{"id":1881,"date":"2026-11-11T15:39:56","date_gmt":"2026-11-11T15:39:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/institute-advancement-community-health\/?p=1881"},"modified":"2026-11-11T15:41:27","modified_gmt":"2026-11-11T15:41:27","slug":"turning-community-voices-into-insight","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.furman.edu\/institute-advancement-community-health\/2026\/11\/11\/turning-community-voices-into-insight\/","title":{"rendered":"Turning Community Voices Into Insight"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Melissa Charles<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Improving community health starts with listening. Every three years, nonprofit hospitals in South Carolina conduct Community Health Needs Assessments to ask residents a fundamental question: What do you need to be healthier? Yet hospitals often collect community feedback using different surveys or methods that make it difficult to align data across the state.<\/p>\n

One Goal, Many Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Hospitals are required to conduct Community Health Needs Assessments every three years to keep their nonprofit status. The assessment evaluates the general health of the community that a hospital serves, providing information about strengths, challenges, and resources that can help improve efforts. However, there are no standard surveys or methods that hospitals all use, making comparisons between communities difficult.<\/p>\n

That inconsistency is exactly what Furman’s Institute for the Advancement of Community Health<\/a> (IACH) and the Alliance for a Healthier South Carolina<\/a> are working to address. Solving it requires intentionality and begins with bringing together the right people to recognize the same gaps from different perspectives.<\/p>\n

A Natural Partnership<\/strong><\/p>\n

Various efforts and conversations have taken place across the state in recent years, but organizations and health systems have not been able to achieve statewide alignment. The Alliance, with the help of partners like IACH and others, is working to fill that gap. As part of those collaborative efforts, an opportunity was identified to align Community Health Needs Assessments with the State Health Assessment, which is a statewide look at South Carolinians’ health that\u2019s meant to guide improvement plans at both the state and community level. Leaders such as Monty Robertson \u201909, executive director of the Alliance for a Healthier South Carolina, and Melissa Fair \u201910, director of community action for IACH, have been among those helping to advance that work.<\/p>\n

The Alliance was already well-positioned to make connections. They had worked with the South Carolina Department of Public Health to develop the State Health Improvement Plan, which lays out a statewide vision for continuous health improvement. That work solidified the Alliance as a statewide convener. The Alliance partnered with IACH and the USC Center for Applied Research and Evaluation (CARE) to conduct an assessment of different Community Health Needs Assessment processes and data collection methods by different health systems across the state. That work evolved over time to help provide technical assistance and training to support health systems conducting Community Health Needs Assessments and begin developing a standardized survey.<\/p>\n

IACH brought academic and research expertise while the Alliance served as the neutral connector bringing organizations to the table. IACH had worked with Upstate health systems to strengthen their Community Health Needs Assessments, giving the partnership a solid foundation. Robertson knew Fair and Pam Gillam at CARE had already been doing some work with other community health initiatives and research.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe partnered with them to understand this work and then take this information and actually do something with it,\u201d Robertson said.<\/p>\n

Why the Data Alone Isn\u2019t Enough<\/strong><\/p>\n

Health systems already collect a wealth of data on the conditions they treat. What that data can’t explain is why. Why does that neighborhood have the highest rate of diabetes? Why are those outcomes worse than a similar community a few miles away? Health systems can see the pattern clearly, but the data alone can’t tell them what’s driving it. Without that answer, any solution is little more than a guess.<\/p>\n

The Community Health Needs Assessment fills that gap. It’s meant to reveal what’s really happening in a community and, done well, humanize the numbers behind it.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it really gives a community the opportunity to take a step back and really understand what’s behind the data of what’s really driving what the community looks like,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cThrough the needs assessment, we can really humanize what the data shows us.\u201d<\/p>\n

That’s the value Fair sees in the assessment process, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe community often holds the most effective solutions or the answers to the barrier,\u201d Fair said. \u201cCommunity Health Needs Assessments are a way that we can ask and meaningfully engage.\u201d<\/p>\n

Aligning the Data<\/strong><\/p>\n

Right now, each health system asks about issues a little differently, making the data nearly impossible to compare. As Fair explained, “Each system uses its own metrics and definitions, so the resulting datasets aren’t standardized enough to support meaningful cross-community comparison. While that data is useful for local impact, it doesn’t necessarily help us understand the scale of the problem or where to go next as a state.”<\/p>\n

Shared metrics would change that, letting the partners compare data across the state for the first time. The goal is to improve the outcomes and quality. That means aligning Community Health Needs Assessments with State Health Assessments while also aligning Community Health Improvement Plans with the State Health Improvement Plan.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat centralized shared data could be really impactful. For example, many of these health needs assessments collect data about things like housing and food insecurity and barriers to accessing healthcare,\u201d Fair said. \u201cAnd that’s not really a data set that exists in any other form or fashion.\u201d<\/p>\n

The partners also want to build a performance management system to have a more systematic way to understand what\u2019s in each plan across the state and how those plans connect. The ultimate goal is for data gathered at the community level to roll up to the State Health Assessment without requiring additional data gathering.<\/p>\n

Right now, the Alliance has convened a group of leaders from across the state to develop a shared action plan aimed at a more centralized assessment and improvement plan process going forward.<\/p>\n

Asking Better Questions<\/strong><\/p>\n

Beyond aligning the data, another area of focus is improving the quality of the assessments themselves. Even asking the right questions in the right way can change the results. A question about hypertension may land differently than one about high blood pressure, even though they\u2019re the same condition. Improving the quality of questions helps ensure the people answering them can respond accurately.<\/p>\n

A Furman Story<\/strong><\/p>\n

The partnership is also a chance to highlight Furman’s community-engaged work, which is central to Furman\u2019s research and evaluation. Furman\u2019s applied, community-based approach to research has carved out real influence in the state’s public health landscape.<\/p>\n

That distinction matters to how IACH approaches this work. Its contribution comes from research grounded in direct community relationships, a combination Robertson says has shaped how the Alliance thinks about the work overall.<\/p>\n

“It’s not just having someone who’s just doing research in their office,” Robertson said, “but also someone who’s out in the community and with other leaders across the state.”<\/p>\n

Get Involved<\/strong><\/p>\n

Robertson is quick to point out that none of this work is exclusive.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnybody’s welcome to join the Alliance,” Robertson said.<\/p>\n

Organizations and individuals interested in the work can attend one of the Alliance’s annual meetings or join a working group like the one shaping this effort. As the group continues refining a shared approach to Community Health Needs Assessments, the goal is simple: help communities tell their stories in ways that can be better understood, compared and acted upon across South Carolina.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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