Politics & Government

Public Health Department Aims to be Healthiest City

Shrewsbury is part of the regional public health department that has launched a new initiative.

The City of Worcester Division of Public Health and UMass Memorial Health Care, Inc. along with numerous community partners will launch a city of Worcester Community Health Improvement Initiative.

Shrewsbury is part of the regional public health department in Worcester. Worcester hopes to become the healthiest city in the country by 2020, according to NECN.com.

The goal of the initiative is to create a social, economic and health profile of the City and identify assets and priority areas for community health improvement known as a Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP). As early as February, 2012, a Community Health Assessment working group began meeting regularly in preparation for the project. Together, this team discussed the scope of the project and identified specific goals and priorities that will be gained as a result of this effort.

Find out what's happening in Shrewsburywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

The (CHIP) is the development process of a community-wide, collaborative strategic plan that sets priorities for health improvement and engages partners and organizations to develop, support, and implement the plan. The CHIP is intended to serve as a vision for the health of the City of Worcester and a framework for organizations and the community to use in making that vision a reality.

This work will begin in late June of this year as 10 Town Hall Forums will be scheduled to encourage resident input and present data from the recently completed Community Health Assessment (CHA). The CHA is an ongoing process of collection, assembly, analysis, and distribution of information on the health needs of the community. This information includes statistics on health status and community health needs.

Find out what's happening in Shrewsburywith free, real-time updates from Patch.

In July, 2012, a working group of over 40 individuals and agencies will then be convened to begin the formal process of vetting the data and priority setting. During the month of August, community health priorities will be established, goals created and strategies selected in an effort to complete the CHIP.


Get more local news delivered straight to your inbox. Sign up for free Patch newsletters and alerts.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here