Center to Advance Community Health and Equity 

A treasure trove of data, tools, and resources to advance community health improvement practices.

August 2018
 
Welcome to the monthly newsletter of the
Q & A with CACHE's Lead Technical Assistance Analyst

We sat down with Eliza Love to ask what she's been up to since joining CACHE. Hear what she had to say about her work and how to integrate the CBI tool into your own:

Can you describe what you do as the lead technical assistance (TA) analyst? What types of technical assistance does CACHE provide?

In the first year of being CACHE's technical assistance analyst, I have had the opportunity to work across our team in many ways. This includes supporting users of the Community Benefit Insight (CBI) tool through online and telephonic assistance, collaborating with the RTI team to refine the CBI tool, and working with our team to continuously evaluate and grow our center. Most of my time, though is spent integrating information from multiple data sources to identify trends and collaborative opportunities to drive improvements where inequities are concentrated. These contextual analyses lead to the CACHE team's facilitation of strategic conversations with stakeholders across communities to identify where resources can be aligned and where opportunities exist to share ownership in generating health and well-being for all community members. Since the launch of CACHE, we have worked with health systems, hospital associations, public health officials, community organizers, and other stakeholders to better understand how our vision for strategic alignment in cross-sector approaches to health equity can be achieved.


What advice would you give to someone who is new to the CBI tool and CACHE?

First of all, welcome! We're so glad you're interested in using the CBI tool. Three key pieces of advice I would give to new users include:
  1. Check out the terms and glossary section if you find yourself unsure of terminology used on the CBI site. There is some nuanced community benefit language which may be unfamiliar at first
     
  2. Review the recently posted FAQs co-developed by the CBI and CACHE teams to assist in using the tool as well as interpreting the data accessed. It shines light on reporting nuances, limitations of the data, and core functions of the tool.
     
  3. Flip through the slides used for our presentation at the NNPHI conference to become familiar with our team's mission, vision, and working principles. We aim to support appropriate interpretation of data presented on CBI and believe complementary contextual information and supporting analyses are are essential to provide the full picture.
We are here to work with users who might run into any challenges using the tools, understanding the data or thinking through next steps with putting data to good use!


Anything else you'd like to share about CACHE or the work you do?

The CACHE team is always interested in hearing new perspectives on what you're doing to promote multi-sector investment, alignment, and engagement in tackling health inequities. We would love to hear from you on what's working, what's not working, what's most helpful to move this work forward, what's missing in the field currently, or any other questions or thoughts you have! We seek to be a partner and resource in moving this work forward together. 

If you have questions about the work we do at CACHE, potential analyses that might be helpful to your goals, or ways to use different data sets, please send us an email at cache@phi.org or complete our
TA request form. We look forward to hearing from you!
The World Around Us
Advancing Health Care and Community-Based Organization Partnerships to Address Social Determinants: Lessons from the Field

Webinar: Hear from representatives from Project Access NOW (Portland, Oregon), Hunger Free Colorado, and 2-1-1 San Diego's Community Information Exchange as they  explore promising strategies to develop and sustain health care/community-based organization partnerships that address social determinants of health. August 17, 2:30pm ET.


Building Healthy, Equitable Communities Through Comprehensive Long-Range Planning

Webinar:  Change Lab Solutions  will feature Moses Gates of the Regional Plan Association to discuss how place-based strategies are central to health equity, a framework categorizing the elements of healthy places, and how to organize long-range plans using health equity concepts. August 21, 11:00AM PT


Healthy Aging in Oregon

Webinar:   Kirsten Aird, MPH, explores how her program builds collaborations with state and community aging service partners, uses data to drive decision-making and identify health priorities, and prepares staff for working with aging population and partners.
August 28, 12:00PM PT

Healthy Homes: A Healthy Neighborhood Healthy Families Initiative
Healthy Homes: A Healthy Neighborhood Healthy Families Initiative
With partners including faith-based organizations, community development organizations, youth-serving nonprofits and local public schools,  Nationwide Children's Hospital  decided to revitalize Columbus' south side to support the well-being of children and families in the area. 
 
Can A Community Hospital Stick To Its Mission When It Goes For-Profit? 

This article from  Shots, Health News from NPR  highlights costs associated with health care when hospital mergers occur. "Of the nation's 4,840 general hospitals that aren't run by the federal government, 2,849 are nonprofit, 1,035 are for-profit and 956 are owned by state or local governments according to the American Hospital Association. In 2017, 29 for-profit companies bought 18 for-profit and 11 non profit hospitals..."
Resources We Don't Want You to Miss

From our partners at Build Healthy Places Network comes Partnerships for Health Equity and Opportunity: A Healthcare Playbook for Community Developers. This playbook guides community developers toward partnerships with hospitals and healthcare systems. 
 
 


The National Collaborative for Health Equity launches the Health Opportunity and Equity (HOPE) Initiative. HOPE's measures help national and state leaders identify strengths and gaps in opportunity, inform decisions on policy priorities that support good health and well-being across populations, spur cross-sector dialogue and solutions, and exchange model solutions that improve opportunity and health for all. 

We'd love to hear from you!
 
Have a comment, question, resource, tool, or relevant policy you'd like to share?  
Complete the following  form  and let us know how else we can help assist with your needs. You can also send us an email at CACHE@phi.org. 

About CACHE
The Center to Advance Community Health & Equity (CACHE) is housed at the Public Health Institute and has expertise to help nonprofit hospitals, health systems, and other stakeholders translate data into better community investments. CACHE helps users interpret data from Community Benefit Insight, and couple it with existing tools and resources for strategic community benefit implementation. 
Visit  www.thecachecenter.org to learn more.

About CBI
Community Benefit Insight (CBI) is a comprehensive, searchable tool for community benefit data, enabling local organizations to assess how hospital resources are allocated. The tool includes community benefit expenditures as reported by tax-exempt hospitals from all fifty states and the District of Columbia. Visit  www.communitybenefitinsight.org to begin searching for, and using, community-benefit spending data.

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