New UChicago Medicine report outlines health priorities for South Side communities
Residents on the South Side have identified chronic diseases, the need for violence prevention and trauma resiliency, and health inequities as key health concerns they face, according to the University of Chicago Medicine’s 2019 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA).
UChicago Medicine’s service area represents 23% of Chicago’s population and includes 12 ZIP codes that span 35 community areas on the South Side.
“The Community Health Needs Assessment provides powerful data and valuable insight to help UChicago Medicine ensure its programs and resources are promoting health equity by supporting the most relevant and pressing health concerns in the communities that we serve,” said Brenda Battle, RN, BSN, MBA, vice president of the Urban Health Initiative, which oversees community benefit initiatives.
For South Side communities, the priorities for 2019-21 are:
Preventing and managing chronic diseases (asthma and diabetes)
Building trauma resiliency with a focus on violence recovery and mental health
Reducing health inequities by addressing social determinants of health (access to care, food and employment)
Priority health areas were determined through extensive data collection and analysis, including from community resident surveys and focus groups, as well as from state, county and city public health and crime data. UChicago Medicine also worked extensively with its Community Advisory Council, along with faculty and staff.
The 2019 report includes a thorough analysis of social determinants of health, which are the root causes of health inequities, including higher prevalence of chronic diseases and violence in the community. These determinants include
education level, poverty, unemployment, violence and community safety, access to care and food insecurity, which results from the lack of nutritious, reliable, and affordable food sources. According to the 2019 CHNA, 53% of the service-area population lives in poverty, almost double the state poverty level, and nearly half of the community residents are at risk for food insecurity.
UChicago Medicine works with community partners to offer programs and resources to mitigate the health concerns associated with asthma, diabetes and trauma resiliency. These include the South Side Pediatric Asthma
Center, South Side Fit and the Diabetes Empowerment Education Program. The medical center’s Violence Recovery Program offers violence prevention and recovery grants to address trauma resiliency.
UChicago Medicine collaborates with the South Side Health Collaborative — which includes 30 community health centers and community hospitals — and offers the Medical Home and Specialty Care Connection to improve access to care.
The 2019 CHNA features community profiles of 27 South Side community areas — from Oakland to Riverdale — which provide data about demographics and social determinants of health, as well as health behaviors, outcomes and resources.
As part of its mission and as a federal requirement for nonprofit hospitals, UChicago Medicine and Ingalls Memorial conduct a CHNA every three years and publish an accompanying Strategic Implementation Plan.
For the Ingalls Memorial service area, which covers a population of nearly 261,000 in the south suburbs, health priorities are: preventing and managing chronic diseases (heart disease, diabetes, and asthma), increasing access to maternal services through prenatal care, and promoting cancer awareness (breast and prostate).