November 20, 2024 – Nantucket Cottage Hospital recently competed its 2024 Community Health Needs Assessment, detailing the most pressing health concerns facing Nantucket.

The goals of this Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) are to: 1) identify the primary health – related needs that residents of Nantucket face, 2) understand how those needs are currently being addressed, and 3) identify opportunities to address needs in the future.

The CHNA report includes:

• A review of key demographics of the island and health outcomes data for Nantucket residents
• A summary of findings from a community engagement process that included public town halls, surveys, and a robust series of stakeholder interviews.
• A report of social determinant of health outpatient screening actively affecting community members.
• A review of high utilizers of healthcare.

Context

This Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) is the first assessment post- COVID pandemic. This is important given how many community health needs were addressed during COVID, which no longer are to the same degree. The CHNA was produced by the Community Benefit Advisory Committee which is a group of Nantucket Cottage Hospital employees, community-based organizations, and community residents. The CHNA aims to identify the most important health needs on island and provide an opportunity to outline sustainable system, environmental, and policy changes to support health improvement in the community. Historically, Nantucket CHNA identified housing instability, financial instability, behavioral health needs, and cancer resources as important health needs. Since the last CHNA, there have been many positive changes on island to address the identified needs. To highlight a few: the expansion of urgent access, NCH sponsored housing development, increased access to oncology, development of the island’s first overnight homeless shelter, and expansion of mental health resources.

Key Findings

This year’s CHNA survey identified the following community health needs perceived by community members: mental health, affordable housing, access to care, and substance use disorder. Routine outpatient screening of social determinants of health currently affecting residents identified housing, food, education, and finances as active social determinants of health (SDOH) affecting community members at the time of their healthcare appointment. Hispanic and Spanish-speaking community members were disproportionately affected by SDOH identified during outpatient health screening.

The complete report can be found here: 2024 Community Health Needs Assessment