The Alliance for Health Equity aims to improve health equity, community wellness and quality of life across all neighborhoods of Chicago and Suburban Cook County.  

Impact Areas

The Alliance for Health Equity’s collaboration for the area Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) strengthens our ability to identify health needs and convene specialized workgroups to address disparities.  In order to address the social and structural determinants of health and mental health needs identified in the CHNA, the Alliance for Health Equity is currently convening workgroups on the following areas:

  • Food Access and Food Security

  • Housing

  • Mental Health

  • Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA)

Are you interested in signing up for a workgroup?

Strategies

Our workgroups use several methods to address the disparities found in the Community Health Needs Assessment.

The Alliance for Health Equity works to lead and support policy and advocacy initiatives at the local, state, and federal level. Alliance staff participate alongside member hospitals and community partners in developing, implementing, and advocating for policy change related to our collective priorities – housing, food access, economic development, access to care particularly for mental health and substance use disorders, and health equity.  Examples of policy initiatives that the Alliance for Health Equity has supported are:

  • Creating and funding a statewide Healthy Illinois survey

  • Engaging healthcare providers in the Bring Chicago Home and Just Cause affordable housing campaigns

  • Supporting Tobacco 21 and other related policy initiatives

  • Addressing barriers to naloxone access in healthcare settings and facilitating hospital and clinic services for medication assisted recovery

  • Supporting local food purchasing in institutions in alignment with the Chicago and Cook County Good Food Purchasing policies

  • Creating innovative coverage and services for health related social needs (HRSN) in the Medicaid 1115 waiver, particularly for medical respite, housing supports, and food is medicine

Policy and Advocacy

Through both Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) and development of shared evaluation strategies, the Alliance for Health Equity implements shared data and tracking. The Alliance partners closely with Chicago Department of Public Health, Cook County Department of Public Health, the State of Illinois, and Metopio on data systems work.

The Alliance also works to track shared implementation strategies. One current active initiative is to catalogue Food is Medicine partnerships across the City, County, and State. Active Food is Medicine partnerships in Illinois are encouraged to complete their information in this online spreadsheet. The Alliance also works closely with colleagues at Illinois Public Health Institute who are developing a countywide Community Information Exchange (CIE) for Chicago and Cook County.

Data Systems and Shared Implementation

The Alliance for Health Equity believes that community engagement is a critical component of any effort to improve health equity. Community engagement helps Alliance partners identify the most pressing needs within communities, direct resources where they are most needed, evaluate existing programs, and support community-led and grassroots initiatives.  

The Alliance engages communities in multiple ways and is continually seeking opportunities to improve community involvement and leadership within the collaborative process.

Some examples of community engagement within the Alliance are:

  • Community input collection during assessments through focus groups and surveys

  • Co-leading and participating in implementation workgroups 

  • Providing direct feedback on program plans through key stakeholder interviews and focus groups 

  • Engagement of local community advisory councils and advisory boards in decision-making processes 

Community Engagement

The Alliance for Health Equity team at IPHI has deep expertise in both Health Impact Assessment and Racial Equity Impact Assessment. The team integrates aspects of impact assessment work into all aspects of our work for equitable systems change. We also partner to conduct full impact assessments. In 2021, the Alliance for Health Equity team worked with the Chicago Department of Public Health and Elevated Chicago on a Health and Racial Equity Impact Assessment of equitable transit oriented development (ETOD). The Health and Racial Equity Impact Assessment was part of the process to develop and pass the Connected Communities Ordinance and implementation of ETOD pilot projects in Chicago.

Health and Racial Equity Impact Assessment

Food

The Alliance for Health Equity has a Food Action Agenda that guides our collective work in five strategy areas:

  • Food is medicine

  • Screening and referral

  • Culturally tailored food and nutrition

  • Policy

  • Local food procurement and economic development

The Food is Medicine subcommittee meets quarterly and works to advance policy and programmatic work to support partnerships across Cook County and Illinois. One key Food is Medicine initiative has been work on the 1115 waiver food and nutrition benefits. For Local Food Procurement, the Alliance has partnered on Good Food in Healthcare and identifying strategies for local food procurement in the healthcare sector in Cook County.

Housing

Based on our foundational landscape analysis of Housing and Health partnerships, the Alliance for Health Equity supports work across five strategy areas:

  • Capital and asset investments for housing and community development

  • Coordinate and embed health resources and services with affordable housing

  • Data to inform health and housing initiatives

  • Coordinated policy, advocacy, and legal aid

  • Healthy, quality, accessible housing

Since the founding of CHHRGE in the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic, IPHI and the Alliance for Health Equity have been members of the facilitating committee, advocacy committee, and FLEX group. IPHI and the Alliance led PPE distribution efforts for homeless service organizations at the outset of the pandemic. IPHI and the Alliance worked with CDPH, Lawndale Christian Health Center, and Heartland Alliance Health to to support the launch of shelter based care in Chicago, including coordinating of the process to develop Standards for Shelter Based Health Care and convening cross-sector partners and people with lived expertise to develop the Systems Change Collaborative Recommendations Report.

Chicago Homelessness and Health Response Group for Equity (CHHRGE)

Since 2019, Medical Respite has been a key strategy area for Alliance for Health Equity partners. Medical Respite, or recuperative care, is acute and post-acute care for people experiencing homelessness (PEH) who are too ill or frail to recover from an illness or injury on the streets or in shelter, but who do not need to be in the hospital. Alliance for Health Equity partners and IPHI are currently leading the Illinois Medical Respite Capacity Building Initiative and the Cook County Medical Respite Network. Learn more about the programs to build capacity and systems for holistic medical respite care in Illinois and Cook County.

Medical Respite

Mental Health

After a hiatus, the Alliance for Health Equity relaunched its Mental Health Workgroup. This workgroup is made up of representatives from health systems, health departments, and community-based organizations across Chicago and suburban Cook County. Utilizing key informant interviews from the Community Health Needs Assessment, the priorities developed for the Mental Health Workgroup include:

  • School based mental health services

  • Young adult mental health

  • Building and supporting the mental health workforce

These priorities are viewed through a lens of racial equity, social determinants of health, and collaboration. View our previous work or contact us to join the workgroup today.

CHNA

The Alliance for Health Equity is a collective impact project that unites partners across fields such as clinical care, community-based healthcare, public health, social and human services, community development, academia, and policy. AHE was formed in 2015 by the Illinois Public Health Institute and hospitals in Chicago and Suburban Cook County, in close partnership with the Chicago Department of Health and Cook County Department of Public Health, to complete a Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) for the City of Chicago and Suburban Cook County.

The CHNA is a public health tool that gives organizations information about a community’s current health status, needs, and resources. Information gained from CHNA’s allow our partners, including hospitals, health departments, health service providers, community-based organizations, universities, and government agencies to develop shared plans for improving community health and reducing health inequities across the city and county. 

The landmark Affordable Care Act requires non-profit hospitals to complete comprehensive community health needs assessments every three years and to develop plans for improving community health based on assessment findings. Membership in the Alliance for Health Equity allows hospitals to streamline their assessment processes, more effectively use community benefit resources, align with local health department plans, meaningfully engage communities, build stronger networks with community-based providers, and have a greater impact on community health. 

  • The Alliance for Health Equity completes a countywide assessment every three years. Previous assessments were completed in 2016, 2019, and 2022. The next countywide assessment will be completed in December 2024 and will be publicly available in 2025.

    Illinois Public Health Institute (IPHI) serves as the background organization for the Alliance and coordinates the assessment process. IPHI provides hospitals with collated datasets and reports that describe the health status of Chicagoland communities with an emphasis on health and racial equity as well as community assets. In addition, IPHI works collaboratively with Alliance partners to engage communities in the assessment and planning processes through multiple methods such as focus groups, surveys, and participation in workgroups.

    IPHI provides technical assistance to hospital partners to create companion chapters to the countywide assessment report that are focused on findings in each of the hospital’s primary service areas. Following the completion of assessment reports, IPHI provides technical assistance to partners in the development of implementation plans and facilitates workgroups around core priority health issues.

    [LINK TO PAGE WITH PREVIOUS REPORTS]

  • The Alliance for Equity assessment structure is based on the National Association of City and County Health Officials Mobilizing for Action through Planning and Partnerships (MAPP 2.0) framework. MAPP 2.0 is a community-driven multi-sector process that focuses on collaborative policy, environmental, and system change for achieving health equity.

    In addition to MAPP 2.0, the assessment process integrates tools from the American Hospital Association’s Community Health Assessment Toolkit.

  • The Alliance has developed a comprehensive list of community health priorities based on assessment findings including population health data and community input, new and existing resources, partner expertise, policy opportunities, alignment with health department priorities, and alignment with priorities of other local health improvement processes or programs.

    [INSERT SCREEN READABLE UPDATED GRAPHIC OF ALLIANCE PRIORITIES]

    Alliance partners are working on a mix of hospital service area, regional, county-wide, and state-wide implementation strategies. Currently, there are cross-sector implementation workgroups working together on strategies in several priority areas including Social Determinants of Health, Food Access and Food Security, Housing, and Mental Health.

    [LINK TO PAGES RELATED TO THE PRIORITY AREAS]

  • Community input is the most important component of community health assessment. Including communities in the assessment and implementation processes allows Alliance partners to understand the root causes of illness and health inequities, assess existing resources, identify barriers to community health improvement, and build implementation plans that not only better address community health needs but are also more likely to succeed.

    [ADD QUOTES REGARDING FOOD, HOUSING, SOCIAL DETERMINANTS, AND MENTAL HEALTH FROM PREVIOUS CHNA]

    Learn more about the ways that communities can participate in the Alliance for Health Equity

    [LINK TO COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT PAGE]