Every three years, Swedish participates in a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) to identify the greatest needs and unique challenges of the communities we serve. In December, Swedish completed its 2018 CHNA and released the executive summary of the findings for each community, here.
The CHNA process was guided by the understanding that much of a person’s health is determined by the conditions in which they live, work, play, and worship. To make this assessment, Swedish gathered community information on health conditions of the population, socioeconomic factors, physical environment, health behaviors, and available opportunities.
“With this information, we can specifically target the health needs of our various communities and develop strategies to address them,” said Dr. Guy Hudson, Swedish chief executive officer.
The following social determinants of health emerged as prevalent issues across the communities of all five Swedish hospital campuses and ambulatory network during the assessment process: mental health, drug addiction, homelessness, obesity, joint or back pain, diabetes, high blood pressure, cancer, and alcohol overuse.
Swedish will use this information to develop a community health improvement plan (CHIP) to specifically address many of the identified barriers to improve health. The CHIP will outline a process by which Swedish will focus on strengthening its existing programs, consider new programs that will make a greater impact, and partner with other organizations and providers to collaborate on solutions.
The Swedish CHNA was first developed in 2006 as a requirement of the Affordable Care Act (ACA) and is now part of the 2018 – 2022 Swedish Strategic Plan.
A copy of the CHNA is available at www.swedish.org/about/overview/mission-outreach/community-engagement/community-needs-assessment. To request a paper copy of any of the reports or to provide comments, please contact Sherry Williams, community engagement director for Swedish, by email or call 206-386-3407.
