About CHNAs

Prevention is Powerful

This week, we’re wrapping up our month-long series on our values here at AscentHealth Consulting. In previous weeks, we’ve discussed our first value: Research is the basis for all good decision making and strategy (See post). And our second value: Every community is unique and has opportunities to become a much healthier place [See post].

Now it’s time to dive a little deeper into our third value: Prevention is the most powerful concept for improving community health.

We’ve seen it time and time again — preventing health problems is much less expensive than trying to play catch up later on. Matt Richardson, Ph.D., AscentHealth president, has spent most of his career establishing and implementing prevention programs in various cities, and I’ve spent much of the last decade working to prevent smoking in children, teens and adults. From my experience in tobacco prevention, I’ve learned it’s always easier to prevent bad habits than get people to quit them.

Our goal for every community health needs assessment we complete is to empower organizations, hospitals and communities to find the best means of preventing dangerous health habits so they can grow healthier, more sustainable communities for decades to come.

We hope this series about our values has helped you get to know our company a little better. If you’ve decided we might be a good partner for your Community Health Needs Assessment, please contact us and we’ll be happy to help you with a plan that’s right for your organization.

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The 3 Values We Share

Many people know how important AscentHealth Consulting is to Matt and me, but we often get asked why community health needs assessments (CHNAs) are such an important part of the puzzle of improving community health. We founded AscentHealth and chose to focus our business around community health needs assessments for nonprofit hospitals, community health foundations, public health departments and other nonprofits because we share three main values:

1. Research is the basis for all good decision making and strategy.
2. Every community is unique and has opportunities to become a much healthier place.
3. Prevention is the most powerful concept for improving community health.

For the next month, we plan to devote a blog post to covering each of these values and explain how they work together to make communities healthier and stronger. Stick around while we discuss the power of research and data to inform strategic decisions around improving the health of a community. By the end of this series, we hope you’ll know a little more about us and how our philosophy toward community health needs assessments can give your organization what it needs to empower your community.

If you have questions along the way, please don’t hesitate to share them with us. We would love to expand upon or clarify anything we’ve said, so please reach out.
-Mary

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Garden as Metaphor: Everything’s Bigger in Texas

Part I – Garden as Metaphor Series …

Growing things fascinates me. Put a seed in the ground, give it a little water, a little sun and voila! You (usually) get a plant that offers great value – well beyond the small seed that was planted.

Being raised on a farm let me see this process in an up close and personal way. Our family’s annual income was tied to my father’s seasonal efforts of planting, tending and harvesting.

One summer, he and my mother decided that my sister and I could benefit from caring for a garden. In typical “Everything’s Bigger in Texas” fashion, my dad helped out by planting the corn with his tractor. It didn’t take very long in his enormous tractor to plant 18 rows of corn that were each about ¼-mile long.

So far, so good. Until my sister and I discovered that every morning, we’d be expected to grab our hoes and weed those 18 rows, along with about six more rows of okra, cucumbers, watermelon and other produce.

It felt like child labor at the time, but looking back, that garden has proven to be a metaphor for almost every life event, every business challenge, every turn of fate.

Improving the health of a community is very much like tending a garden. In future blog posts, we’ll explore the whole process from planting to harvest as it applies to cultivating the health of your community. Stay tuned!

If you are interested in discussing how a Community Health Needs Assessment and related planning activities can help your organization make a greater impact, please contact Mary Coyne at (806) 670-7440 or Mary@AscentHealthConsulting.com.

 

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Puzzled About How the Pieces Go Together To Create a Healthy Community?

Nonprofit hospitals, United Ways, community foundations and public health departments are just a few of the groups looking at what appears to be a 10,000-piece puzzle that must be solved before the true picture of a healthy community emerges. Many groups start with the straight-edge pieces – what everyone thinks are the obvious issues — but how do you know that’s the real place to start?

The answer, of course, is good data that’s community-specific. The kind of data gained through a Community Health Needs Assessment. The kind of data that has enough depth to suggest workable strategies and also which groups can implement those strategies.

We often hear people say, “My community is different.” Indeed, every community IS different. Let’s take a look at a few of the aspects that affect a community’s health in ways that may be different from other communities:

• Different cultures – Are faith-based organizations trusted sources of health information? Is education valued? Is there a culture of exercise or do people typically drive, rather than walk or ride bicycles?
• Different community organizations – Which organizations are well-managed and financially strong? Which are providing evidence-based programs? Which can provide the leadership for a community-wide initiative?
• Different barriers to healthy behaviors – Are there safe places to walk and exercise? Is fresh food readily available and affordable?
• Differing access to healthcare – Are neighborhood clinics located in low-income neighborhoods? Are certain groups reluctant to visit healthcare providers? Is transportation an issue?

Many of the strategies for improving community health involve local leaders working together to make a difference. In any given community, this may be hospital leaders, public health officials, the United Way, community foundation boards, city officials, nonprofit organizations and other interested groups. There are many organizations and individuals in every community that have a sincere interest in seeing tangible improvements in the place they love and serve.

A high quality Community Health Needs Assessment will certainly highlight the issues a community should start to address, but it will also provide the evidence that points to workable strategies and help identify the groups that can carry out the work.

All these moving parts may seem like that 10,000-piece puzzle. But the puzzle’s picture begins to emerge with information from your Community Health Needs Assessment.

If you are interested in discussing how a Community Health Needs Assessment and related planning activities can help your organization make a greater impact, please contact Mary Coyne at (806) 670-7440 or Mary@AscentHealthConsulting.com. 

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Start with the End in Mind–What Tools Do You Need?

If you want to accomplish something and propel your organization forward, you have to envision it. Granted, this isn’t news to anyone reading this blog. After all, most people interested in healthcare consulting services know what they need, right?

But let’s review the basics because repetition is the mother of mastery. First, we acknowledge we need data. Next, we need to build a team. Now, it’s time to talk about what the team needs to choose.

The “end” in this case is a tool, instrument or roadmap that leads your healthcare organization to make decisions based on facts. Evidence-based strategic planning is important, but you have to design your assessment process in such a way that you achieve your goal.

Let’s take a practical example: buying a car. How do we choose a vehicle out of thousands of options? Well, we have a few criteria:
• Capacity (seats for just you or you and all of the neighborhood 12-year-olds?)
• Fuel economy (can you actually afford to run this thing?)
• Features (how much whiz-bang stuff do you need vs. want?)
• Cost (oh, can we afford this?)
• Status (what does this minivan “say” about me? What do I want people to think?)

If you think this is a silly example, keep reading.

Your community health needs assessment (CHNA) must fit your needs. Are you a hospital needing to satisfy the IRS 990 Schedule H requirement to conduct a CHNA? Are you a non-profit? As a healthcare organization, what types of decisions do you want a CHNA to guide you through? Is it a “one time” document or will it be structured for updates and revisions?How many questions will you ask/answer and what types of information will it cover? Will it be quantitative or qualitative? Will it be used by a limited number of people and organizations or will you actively encourage others in your community to mine its riches? Do you want to use secondary data to save money or do you want a more comprehensive primary data project?

These are the questions that will help you clarify your needs for a final product. And once you decide, it’s time to make it happen. The good news: now the end is in sight!

If you are interested in discussing how a Community Health Needs Assessment and related planning activities can help your organization make a greater impact, please contact Mary Coyne at (806) 670-7440 or Mary@AscentHealthConsulting.com

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Short-Term Teambuilding: Think Olympics, Not the NFL

You’ve done it. You’ve convinced the people you need to convince that it’s time for a Community Health Assessment process. Someone is going to invest in the project—maybe the taxpayers, maybe hospitals, maybe the local philanthropic foundation—but someone, somewhere agrees with you because of your deliberate advocacy and persuasive arguments. Now it’s time to build the team.

This part can be very cliché or chocked with bureaucratese. Don’t let it be trite or wordy. Don’t lose yourself or others in “collaboration” discussions for hours. Time for precision and accuracy. Cogent, concise, to the point. You need to recruit decision makers and experts for a finite period of time. Once you do that, it’s time to get to work. In fact, try these steps:

• Plan for three meetings for 90 minutes each, around lunch

• Recruit the following participants:
– United Way
– Local Hospital administrators or COOs (must be decision makers)
– Local university social sciences, biostats, or public health professor
– City and County officials
– Local health department
– School superintendent
– Largest employer management representative (not the ISD or hospital)
– State health department
– Local workforce expert
– Local clergy alliance representative
– Largest local volunteer association
– Social service club representatives

• Have no more than 15 people on the committee

Plan to conduct your three meetings in an open and collaborative fashion, but be a slave to the clock. You MUST accomplish your action items and respect everyone’s time.

Here is the overall objective: build a team to do this specific work. These are not the same people you would choose to run a hospital or school. You aren’t working through a church retreat planning session. You are not building a football team with a quarterback for an entire season. You are choosing an Olympic team representing the best and most knowledgeable people possible to come together and contribute for one project and product. You want specialists with the clear understanding and expectation that this is a short-term commitment with long-term effects. Yes, more projects and momentum may come from this work. But be clear: we just need YOU! for three lunch meetings to make decisions based on your experience.

With that kind of focus, dedication and skill, you just might win a medal, stand on the podium and make a measurable difference.

If you are interested in discussing how a Community Health Needs Assessment and related planning activities can help your organization make a greater impact, please contact Mary Coyne at (806) 670-7440 or Mary@AscentHealthConsulting.com

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Let’s Begin at the Beginning…

We’re going to start at the start of things. If you are considering a strategic process for a Community Health Needs Assessment, there has to be a place to begin the journey. And it’s not where you think. No, it’s not with the statistician. Not the focus group. Not the committee meeting. It’s earlier than that.

The beginning of the journey is “buy-in.” Literally and figuratively. The decision makers must realize, recognize and agree on the value of this idea. This isn’t just a box to check on an IRS form: this must be strategic and transformational. This assessment process absolutely must get to the heart of the community’s needs. No foolin’, no sugar-coating, no hurt feelings. Politics must take a break.

Now, anyone reading that last sentence who is a leader of an organization for longer than 10 minutes will say: WRONG! You can’t ignore politics and the context of healthcare organizations in our town/city/community. The “other” hospital is doing “X” and we just started services with “Y” to compete. Or: the mayor started this “movement” and the city is behind her—we have to go along. You know all of the examples…people have already started on something and we can’t look too closely and change directions to waste money.

The beginning, the starting conversation, the headwaters of this journey have to be data-driven. Everyone has to agree that priorities must be defined by the trends assessed and that resources must be given to those priorities. The buy-in argument is simple: priorities must be addressed. They can be “in addition to” the existing efforts, projects, programs and ideas that are already being pursued. These priorities can be added, but everyone must agree that they can’t be ignored.

There will be time (we’ll discuss at a later date) for the next steps. But do not ignore the importance of the process and the champions it will take to make it happen. Your first mission, should you chose to accept it, is to cultivate and grow your own heroes.

An example would be my first political foray into community health assessments. A CHNA had not been performed in eight years in my jurisdiction as a health officer, and I knew it needed to happen. So, what did I do?

• I met with community leaders to describe what had been done in the past
• Talked about the “needs” that others were discussing across town, yet no one had focused efforts
• Advocated and proposed a budget item (one year in advance)
• Presented a proposal with action items for a contract and contractor
• Managed the process with transparency and community input
• Provided the political boards and organizations with opportunities to publicly discuss the process and take ownership for the leadership and foresight
• Facilitated follow-up meetings
• Formalized plans for subsequent CHNAs

Sounds simple, right? We’ve all heard about strategic decisions and the importance of champion development. Few organizations, however, take the time to get consensus and energy at the beginning. And as the process moves forward, you’ll be glad you put in the hard work to grow these local heroes.

So, grab a cape and a mask and sell the idea. You’ll need help to save the world.

If you are interested in discussing how a Community Health Needs Assessment and related planning activities can help your organization make a greater impact, please contact Mary Coyne at (806) 670-7440 or Mary@AscentHealthConsulting.com

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