This is a followup.. or a tangent.. to a previous post on Rural Community Health Needs and Quality Measures

It takes a village

Take a look at any CHNA list of stakeholders and you will see that the community is supported by many operations. Even conducting the CHNA takes multiple experts. Hospital administrators need to outline the goals of their facility, community organizations need to weigh in on important issues, and somebody has to collect surveys and crunch the numbers. The majority of CHNA reports are crunched by external contractors. This last point seems strange to me, as the CHNA is meant for local community building. Why can’t the community do it all? As mentioned in the earlier post, in some communities there is a lack of survey and data know-how. Small rural towns without universities may not have anyone with statistical training. Complex methods may be out of reach. Brilliant rural physicians may just not know where to start. Dispite these issues, CHNA reports are at their core a list of survey questions, a few prevalence calculations, and a community listening group. With a smart simple approach, maybe the community can do it all.

< writing in progress. check back later.. >