2015 Central City Concern community health survey

Central City Concern (CCC) provides housing, employment services, healthcare services, and peer support to over 13,000 low-income people experiencing homelessness annually in Portland, OR. In 2015, CCC conducted a community health survey to understand the health needs, care goals, and service usage of the population CCC serves. Results of this project will be used to improve services for subsets of the CCC population (e.g. people of color, veterans). The objectives of this poster are twofold. First, this poster will describe the process by which CCC collected data. CCC's Quality Management Department partnered with the HEARTH Project, a research project housed at CCC that collaborates with local academic institutions. Ten student interns from Portland State University conducted over 500 interviews in eight weeks at CCC's nine health services sites. Researchers at local universities provided consultation on survey development and sampling procedures. In addition, researchers at PSU loaned CCC ipads for data collection, which removed the need for data entry associated with paper surveys. The Quality Management Department provided oversight and direction to the project. Second, this poster will present the results of this project. Preliminary data analysis has revealed notable findings. For example, non-white and Hispanic consumers were more likely to have a goal of improving their ability to read than white and non-Hispanic consumers, respectively. In addition, non-white and Hispanic individuals were also more likely to have a goal of getting housing for families than white and non-Hispanic individuals. The poster will also present descriptive findings related to physical and mental health, quality of life, and service utilization for the CCC population. The information included in this poster will be useful to nonprofit organizations and public institutions seeking to conduct large-scale community health surveys. The poster will provide insight into how such a survey could be conducted, and examples of what types of data could be collected.