RECOMMENDED TOOLS

These organizations offer tools and resources that share CACHE’s principles of shared ownership, health equity, contextual analysis, and collaborative problem solving.

Community Benefit Insight

Community Benefit Insight (CBI) is a searchable platform for hospital 990 Schedule H data that supports quick calculations and comparisons of community benefit expenditures and related policies across institutions over time.

CBI provides a useful starting point to examine how hospital charitable resources are allocated. With complementary tools, the CACHE team can assist users in determining how community stakeholders are engaged, how priorities are set, where resources are allocated, and how hospital resources are leveraged through strategic alignment with others in health and related sectors.

Build Healthy Places Network

The Build Healthy Places Network catalyzes and supports collaboration across the health and community development sectors to improve low-income communities and the lives of people living in them. Building on the work of the Healthy Communities Initiative and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Commission to Build a Healthier America, it was founded in recognition that a national network connecting sectors and promoting and enabling cross-sector collaboration was critical for ensuring that all people have the opportunity to live healthy and rewarding lives. Activities include: Network Commons live online discussions, customized trainings, MeasureUp, Jargon Buster, case studies, blog series and long form essays.

Community Benefit Connect

Community Benefit Connect provides a one-stop resource for community benefit with curated information, people, practice and research. Their focus is on the efforts that promote community wellness and prevention, and deepening of community benefit practice.

Community Benefit State Law Profiles Tool

The Hilltop Institute’s Hospital Community Benefit Program is a resource created to ensure that tax-exempt hospital community benefit activities are responsive to pressing community health needs. The program provides tools to state and local health departments, hospital regulators, legislators, revenue collection and budgeting agencies, and hospitals to develop approaches that suit the unique needs of their communities and work toward a more accessible, coordinated, and effective community health system.

Community Commons Vulnerable Populations Tool

The Community Commons Vulnerable Populations (VPF) Tool is a mapping and report tool that identifies where high concentrations of population living in poverty and population living without a high school diploma overlap.

Community Health Improvement Navigator

The CDC Community Health Improvement Navigator (CHI Navigator) is a website for people who lead or participate in CHI work within hospitals and health systems, public health agencies, and other community organizations. It is a one-stop-shop that offers community stakeholders expert-vetted tools and resources.

Community Tool Box

Millions of people use the Community Tool Box each year to get help taking action, teaching, and training others in organizing for community development. Dive in to find help assessing community needs and resources, addressing social determinants of health, engaging stakeholders, action planning, building leadership, improving cultural competency, planning an evaluation, and sustaining your efforts over time.

County Health Rankings & Roadmaps

The County Health Rankings & Roadmaps program is a collaboration between the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the University of Wisconsin Population Health Institute. The annual County Health Rankings measure vital health factors, including high school graduation rates, obesity, smoking, unemployment, access to healthy foods, the quality of air and water, income inequality, and teen births in nearly every county in America. They provide a revealing snapshot of how health is influenced by where we live, learn, work, and play, providing a starting point for change in communities. The Roadmaps provide guidance and tools to understand the data and strategies that communities can use to move into action. The Roadmaps are helping communities bring people together from all walks of life to look at the many factors that influence health, focus on strategies that we know work, learn from each other, and make changes that will have a lasting impact on health.

Delivering Community Benefit: Healthy Food Playbook

The "Delivering community benefit: Healthy food playbook" is a suite of resources to support hospital community benefit professionals and community partners in developing community health interventions that promote healthy food access and healthier food environments. The playbook has several sections with resources to support different stages of the community benefit or community health planning process. Each resource provides examples and links to learn more. Delivering community benefit: Healthy food playbook is a service of Healthy Food in Health Care at Health Care Without Harm.

Low Income Investment Fund Social Impact Calculator

The Social Impact Calculator is an interactive tool that allows you to put a dollar value on the benefits of things like an affordable home, a great school or access to transit—as well as calculate a rate of social return. It is a first-of-its-kind tool that estimates the dollar social value of community development projects.