Association for Community Health Improvement

The Association for Community Health Improvement (ACHI) is the premier national association for community health, healthy communities and community benefit.

Mission and Focus Areas
The Association's MISSION is to convene and support leaders from the health care, public health, community and philanthropic sectors to help achieve shared community health goals, and work with hundreds of members to strengthen community health through education, peer networking and the dissemination of practical tools.

ACHI serves members' needs in a number of FOCUS AREAS within community health, including:

Access to care: primary and specialty care for underserved populations, insurance coverage and barriers to access, disparities in care due to language and cultural differences, transportation, and more.

Chronic disease prevention and management: community-based approaches to create the conditions for health and reverse the course of chronic disease.

Community benefit: tools and methods to improve community benefit practices within hospitals and health service organizations.

Collaborative strategies: effective partnerships based on healthy communities principles to achieve real advances in community health while strengthening the health system.

Measurement and evaluation: logic models, indicators, and assessments to help establish goals, understand outcomes, and communicate progress.

History
The Association for Community Health Improvement was conceived in 2002 as a successor to three national community health initiatives that were approaching the end of their grant cycles or were otherwise ripe for renewal and growth: the Community Care Network Demonstration Program, ACT National Outcomes Network, and Coalition for Healthier Cities and Communities. These three programs had made complementary contributions to community health since the mid-1990s, focusing on topics including health care delivery and preventive health systems that ensure accessibility and are accountable to local needs; careful planning for and measurement of progress toward defined community health goals, and; broad community engagement in resolving systemic challenges to community health and social well-being.

ACHI adopted the key tenets of each and blends them with additional ingredients of effective community health practice, to create a unified professional association with broad value as a hub of networking and continual learning. The Association is well informed by experienced advisors and a rich base of members from the health care, public health and healthy communities sectors. It is a program of the Health Research and Educational Trust and an affiliate of the American Hospital Association.

The Association for Community Health Improvement has over 500 members from 47 states, the District of Columbia, and Canada.

Internal Links
American Hospital Association