CommunityWisdom

Healthcare organizations can address community health more broadly and effectively if they more deeply understand the real-world perspectives of community members. CommunityWisdom goes beyond traditional Community Health Needs Assessments (CHNAs) and standard approaches to market intelligence to provide clear lines-of-sight into what matters to the community.

How it Works
CommunityWisdom is a mobile-responsive, web-based, anonymous platform for capturing perspectives about health issues, needs, and resources at both the individual and community level. It combines an open-ended, qualitative approach with highly reliable content analysis to capture meaningful insights and turn them into meaningful action.

The Big Picture
When it comes to non-genetic determinants of community health, clinical care accounts for only 20%; the other 80% is linked to social and economic factors (40%), behavior (30%), and physical environment (10%). Improving community health requires a robust understanding of these non-clinical aspects as well as community-member perspectives on priorities and health-related resources.

The Power of CommunityWisdom
We have helped major health systems invest scarce resources more effectively by providing evidence that their assumptions did not align with reality in the communities they serve.

This is why: Rather than taking an if we build it, they will come approach, a health system used CommunityWisdom to learn how community members view their own health and health behaviors as well as their ideas for improving health in the community. Results led to a strategic investment into an existing community resource, creating a partnership that people value instead of a shiny new object that people didn't want to use.

This is why: A health system set aside major funding to develop a transportation program for three rural communities, certain that transportation was 'the' problem to solve. But they hadn't asked people who lived in these communities. When they used CommunityWisdom to gather community voices, food insecurity emerged as the real problem, which led to a much more effective and appreciated investment.

This is why: In order to maintain their non-profit status, hospitals and health systems must periodically conduct a CHNA that guides their work in the community. CommunityWisdom's open-ended approach surfaced high-priority health issues that were not captured by the standard CHNA 'checkbox' approach, allowing the health systems to provide support that is truly needed and create trust in the process.