Hampden County Health Improvement Plan to Be Released March 31

WEST SPRINGFIELD — The Hampden County Health Coalition, Partners for a Healthier Community, and the Pioneer Valley Planning Commission invites the public to join them for the release and presentation of the Hampden County community-wide Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) on Friday, March 31 beginning at 10 a.m. at the Municipal Office Building of West Springfield.

Hampden County has ranked last among Massachusetts’ 14 counties with respect to health outcomes for the last six years, according to the County Health Rankings and Road Map report produced each year by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in collaboration with state public-health officials.

In response to this, stakeholders convened and produced the CHIP, which is a collaborative, long-term, systematic effort to address public health problems on the basis of the results of community health-needs assessments recently completed by hospitals, as well as the County Health Rankings and Road Map report.

Hampden County public-health departments, area hospitals, legislative representatives, and community nonprofits have been collaborating since 2014 to develop the CHIP and are looking forward to implement the county-wide plan in a much more strategic and unified way. This plan will be used to help stakeholders set priorities, coordinate, and target resources in order to enhance health outcomes for the more than 467,000 people living in the county’s 23 cities and towns.

Additional information and agenda can be found at www.pvpc.org/events/chip-release-presentation.