Hospitals and health systems are adopting innovative approaches to address the social determinants of health and improve the health of communities they serve.
Improving the health of individuals—and their neighborhoods and communities as a whole—is one of the most complex and pressing challenges in health care today. Given the inextricable link between affordable, quality housing and good health, housing is one area that hospitals and health systems are starting to focus on more and more. A new initiative, Accelerating Investments for Healthy Communities, led by the Center for Community Investment and funded by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is helping hospitals refine their community investment strategies around affordable housing. The American Hospital Association and NORC at the University of Chicago are partnering to learn from the journeys of participating hospitals and sharing initial findings in this issue brief, Making the Case for Hospitals to Invest in Housing.