Health grantmakers play a vital role in supporting and spreading community health improvement. Community Health Solutions provides research, consultation, and learning support to help health grantmakers:
- Assess community needs,
- Develop community strategies,
- Support community learning,
- Facilitate community collaboration, and
- Analyze the community value of local initiatives.
1. Assess Community Needs
Community health needs assessment (CHNA) is essential for producing timely information about community needs and service gaps. Community Health Solutions offers a flexible approach to CHNA that can be customized to produce a wide lens on overall community health or a narrow lens on the impact of specific health issues. The product can be delivered in a traditional report format or via a community portal complete with data tables and mapping. The results can help grantmakers and community organizations plan, manage, and evaluate community initiatives.
2. Develop Community Strategies
Community health improvement requires thoughtful strategy development. We support health grantmakers in their efforts to develop community strategies that engage local organizations in collaborative efforts to achieve defined objectives through collective impact. We begin with active listening to understand the strategic vision and objectives of the project. We then work closely with our client to design a strategic approach that meets the vision and objectives of the project within the context of the particular setting. We can also provide support for strategy execution and evaluation, as needed.
3. Support Community Learning
Community learning is essential for assuring that community organizations have the strategic and operational capacity to sustain their mission and deliver value in return for funding. We provide community learning solutions that may include a spectrum of supports including topical training, focused workshops, and community learning portals. A community learning portal is a community resource that delivers a combination of data, maps, tools, training, and technical assistance to help community stakeholders develop informed strategies and programs. Community learning portals can be customized as needed to address community needs. (See the Virginia Atlas of Community Health as an example of a community learning portal for a general audience, and the CBHI Support Center as an example of a community learning portal focused on children’s behavioral health.)
4. Facilitate Community Collaboration
Today’s community health issues are too complex for any single organization to solve. Community collaboration is necessary to improve health and optimize resources. Community Health Solutions helps health grantmakers facilitate community collaboration by employing proven strategies for engaging stakeholders, defining objectives, enabling learning, supporting action, and assuring accountability. All of this work is conducted in close consultation with the sponsoring organization. We typically employ a collaborative learning platform to multiple organizations collaborate for capacity building and community health improvement. The result is stronger community capacity and better performance at an efficient cost per organization. (See the Greater Richmond PCMH Collaborative and the Greater Williamsburg Chronic Care Collaborative as examples of health grantmaker funded community collaboratives.)
5. Analyze Community Value
Today it is critically important for health grantmakers to assure the value of their investments in community health. Community Health Solutions helps health grantmakers assure value by conducting strategic evaluations of community organizations, programs and initiatives. Our capabilities range from conventional models of evaluation to more innovative approaches such as community value analysis. Community value analysis is a special form of evaluation focused on measuring the value a community organization or program delivers in return for the resources it receives. Because it is focused on defining specific forms of value for specific audiences, community value analysis is a powerful tool for helping community-based organizations focus on delivering services that are of high value to the community. The results of community value analysis can help health grantmakers make informed decisions about program management and support.
Learn more…
Please contact Stephen Horan at 804.673.0166 or chs@chsresults.com to learn more about strategy supports for health grantmakers.
