Abstract
The health of a region, and disparities within regions, drive social, economic, and political well-being. Despite broad agreement about the importance of health to individuals and communities, we are a long way from realizing the health outcomes that most would like to see. Clinical health issues, and health disparities, persist at troubling rates across the country and across our state.
In this report, grounded in data collected while conducting comprehensive community health needs assessments for five hospital networks in collaboration with health departments across five South Jersey counties, we present an important finding about the health of South Jersey residents: residents’ physical and mental health are surprisingly strongly predicted by their connections to the people and places surrounding them.
In the following report, we describe briefly the partners and methods that led to this conclusion, and then we explain the data in more detail. This report focuses on the finding of connection; for more comprehensive information about health needs in the region, see the full community health needs assessments at rand.camden.rutgers.edu.