Community Health Needs Assessment

The mission of Western Missouri Medical Center is to improve the health of our greater community by utilizing system resources and partnering with community organizations and businesses.

It is our hope that our health programming will empower people to manage their health and that it will inevitably transform lives.

About the Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA):

Creating healthy communities requires a high level of mutual understanding and collaboration among community leaders. The development of this CHNA brings together community health leaders, providers, and residents to research and prioritize county health needs and document community health delivery success. The CHNA process provides a way for communities to act upon unmet community health needs. It must be conducted by non-profit hospitals every three years, as mandated by the Affordable Care Act. This health assessment will serve as the foundation for community health improvement efforts for the next three years. The latest CHNA process began in 2022 and was facilitated by the Missouri Hospital Association Quality Works team. To gather feedback from the community served by WMMC, residents of the area were given the opportunity to participate in a survey. Nine hundred thirty-five area residents completed the survey. Additional information was collected through a town hall meeting with community partners. The input from the residents, who primarily reside in Johnson County, represented the broad interest of the communities in the service area. Data derived from primary and secondary data was key in informing the CHNA process. The top health concerns emerging from the 2022 community survey, secondary data analysis results and focus group meeting, as well as the 2019 CHNA findings, were:

• Mental health and substance abuse

• Affordable health care (including access to dental care)

• Chronic diseases (including cancer, diabetes, heart disease, and obesity)

Each of these health concerns is being tackled by individual committees. The committees comprise multiple leaders and community members from different organizations within the CHNA service area. You can learn more about each committee below.