Mount Nittany Medical Center is currently conducting a comprehensive Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) in part for IRS reporting purposes, but also to support Mount Nittany Health's strategic priority of localizing healthcare for our community and as an essential part of our vision of becoming the most trusted healthcare provider in Central Pennsylvania.

UPDATE: CCPCH Announces Health Summit Brown Bag Lunch Series

As a follow up to the recent health needs summit, held February 25 at Mount Nittany Medical Center’s Galen and Nancy Dreibelbis Auditorium, the Centre County Partnership for Community Health will host six monthly brown bag lunches. Each lunch will address a major community health need presented at the summit. Anyone with an interest in helping to identify ways to improve the community’s health and wellbeing is encouraged to attend. Please see the attached flyer with details on the entire brown bag lunch series, and help us encourage community-wide participation in finding real solutions to major health needs in our community.

Mount Nittany Medical Center's CHNA is comprised of five major components:

Health Needs Survey

In order to capture information about the health needs/gaps and where they exist in our community, we asked community members to complete a brief community health needs assessment survey (made available online and in print).

After a month-long campaign held in partnership with various community organizations and groups, we were grateful to have received more than 1,130 completed surveys.

Currently, the survey results are being aggregated and used to inform discussions that Mount Nittany Medical Center will have internally and with community organizations to identify good ways forward in solving the most pressing issues for our residents.

Health Needs Summit

On Monday, February 25, 2013, the Centre County Partnership for Community Health (CCPCH) hosted the first of what is planned to be a series of semi-annual health needs summits for Centre County. The summit series is intended to provide a dedicated and collaborative forum for community health experts, leaders, advocates, and elected officials to discuss, define, and prioritize health needs and gaps in our region. The goal is for leaders to work together to identify and pursue synergies between organizations and agencies in our area to more completely and efficiently meet the needs of our residents. Information about community health needs gathered by Mount Nittany Medical Center during its CHNA process served as the basis for initial summit discussions. Questions about the summit can be directed to CentreHealthSummit@gmail.com.

Proceedings from the summit are available for download at partnersforhealth.org.

Key Stakeholder Interviews

As part of the CHNA process, Mount Nittany Medical Center is scheduling a series of up to approximately 40 key stakeholder interviews with elected officials, directors and board members of various health-related organizations in the Medical Center's service area, and knowledgeable community health advocates and experts. The opinions and insights expressed during these interviews will be used to inform discussion topics at the health needs summits described above.

Internal Insights

The Medical Center has convened an internal advisory team and has conducted select interviews with key stakeholders who work within Mount Nittany Health to capture insights into the issues that our healthcare providers see, hear about, and have researched in the course of providing care to residents of our community over time. Results of these internal discussions and interviews will be incorporated into Mount Nittany Medical Center's final CHNA documentation.

Secondary Data

Publicly available health, census, and demographics data will be compiled and incorporated into this CHNA to provide high-level insight into prevailing risk factors and health-promoting or health-limiting factors specific to our region. A complete list of sources and findings will be included with our final CHNA documentation. Please check back in early June of 2013 to download and review that final documentation.

Questions about Mount Nittany Medical Center's CHNA or any of these five components can be directed to Nathan Elliott, director of system decision support, at nelliott@mountnittany.org or by calling 814.231.7124.