ALLENTOWN, Pa. — Allentown is on the verge of releasing the findings of a years-long Community Health Needs Assessment.
The city’s health bureau is pinpointing three key areas to address first.
"Homelessness, lack of affordable housing, need for higher paying jobs, substance use violence and crime, safety and access to services are all huge concerns from everyone across the city, no matter what neighborhood they're in,” said Dave Synnamon, the Allentown Health Director.
Allentown’s first-ever community health needs assessment began last May and included input from a series of surveys and focus groups. Synnamon held a conference Wednesday to address the findings.
"These are the issues that are not only affecting our population, but are affecting their health outcomes."Dave Synnamon, Allentown Health Director
"These are the issues that are not only affecting our population but are affecting their health outcomes, even though these things in and of themselves are not health issues,” he said.
Synnamon said with help from the local health networks and community entities, his department identified their priority health issues.
The first priority health issues are loneliness and social isolation.
"Loneliness and social isolation is associated with increased mortality and it affects everyone from the youth, the elderly, from people in different socio-economic categories, and racial and ethnic categories,” he said.
The second area of focus will be safe, stable and affordable housing.
“This is a huge issue across the board, but especially in certain areas of this city with not only the affordability of housing, but the quality of housing can directly affect individuals' health," Synnamon said.
The third area is upward economic mobility.
“Economic disparities and financial insecurity impact health outcomes and lifespan, from access to health care through having a good job, to the ability to go to doctor's appointments if you don't have time off from work and these disproportionately affect African Americans, Hispanics and seniors,” he said.
A Community Health Improvement Plan will be rolled out in the next month to begin addressing the problem areas.
"It is a long-term systematic effort to address public health problems," Synnamon said. “These aren't things that we as a Health Bureau can fix by ourselves, so we need help from the community, we need help from our partners, and obviously the city and the county to really focus in on these issues that can help improve the health of our residents. “
Both major hospital systems in the region were involved in the assessment.
“It's the daily fabric of our work and we felt very good about all the numbers of people that were involved and the number of all the different demographics that were intentionally included, to make this a robust experience for everyone,” said Dr. Cheryl Arndt, of Lehigh Valley Health Network’s community partnership data department. “These things that impact health are certainly not the sole responsibility of the Health Bureau or the health networks, but something that we all need to participate in order to be able to make the changes that we would all like to see.”
Dr. Rajika Reed is the Vice President of Community Health for St. Luke's University Health Network.
"Assessments are really meant to uncover those complex needs within the community by bringing various sectors together to hear the voice of our community, and correlate that with the data that we also have,” Reed said.
The full report can be found on Allentown’s website with an interactive version expected within a few months. A new community health needs assessment is expected every three to five years.
