2024 Community Health Assessment Wraps Up
2024 Community Health Assessment Wraps Up: Priorities include Housing, Medical, and Behavioral Health Care
The Columbia Gorge Health Council (CGHC) and the Community Advisory Council (CAC) are proud to announce that the 2024 Community Health Assessment (CHA) is complete. The information gathered for the CHA will inform community-wide strategies to address the region's highest-priority needs. CGHC, the CAC, and local agencies will create collaborative strategies in drafting the 2025 Community Health Improvement Plan (CHP.) The CHP will guide CGHC spending for the next several years. (Information below about how to get involved.)
SUMMARY & KEY TAKEAWAYS
The 2024 CHA found that the lack of affordable housing and access to medical and behavioral health care, ranging from adequate services of all care types to workforce development opportunities, are opportunities to improve health across Wasco and Hood River Counties.
Every five years, CGHC facilitates the development of the CHA on behalf of PacificSource Community Solutions (PacificSource) Columbia Gorge Coordinated Care Organization (CCO.) The last Regional Columbia Gorge CHA was developed in 2019 and focused on seven counties along the Columbia River in Oregon and Washington. This 2024 CHA focuses on two Oregon counties—Hood River and Wasco—as these counties form the PacificSource CCO geographic footprint.
COMMUNITY-DRIVEN PROCESS
The CAC, a planning team, and key partners stewarded a community-driven process to document and prioritize critical health-related issues. The three groups used a health equity framework, three guiding principles, and six questions to guide the process of gathering and documenting information, synthesizing data, and engaging in sense-making and prioritization of key takeaways. Read more about the process in our 2-page Executive Summary.
Three principles:
· Listen to and act upon community partner input without placing undue time burden,
· Use high quality, accessible, and regularly updated data sources, where available
· Centering equity in gathering, analyzing, and reporting data
Framework
The Bay Area Regional Health Inequities Initiative (BARHII), a nationally recognized framework for health equity, served as a frame for sense-making around the relationships among demographics, social determinants of health, and health inequities. As shown below, the BARHII framework suggests that social inequities influence social determinants of health, which in turn, influence health inequities.
Social inequity is the unequal distribution of money, power, and resources in a society because of unfairness and injustice. (Learn more: American Public Health Association)
Social determinants of health are the conditions in which people are born, live, learn, work, and play that influence our well-being. Understanding these conditions helps explain why some people are less healthy than others. (Learn more: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services)
Health inequities are systematic differences in the health status of different population groups, which often arise from the social determinants of health. These inequities have significant social and economic costs both to individuals and societies. (Learn more: World Health Organization)
The team used guiding questions to gather qualitative and quantitative data across multiple community listening sessions, surveys, national and local census data and community forums, hearing from and working with community partners (i.e., agencies) and community members (i.e., residents).
A common theme identified across all four priorities was the need for more diverse, bicultural, and bilingual services and providers.
To learn more about the inequities and health disparities identified across the Gorge, please see the 2024 Community Health Assessment here (https://www.cghealthcouncil.org/s/CHA-Report-FINAL-12-10-24.pdf) and the Executive Summary here (https://www.cghealthcouncil.org/s/2024-CHA-Executive-Summary-12-10-24.pdf).
HOW TO GET INVOLVED
The Community Advisory Council (CAC) is a committee of the Columbia Gorge Health Council (CGHC). The CAC is made up of people living in Hood River and Wasco Counties who are on the Oregon Health Plan. Some members can also be from local community organizations in our region.
The local CCO, PacificSource Columbia Gorge, has commitments to community engagement and reinvestment. CGHC works with the community to hold the CCO accountable to these commitments. The CAC helps make decisions about how the CCO works with the community and spends funds.
To join, please complete an application for CAC membership on our website here. A committee will review your application and may call to talk about your interest. Please call Amina Krol at (971)-465-1024 or email amina@gorgehealthcouncil.org if you have questions or need help with your application.
MISSION STATEMENT
The Columbia Gorge Health Council’s mission is to address barriers to health and well-being in the Gorge region by working with partners to generate community-driven solutions, lifting patient and provider voices, and bringing partners together to invest funds and support collective efforts to improve health quality, access, and equity.