Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP)
What is the CHIP?
The Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) outlines shared strategies for addressing the priorities identified in the Community Health Assessment (CHA) over the next five years.
The CHIP provides a common framework that informs planning, decision-making, and collaboration across Public Health and community partners to improve the conditions that impact health.
Read the entire 2025-2029 CHIP
Keep scrolling below to learn about the four priority areas and how we plan to improve them over the next five years.
Chronic Conditions
Chronic conditions are long-term health issues that often require ongoing medical attention and can limit daily living activities. Common examples of chronic conditions include heart disease, diabetes, cancer, and asthma.
Increase opportunities for physical activity and improve the built environment to support active living, safe environments, and chronic condition prevention.
Strategies:
- Support and promote community events and initiatives that increase opportunities for physical activity.
- Inform planning processes to promote land use and community conditions that support physical activity and a healthy environment.
- Monitor and analyze environmental data and provide timely communication and guidance to ensure those living with chronic conditions can limit the impact of negative environmental conditions.
- Identify and investigate household risks that can lead to and exacerbate chronic conditions.
Advance food security and healthy eating to reduce risk and complications of chronic conditions.
Strategies:
- Increase community access to affordable, healthy, and culturally relevant food in communities with greatest need.
- Provide nutritional support during pregnancy, early childhood, and for children to prevent chronic disease risk.
- Coordinate regional food systems planning and policy efforts to improve long-term security and equitable access to food.
Improve access to care and increase chronic disease screenings to enable early detection and management.
Strategies:
- Strengthen prevention, screening, early detection, and management of chronic conditions through equitable access to care and community-based approaches.
- Strengthen coordination, navigation, and referral approaches that improve connections across health, behavioral health, and community support systems.
Injury & Safety
Injury and safety encompass both intentional and unintentional harm, including violence, motor vehicle crashes, falls, and poisonings.
Prevent violence and support healing for individuals, families, and communities affected by violence.
Strategies:
- Strengthen community-informed and cross-sector violence prevention efforts through partnership, coordination, and prevention.
- Provide healing centered response and recovery support for families and community members affected by violence.
Protect community health from injury and illness through environmental inspections, surveillance, and education.
Strategies:
- Conduct routine, pre- and re-inspections and complaint investigations to ensure safe environments.
- Conduct prompt investigations of foodborne illness, waterborne disease, and environmental outbreaks to identify the source, prevent further cases, and develop corrective action.
- Prevent animal-related injury and zoonic illness through bite follow-up, water testing, and education.
Reduce preventable injury and increase community preparedness for emergencies and hazards.
Strategies:
- Prevent injuries related risks such as alcohol impaired driving, unsafe child transport, and household hazards through education, programming, and community partnerships.
- Build community resiliency and preparedness for hazards related to flooding, extreme heat, poor air quality, and power outages.
Reproductive Justice
Reproductive justice, as defined by SisterSong, as “the human right to maintain personal bodily autonomy, have children, not have children, and parent the children we have in safe and sustainable communities."
Improve birth outcomes and advance maternal health equity.
Strategies:
- Use timely, community-level data to identify disparities in birth outcomes and drive evidence-based actions. Prioritize populations experiencing the greatest inequities.
- Partner with community organizations and healthcare systems to improve Black maternal and child health outcomes through screening people for social determinants of health and connecting individuals and families to resources.
- Strengthen and expand continuous, trusted support for pregnant people before, during, and after birth.
- Advance policies that expand access to care and resources for pregnant people.
Provide early and reliable access to prevention, detection and treatment of sexually transmitted infections (STIs) and infectious diseases.
Strategies:
- Build upon existing STI and hepatitis screening and early detection through monitoring infection trends to identify priority populations and expanding community-based testing.
- Strengthen referral systems, provide follow-up and care coordination, and track linkage to care to ensure timely treatment and completion of STI and hepatitis B and C services.
- Deliver and promote HPV and hepatitis vaccinations through education and outreach and support policies that improve vaccine access.
- Provide sexual health education and risk reduction messaging, partner with community organizations and schools for outreach, and expand access to prevention tools and safe sex resources.
Increase access to family planning resources and promote reproductive autonomy.
Strategies:
- Increase access to high quality, client-centered, reproductive health education and counseling.
- Partner with trusted community-based organizations and health care systems to provide care coordination, education, and outreach to ensure reproductive autonomy for all.
- Advance reproductive equity through policy and practices that ensure individuals have the knowledge and the power to make informed decisions about their reproductive health.
Mental Health & Substance Use
Mental health and substance use refer to the emotional, psychological, and social well-being of individuals and the ways people cope with stress, relationships, and substance use.
Prevent and reduce substance misuse through policy, education, and community-based strategies.
Strategies:
- Advance policies and enforce regulations that reduce substance use initiation and access.
- Increase awareness of the risks associated with substance misuse through the development and delivery of education initiatives in schools and community settings.
Reduce harm from substance misuse through accessible, evidenced based harm reduction strategies.
Strategies:
- Strengthen overdose prevention efforts through community-based and data-informed approaches.
- Reduce disease transmission and connect people to care through harm reduction programs and access to care and resources.
Promote efforts to address mental health and substance use as community level issues.
Strategies:
- Use data and community voice to identify and address mental health and substance use inequities.
- Develop robust referral networks for mental health and substance use treatment and care.
- Support community collaborations and efforts that increase access to care for mental health and substance use treatment.
- Provide healing centered response and recovery support for families and community members affected by violence.