a CHNA is an opportunity to bring to light and emphasize how factors beyond health care affect the overall health of the community.
Required by the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA), all nonprofit hospitals must complete a CHNA every three years. A CHNA should:
Once a CHNA is complete, a hospital must develop a plan for how it will address the identified health challenges—often called an Implementation Plan. Both of these documents should be available to the public on the hospital’s website.
Through this regular and intensive look at pressing health challenges, nonprofit hospitals can better target partnerships, strategies and investment of its community benefit resources. Historically, CHNAs often focused on health challenges that relate directly to a health condition or health care services, such as cancer, diabetes or behavioral health. However, hospitals are increasingly identifying issues outside health care, such as poor housing, lack of healthy food and widespread racism or poverty, as a community impediment to good health.
CHNAs are similar to a process that public health departments organize, known as a Community Health Assessment. Because of the similar nature of both processes, some public health departments and nonprofit hospitals coordinate their assessment efforts.
This Jargon Buster was contributed by Vitalyst Health Foundation.
