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Community Health

Health Share is committed to achieving health equity and improving the health of our members through transparency and collaboration with partners. We are guided by a community health assessment (CHA) and a community health improvement plan (CHP), in making decisions, setting activities, and goals that help to improve health experiences and outcomes in our community.

  • ‍A community health assessment (CHA) or community health needs assessment (CHNA) identifies health experiences, trends and issues of the community at a high level. This involves gathering information and data directly from community and hearing it from their perspective. CHAs are meant to inform organizations like Health Share in how to improve community health.

    Health Share conducts a regional community health assessments through a collaborative effort called the Healthy Columbia Willamette Collaborative (HCWC).

    Previous CHAs:

  • Health Share, along with local health care and public health systems, are part of a collaborative called the Healthy Columbia-Willamette Collaborative (HCWC). The HCWC was birthed in 2010, when local health care and public health leaders began to discuss the upcoming need for several community health assessments and health improvement plans within the quad-county region (Clackamas, Clark, Multnomah and Washington counties) in response to the Affordable Care Act and Public Health Accreditation. They agreed that the best approach was to form a work group to complete one community-wide health assessment.

    This shared and comprehensive approach looks at the health experiences, trends and issues of communities in our region. It helps organizations avoid doing the same work twice, focus on the most important needs, and work together to carry out and track community health improvement efforts.

    Current HCWC Member Organizations:

    • CareOregon

    • Clackamas County HHS

    • Health Share of Oregon

    • Hillsboro Medical Center - Tuality

    • Kaiser Permanente

    • Legacy Health

    • Multnomah County Health Dept

    • Oregon Health & Science University

    • Portland Adventist Medical Center

    • Providence Health & Services

    • Trillium Community Health Plan

    • Washington County Public Health

  • Community Health Improvement Plans (CHP) present ways to improve health for communities and is a direct response to community health assessments (CHA). Health Share’s CHP focuses on the Clackamas, Multnomah and Washington county region.

    You can read our full 2025-2029 Community Health Improvement Plan here. (hyperlink to CHP report).

    Previous CHPs and Progress Reports:

    ·       2019-2024 CHPs

    ·       2024 Progress Report

    ·       2023 Progress Report

    ·       2022 Progress Report

    ·       2021 Progress Report

    ·       2020 Progress Report

    Health Share’s CHP Priority Areas and Goals:

    Access to Equitable Care

    • Goal: Members are able to access the health care system, connect with care easily and locally, and get their physical and behavioral health needs met. The workforce is equipped to support access to equitable health care.

    Prevention

    • Goal: Community partnerships, efforts, and investments are aligned to support prevention across all ages.

    • This ranges from ensuring supports for children to have a healthy start, to providing adults with substance use disorders access to effective, person-centered treatment wherever they seek care in our region.

    Social Health Needs

    • Goal: Partnerships are established to address social determinants of health in the member population. Social Health benefit (called Health-Related Social Needs, or HRSN) is implemented.

  • In 2019, as part of the development of Health Share’s first CHP, Health Share’s Community Advisory Council created a set of five Guiding Values and Principles, which we continue to follow today:

    • We are grounded in health equity, trauma-informed care, and social determinants of health.

    • We are strategic by including upstream and downstream efforts so that we address the social determinants of health upstream while impacting clinical improvements downstream.

    • We are aligned with our local public health departments and health system partners to maximize impact.

    • We are strengths-based to lift up the assets and resiliency of the communities we serve.

    • We are adaptive and emergent in this CHP in that it should be designed to respond to what we know, while also holding space to adapt to new information from communities throughout the duration of the plan.

Community Health Needs Assessment Reports

For questions, please contact Christine Kan, kanc@healthshareoregon.org