A Collective Impact for Conducting a Community Health Assessment

About the Program

Category: Health (Best in Category)

Year: 2023

​ The Department of Public Health has implemented a Collective Impact approach as the backbone of the San Bernardino County Community Vital Signs Initiative (Vital Signs). Vital Signs is a collective impact initiative that seeks to improve health outcomes by organizing cross-sector groups of partners to transform a system by sharing a common agenda. The Vital Signs Initiative was established by three county departments: Public Health, Behavioral Health and Arrowhead Regional Medical Center, and transformed into a community-wide health improvement initiative responsible for operationalizing the Wellness element under the San Bernardino Countywide Vision. Vital Signs prioritized the most urgent issues that impact the health and wellness of our county residents and how factors such as the economy, education, safety, and health issues affect one another. Working collectively with partners, stakeholders and the community, a series of community health assessments were conducted to collect and analyze primary and secondary data and create and implement a plan to address issues that negatively impact our community’s health outcomes. As a result of this effort, we collected over 6,400 surveys across the county, elevating the voices of the populations that traditionally go unheard to develop a comprehensive assessment and community health improvement plan.