FOR THE LOVE OF OUR CHILDREN
Children’s Hospital Colorado has served children for over 100 years—a commitment
that extends beyond our facility and reaches into the community. For the same
reasons we tackle preventable harm within our hospital walls, we strive to tackle
preventable harm in our communities. We do this not because we have to; we do this
for the love of our children. We do this because we can and we will make a difference.
While our providers engage in discovery and innovation in the provision of child
health care in ways that bend the mortality curve, we have an opportunity to bend
the wellness curve. In communities just adjacent to our hospital facilities, children
don’t have access to consistent primary, behavioral or oral health care and health
risks such as obesity and asthma continue to pose considerable challenges to our
community’s children. The rate of premature birth for African American women
living within walking distance to our medical campus is almost double that of their
Caucasian counterparts, leading to an alarming rate of death for African American
infants. Finally, injury remains the leading cause of death of children and teens.
This is unacceptable; and we are dedicated to changing these outcomes.
Children’s Hospital Colorado’s commitment to these kinds of community needs drove
the creation of the Child Health Advocacy Institute (CHAI)—the hub for the hospitals’
community-based work to foster healthier kids and families. We recognize impacting
population health is a big undertaking. In an effort to sharpen our focus and develop
our strategy, CHAI collected community input and community-level data that now
serves as the foundation for community programs and initiatives moving forward.
This Community Health Needs Assessment identified the top issues that impact kids’
health as:
OO Behavioral
OO Oral
health
OO Injury
health
OO Obesity/physical
prevention
OO Respiratory
activity/nutrition
OO Premature
illness
birth
Members of our community, the communities we serve, identified the first three
priority areas (behavioral health, oral health, obesity/physical activity/nutrition)
as noted above. The final three areas of focus (injury prevention, respiratory illness,
premature birth) correspond with the leading causes of death or healthcare
utilization, making this assessment both community-based and data-driven.
In response to these findings, CHAI has drafted the following
Community Health Action Plan1 defining how Children’s Hospital Colorado
(CHCO) will address these six main child health challenges,
in targeted zip codes, over the next three years.
1
2
This Community Health Action Plan serves as the Hospital’s fulfillment of the requirement under
the Affordable Care Act to develop a plan outlining the strategies it will implement to meet the
identified community needs in the Hospital’s Community Health Needs Assessment.