Community Health Needs Assessment
Evaluating the community’s health needs
For more than ten years, the six hospitals in Montgomery County have recognized opportunities to leverage community benefit resources, identify overlapping implementation strategies, and decrease duplication of efforts. In 2021, the hospitals further advanced their dedication to collective impact by developing a joint Montgomery County Hospital Collaborative (MCHC) Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) and Implementation Strategy.
The CHNA addresses 34 zip codes served by Adventist HealthCare, Holy Cross Health, MedStar Health, and Suburban Hospital, Johns Hopkins Medicine. The identified and prioritized health needs will guide the resources, program development, and collaborations required to address gaps in care, advance health equity, and improve quality of life. The MCHC CHNA used the information collected from primary and secondary data sources, including data from a community survey, to identify the top needs of the communities served. Once the needs were identified, local public health and hospital leaders, service providers and community advocates were engaged to set the priorities.
Three criteria were used to prioritize the needs identified from the primary and secondary data analysis: severity (high level of seriousness or urgency in the community), feasibility (could realistically improve in the next three years), and outcome (potential impact on the greatest number of people identified). Our stakeholders identified three priority areas and nine health factors, or root causes, as top unmet needs using the above criteria and their expertise and experience. The three priority areas are Easy Access to Comprehensive Care, Promotion of Healthy Living and Well-Being, and Support for Essential Community Services. The 14 health factors were then prioritized under each area. Each priority and health factor was ranked based on severity, feasibility and outcome.
The following is the ranked list of priority areas and associated health factors:
Easy Access to Comprehensive Care
- Primary care services
- Substance use treatment & recovery services
- Specialty & extended care
- Mental health services
- Health insurance coverage
Promotion of Healthy Living and Well-Being
- Physical activity
- Nutritious eating
- Chronic disease management
- Injury & disease management
- Safe environments
Support for Essential Community Services
- Affordable housing
- Healthy food access
- Transportation
- Health & human services system navigation
Assessment Reports
FY 2025
FY 2022
FY 2020
Holy Cross Health routinely conducts community health needs assessments to help us and our community partners plan programs. The assessment focuses on the geographic areas served by Holy Cross Hospital and Holy Cross Germantown Hospital.
Year-round, we gain insight into the county’s unmet health needs by being involved in community coalitions, commissions, committees, boards, partnerships, advisory groups and panels. We also gather information in collaboration with the Montgomery County Healthy Montgomery Community Health Improvement Process.
In addition, we examine other important data including:
- Population demographics
- Area socioeconomic factors
- Resident use of health services