Community Health

Latest News: Many Virginia hospitals are in the process of completing Community Health Needs Assessments in their service areas. To support that work, Community Health Solutions has created a knowledge bank with resources related to conducting assessments, planning, and evaluation needs. Visit this link to review the available resources. As VHHA’s work on its Population Health strategy evolves, visit this page and the Population Health page for updates coming soon. Questions about the Association’s work on this issue may be directed to VHHA Senior Director Kelly Canon at kcannon@vhha.com or 804-297-3547.

Community Health Needs Assessment Summaries

Development of community health needs assessments (CHNA) and implementation strategies is required of tax-exempt hospitals as a result of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. CHNAs ensure that hospitals and public health agencies gather the necessary information to efficiently allocate resources to meet a given community’s health needs. One objective of the CHNA policy is to create “unique” opportunities to improve the health of communities across the United States. The obvious question, then, is how unique is each CHNA in Virginia? The Virginia Health Care Foundation (VHCF) and VHHA co-sponsored a study that examines all the recent CHNAs in the Commonwealth.

This executive summary identifies the five most frequently reported leading health issues and critical service gaps identified in the CHNAs. It includes CHNA data regarding health professional shortages, it examines some of the top causes of potentially avoidable hospitalizations within the context of these findings, and importantly, it reports on the priority areas for which corrective implementation strategies have been developed. Individual CHNA summaries are available for download below.

Data Uploaded: February 1, 2016


To review a specific Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) Summary, click on the drop-down menu to choose a hospital/health agency, then click View. You may view multiple CHNA Summaries by returning to this page and selecting each individually. VHCF and VHHA logo