Building Effective Health System-Community Partnerships: Lessons from the Field

This brief shares considerations for health care organizations and government entities seeking to build effective partnerships with the individuals and communities they serve to better address their health and social needs.

To better understand what it takes for health systems to meaningfully engage community members, the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), through support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, launched the Community Partnership Pilot. During this 18-month initiative, CHCS worked with two competitively selected sites — Hennepin Healthcare in Minneapolis and Los Angeles County Department of Health Services’ Whole Person Care program — to identify best practices for engaging community members and building effective partnerships between health care systems and the communities they serve.

This brief describes lessons learned throughout this project and offers practical considerations for health care systems as they look to bring community voice more front and center in identifying community priorities and co-designing strategies to address these priorities.