After nearly a year of inquiry and analysis, the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHA) Committee, a subset of Health Share of Oregon’s Community Advisory Council (CAC), has designated Behavioral Health and Chronic Disease as the two priorities for focus in Health Share’s Community Health Improvement Plan, which will be submitted to the Oregon Health Authority (OHA) in June 2014.
“While the process has been time consuming and sometimes overwhelming, it has been a privilege to work with the members of this committee who have been unwavering in their commitment to ensure that the needs and priorities of the communities are heard,” said Committee Chair Sonja Ervin. “Behavioral health issues and chronic disease related to issues of nutrition and physical activity are impacting so many in our communities. We are hopeful that the work that is being done in Health Share and the Committee will begin to reduce the health disparities and build healthy communities.”
Under the direction of Ms. Ervin, the committee members Joseph Lowe, Tab Dansby and Ronda Harrison have, since February 2013, engaged in a comprehensive process to identify the population health issues Health Share, , the state’s largest coordinated care organization, will address through 2015.
The goal of Health Share’s Community Health Needs Assessment is to reduce health disparities, promote health equity and improve overall population health. The regional Healthy Columbia-Willamette Collaborative (HCW) community health needs assessment served as a foundation for Health Share, which then used community-led self-assessments and health disparities from Health Share's own member data to further prioritize needs. Health Share focused on finding community-led self-assessments from a wide array of communities.
“Health Share staff is excited to work with our Council members on population health,” said Janet Meyer, Health Share CEO,” because in order to improve health outcomes for our members we have to get ahead of the curve and begin to focus on prevention. We can no longer focus just on the individuals in a clinical setting, we have to move further out into the community to support health in our members' families and neighborhoods.”
The Community Health Improvement Plan, which will be reviewed and approved by Health Share’s CAC and Board of Directors in May, will focus on addressing behavioral health and chronic disease within identified communities served by Health Share.
Community Health Improvement Plan
As a part of health care transformation in Oregon, the Oregon Health Authority asked the 16 coordinated care organizations (CCOs) throughout the state to collaboratively engage in a systematic approach to assessing the health of the populations they cover and the communities those populations live in, and then planning to improve the health of those communities by addressing health disparities. As part of this process, CCOs are developing a CHA and adopting an annual Community Health Improvement Plan.
Health Share’s Community Advisory Council will use the Community Readiness Model from Colorado State University’s Tri-Ethnic Center for Prevention Research as a basis for Health Share’s Improvement Plan. This model was chosen because it is measurable, multi-dimensional and allows matching of interventions to the community’s level of readiness which is critical for success. The process identifies community leaders and impacted communities, and solicits questions around the level of awareness and commitment to address community health.
About Health Share of Oregon
Serving over 200,000 members in Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington Counties, Health Share of Oregon is a unique community-wide partnership created to ensure quality, cost-effective physical, dental and mental health care for Oregon Health Plan members. With a network of over 18,000 providers, including over 900 dentists, Health Share provides an integrated community delivery system with the objective of achieving better care, better health and lower costs for the Medicaid population and for the region.
Health Share is a collaborative of 11 founding partners: Adventist Health, CareOregon, Central City Concern, Clackamas County, Kaiser Permanente, Legacy Health, Multnomah County, Oregon Health & Science University, Providence Health & Services, Tuality Health Alliance and Washington County.
