Healthy Hartford: A Community Health Needs Assessment

The Community Health Needs Assessment (“CHNA”) process for Hartford began in October 2010. In order to complete the community health needs assessment the Consortium contracted with Holleran, a health research consulting firm, to complete a secondary data analysis and to conduct telephone interviews of 59 Key Informants identified by the steering committee of the CHNA group.
From these various data sources we are able to present a framework to better understand the importance of social determinants of health, which refer to factors and resources that are essential to the health of communities and individuals. These include income, shelter, education, access to nutritious
food, community norms and cohesion. They are the circumstances in which people are born, grow up, live, and work, as well as the resources available to support their health and help them deal effectively with illness and disease. From the perspective of a Community Health Needs Assessment, the social determinants of health provide a lens through which to view different populations and communities in terms of which community conditions are most important and which are the most limiting for population health