Fall Issue 2016

North Jersey Health Collaborative All Partner Meeting & 3rd Birthday Celebration! 


Join us for an evening of celebration on November 29th from 4:00 - 7:00 PM at Altantic Health System! 

Keynote speaker Bob Atkins, PhD, Director of New Jersey Health Initiatives, will share his passion and experience in building healthier communities across NJ through effective collaborations, meaningful partnerships, conversations, and innovations. 

Come network and socialize with other collaborative partners, and help welcome our new leadership team members on board, as we thank the founding leaders who are stepping down for their dedication and commitment to creating healthier communities in NJ.

Limited seats are available. Act now to reserve you spot, register here. 


We need your organization's support to help sustain and expand the collective work of the NJHC.  Click on the graphic above for more information about how your organization can help the NJHC move forward. Every contribution matters and will help the NJHC continue to provide the necessary backbone support to transform our collaboration into meaningful outcomes for our communities.

We will provide updates on the progress of our campaign in the weeks ahead. Pledge your support for 2017 here, or email  Catherine Connelly  to further explore the many ways you and your organization can participate.    

New Website Features introduced during the October Webinar 


Our website has been upgraded to provide faster and more efficient ways to find and display data, trends, and comparisons.  Click on "visit the new dashboard" above to see more. You can also learn more about the new features and enhancements by listening to our recent  Website Webinar  recording.  

Warren County data is coming to to our website soon.  An announcement will be sent as soon as the new data is available.   
Community Health Improvement Plan: 
Evaluation Framework & Performance Measures 

Across the NJHC,  16 workgroups are addressing a variety of health issues, each through multiple strategies within and across counties. Because of this large scope, and the diversity of approaches to issues, it would not be practical,or desirable, to create a unique evaluation plan for each individual workgroup strategy.  As a collaborative, we want to be able to track and understand our impact at multiple levels - in other words to have evaluation performance measures that make sense for each strategy, but that can also be combined to show impact at the workgroup, county, and regional levels.  This approach is known as  Collective Impact Evaluation .   This model works well when you have multiple groups working on separate initiatives that are tied together by a common vision or structure, just like the NJHC.

Overall, our intended result is to create Healthy Communities, Healthy People in northern New Jersey. The workgroup strategies across the collaborative play a key role in making that result a reality.  The strategies which will be officially rolled out starting in January include tactics such as data development, education/training for professionals and/or the community, improving access to resources and services, environmental /systems level change and advocacy campaigns.

Evaluation measures for each strategy category are based on a Results Based Accountability Framework approach and address 3 basic questions:
  • What have we done?                     
  • How well did we do it?
  • Is anyone better off? 
For more information and specific details go to the new Plans & Priorities
heading on our  website to find the county health improvement plan for your county and view the strategies and performance measures that will be used to monitor and track progress on the community health improvement plans.  

This is an exciting time for the NJHC as we gear up for the January launch of our first shared community health improvement plan!

Don't miss your January county committee meeting. Mark your calendar now.

Morris County:  January 12th (10:00 AM - 12:00 PM)
Passaic County: January 25th (9:00 AM - 11:00 AM)    
Sussex County:  Jan 12th (12:00 - 2:00 PM)
Union County: Jan 11th (2:00 - 4:00 PM)
Warren County: Jan TBD

NJHC Talks with Sheri Cognetti of the Fanwood Scotch Plains YMCA about National Diabetes Month 

Diabetes, a group of diseases marked by high levels of blood glucose, resulting from defects in insulin production, insulin action, or both, is a leading cause of death in the United States.   According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), more than 25 million people have diabetes, but 1 out of 4 don't know they have it. The prevalence of diagnosed type 2 diabetes increased sixfold in the latter half of the last century. Diabetes risk factors such as obesity and physical inactivity have played a major role in this dramatic increase. Age, race, and ethnicity are also important risk factors. Diabetes disproportionately affects minority populations and the elderly, and its incidence is likely to increase as minority populations grow and the U.S. population becomes older. If not managed properly, diabetes can lead to heart disease, kidney failure, blindness and stroke.  

Sheri Cognetti, Senior Program Director at the Fanwood Scotch Plains YMCA shares that they use National Diabetes Month to heighten awareness of diabetes prevention and diabetes by offering risk assessments and educational opportunities for the community.  The YMCA's Diabetes Prevention Program is offered on an ongoing basis to help people reduce their risk for developing type 2 diabetes and helps people with prediabetes eat healthier, increase their physical activity, and lose weight, which can delay or even prevent the onset of type 2 diabetes. In addition, in honor of National Diabetes month the Fanwood Scotch Plains Y is hosting a diabetes talk and a healthy holiday cooking demonstration by a Registered Dietitian.  Go here to learn more about these offerings. 

Sheri also serves as the co-lead for the NJHC Union County Committee Diabetes, Hypertension, and Health Literacy workgroup.  This group is working together to improve diabetes and hypertension awareness and access to preventative care and treatment via community-based education and referral services. You can learn more about the data that is being used to inform this work, communities being targeted, and the strategies and performance measures being implemented to address diabetes and diabetes related risk factors in Union County here . 

Diabetes was identified during the recent community health needs assessment as a priority health issue in Morris and Passaic counties also.   Go to our website Plans and Priorities section to find more information and to see how your organization might get involved.   
NJHC Holds First Collaborative to Collaborative Learning Event

At our first ever coalition-to-coalition learning event, Rachel Stoler and Corey Sanderson of the  Communities That Care Coalition shared the nitty-gritty, behind-the-scenes story of their coalition, what works - as well as what hasn't worked, and what they learned the hard way, about their collective impact approach to health improvement.  This was a great opportunity for NJHC, as a young collaborative, to borrow some wisdom from those who have "been there, done that."  NJHC plans to offer more of this type of collaborative learning in the future.To view the slides and highlights of the event go to our new Professional Development page here.
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Check out our Enhanced Website Calendar

Click on the calendar to see our new calendar. If you are a NJHC Partner and would like to post your event, please forward information to

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