EliScholar – A Digital Platform for Scholarly Publishing at Yale
Abstract
As required by new laws of the Affordable Care Act, non-profit hospitals are required to produce a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) on a triennial basis in order to receive Medicaid funding, among others. Identification of community health assets is now a requirement by the IRS, in order for the hospital to keep their non-profit status. Community asset mapping (CAM) is an important new component of the community health needs assessment required by the Affordable Care Act for non-profit hospitals. CAM allows these hospitals and the communities they serve to identify key fixtures in their communities that can be leveraged to promote better health and well-being, especially when external resources (e.g. grants) are not available. In partnership with Yale New Haven Health and UnitedWay 2-1-1, we compiled health assets from various towns and communities in the broad Connecticut region. They were classified into six broad areas of need. We conducted interviews with community leaders and residents from the Greater New Haven area, more specifically the West River neighborhood. We hoped to gather insight and perceptions of residents about health assets in their area. Lastly, we generated asset heat maps with GIS to visualize health asset service areas and possibly identify areas of need. Our project sought to expand upon the scope of the mandated CHNA to include community input. Outside of the list of health assets, we went a step further to try to identify possible areas of need based on low coverage by assets on the heat maps.https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/ysph_pbchrr/1028/thumbnail.jp
