Across the United States, hospitals and health systems are increasingly making meaningful upstream investments to improve the health and well-being of the communities and individuals they serve. These leading health institutions are also forging new partnerships with a diverse range of stakeholders (e.g., government agencies, community groups, foundations and banks) to maximize the scale and impact of their investments.
Advancing this shift in practice is at the root of the Center for Community Investment’s Accelerating Investments for Healthy Communities (AIHC) initiative. Through our work, we’ve discovered that there are multiple motivating factors that lead hospitals and health systems to leverage their resources as a method of strengthening the social determinants of health. Ultimately, these upstream investments aren’t just a prescription for individual, family, and community health and stability, they have the potential to transform the health institutions themselves.
Read more in Health Progress, the official journal of the Catholic Health Association of the United States.
Further Reading
- Making the Case for Hospitals to Invest in Housing—this issue brief, published by our partners at the American Hospital Association and NORC at the University of Chicago, highlights initial findings from the journeys of AIHC participating hospitals
- Upstream All The Way: Why Pioneering Health Institutions Are Investing Upstream to Improve Community Health—this issue brief highlights some of the lessons CCI has learned about the motivations driving health institutions to invest in the determinants of health in their communities
- Learn more about AIHC and the participating health institutions at centerforcommunityinvestment.org/aihc