Become a HIP Partner!

Whether you represent an organization or are an interested citizen, joining the Health Improvement Plan of Washtenaw County (HIP) has numerous benefits. HIP Partners:

• Have a diverse cross-county audience and support system for sharing and obtaining feedback
• Join forces with others to more effectively influence policy decisions
• Help shape the direction of county-wide health improvement objectives and data collection activities
• Identify other organizations to collaborate with

As a partner, you can participate in a number of ways:

• Attend Community Health Committee meetings or HIP workgroups
• Utilize the data and reports to inform and guide your programming efforts
• Network with others locally working towards the 2020 HIP Objectives
• Help fund the HIP Survey, a county-wide health behavior risk factor survey conducted every five years

Why Collaborate?

“Public health is what we, as a society, do collectively to assure the conditions  in which people can be healthy. It takes a society to practice public health.”

- Healthy People 2010, 2nd ed., With Understanding and Improving Health and Objectives for Improving Health. Washington, D.C.: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services; 2001.

It does indeed take a society to practice strategies that improve community health. The health of local communities and the state those communities are located in is a complex matter. Environmental, behavioral, biological, social, economic, and political factors affect the health of individuals and populations. Risks for disease, illness, and injury have both individual and societal causes, and solutions often have both individual and population-based implications.

Communities need an array of knowledge and approaches that promote a healthy society and this requires a collective action of many types of professionals working in different disciplines using both data and effective strategies to prevent illness and promote health for all.

- Institute of Medicine (Committee on Assuring the Health of the Public in the 21st Century). The Future of the Public’s Health in the 21st Century. Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 2003.

The Solution: Partnerships, Data, Strategies

Beginning in 1995, the Washtenaw County Public Health Department has led a county-wide voluntary partnership of organizations and individuals called the Health Improvement Plan of Washtenaw County (HIP). HIP is committed to improving the community’s health by encouraging cross-discipline partnerships, data collection, identifying and prioritizing health needs, setting measurable health improvement objectives, advocating for policies that improve health, and promoting the implementation of effective community health improvement strategies. These activities focus HIP partner efforts and provide a means for measuring progress.

HIP bases its approach on the Social Ecological model (SEM) because it illuminates the interplay between individual health behavior and social relationships among family and peers, neighborhoods, organizations, community norms, the built environment, and public policies. The SEM suggests that health improvement strategies are most effective when they address issues across multiple levels of the model, something HIP partners strive for.

The HIP Partnership

HIP provides both a challenge and an opportunity for individuals and corporate citizens of Washtenaw County to make a voluntary commitment to improve health for all. HIP activities help create a unified front within the county to address urgent local health issues. Involvement from all members of the community is important to overall success. The likelihood of reaching improvement targets is greater when efforts are united and spread across the community.

HIP partners include health systems, community agencies, land-use planners, schools, coalitions, funders, government, academics, and individual residents. Over 30 organizations and 200 individuals have participated since HIP’s inception. Under the umbrella of the Community Health Committee, partners meet regularly to review progress towards targets, learn about and discuss critical health issues, and review local trends and how to best address them.

Join the Partnership!

Updated 7/8/08