While health care typically deals mainly with diagnosing and treating disease, public health looks at trying to improve a broad spectrum of outcomes related to health and well-being -- ideally, preventing health problems from developing in the first place. That’s the basic idea behind prevention strategies, which can be understood as three types of measures: Primary, Secondary and Tertiary.
Speaking Public Health: Social Determinants of Health
Social Determinants of Health are the conditions in the places where people live, learn, work, and play that impact health and well-being. They affect people’s health and well-being in a wide variety of ways, and they’re key drivers of health inequities -- the unfair differences in health status or access to health resources between different groups of people.
Speaking Public Health: Collective Impact
Collective Impact is a structured approach to bringing people together to coordinate and act on complex issues, to bring about positive social change.
In other words, collective impact work means that instead of a lot of people and organizations acting on their own to try to solve problems, all those people and organizations get together and act as one unit to accomplish their goals.
End of Year Rewind Post
They say that with the New Year comes a sense of renewal — unfortunately the beginning of 2021 has brought with it a continuation of the many challenges we witnessed in 2020. It is evident now more than ever that turning the page on the calendar doesn’t mean we can turn away from the intense challenges facing our communities as we continue to battle the COVID-19 pandemic, health inequities, racial injustice, and other social determinants that threaten public health in the Blue Hills region. Despite the fatigue and despair that we’ve felt over the past year, and still continue to feel in this New Year, we also have reasons for optimism and hope.
The Blue Hills Community Health Alliance (CHNA 20) begins 2021 in a stronger position than ever before, ready to tackle the mounting challenges ahead of us with the strength and support of our many community partners.
Celebrating Kym Williams
2020 has been a year of great change for most of us, and the Blue Hills Community Health Alliance is no exception. Amid all the challenges of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic and social inequities that impact our communities, we’re also facing internal change. Some of the changes for the CHNA are positive, such as our new home at Bay State Community Services. Others are harder to accept -- like the decision of our longtime Program Director, Kym Williams, to step aside into a less substantive role as we approached the end of the fiscal year.
Caring for the Community during COVID-19: Lessons Learned
Throughout the COVID-19 crisis, CHNA 20 has been highlighting the stories of our community partners and their heroic efforts to continue serving their clients despite the many challenges presented by the pandemic. As an organization that strives to make meaningful connections between agencies to improve public health outcomes in the long term, we feel it’s vitally important for us to take some time to step back and examine the lessons that have been learned during this time. What has worked well? What surprising insights have agencies had due to changing their models? What do community partners want to take forward with them into a “new normal” that will hopefully change public health for the better?
CHNA 20 Annual Report 2018 - 2019
Every year, the Blue Hills Community Health Alliance (CHNA 20) staff creates an annual report that is shared with local hospitals whose Determination of Need (DoN) funds support community health initiatives and build the capacity of CHNA 20 and its members.
Ensuring that these funds are utilized in the most strategic, cost-effective and impactful manner possible is paramount to CHNA 20. During the last two years we have allocated resources to support multi-sector partnerships, taken steps to align with regional public health efforts, and increased our internal capacity, while prioritizing social determinants of health and health equity initiatives.
Learning More from Community Conversations
We’ve been busy! In the past month, we have taken great strides forward in our transportation equity work in the Blue Hills. Our Blue Hills Regional Coordinating Council (BHRCC) convened six more Community Conversations to gather firsthand perspectives and experiences from the communities we serve. Speaking to participants in Quincy, Braintree, Weymouth, Hingham, Milton, and Hull -- and gathering follow-up evaluations from many -- has provided us with valuable information that will help to shape the future of our efforts to improve transportation in our region.
Why Age-Friendly Communities are Important to Our Work
Within the Blue Hills Community Health Alliance catchment area, three of our thirteen cities and towns -- Quincy, Scituate, and Cohasset -- are currently enrolled in the AARP Age-Friendly Communities network. Their enrollment in the program signals a desire to create communities that will support the needs of an aging population, but what does creating an Age-Friendly Community actually involve? And why are Age-Friendly Communities important to the work of the Blue Hills Community Health Alliance?
Holding Community Conversations to Solve Transportation Challenges
Exactly one year ago, in January 2019, CHNA 20 launched a new program designed to address one of the social determinants that contribute to health disparities in our region. Based on our own data, conversations with partners and stakeholders, and data gathered for the South Shore Hospital Needs Assessment, we chose to focus deeply on solving the problem of transportation equity in our region. Realizing that a lack of reliable transportation is one of our region’s most prevalent social determinants of health led us to create the Blue Hills Regional Coordinating Council (Blue Hills RCC), a voluntary group of stakeholders collaborating to address regional transportation needs. The Blue Hills RCC also supports Metro Quincy’s transition to an Age-Friendly Community by helping to address mobility and transportation access issues for older adults and other populations who would benefit greatly from increased accessibility.