Local health departments’ role in nonprofit hospitals’ community health needs assessment

Health care and public health industries have historically operated in siloes, with distinct and often contradictory approaches to health. Public health has traditionally focused on ensuring healthy outcomes and their equitable distribution in population subgroups through essential public health services consistent with public health agency mandates and community priorities.By contrast, health care providers have arguably operated as part of an industrial medical complex focused primarily on treatment and cure rather than prevention. Several recent developments have converged to encourage health care and public health to focus on population health, leading to cooperation between strange bedfellows toward this common goal.