LVHN Releases 2025-2028 Community Health Implementation Plan

Earlier this year, Lehigh Valley Health Network (LVHN), part of Jefferson Health, in partnership with Leonard Parker Pool Institute for Health (LPPIH), released its 2025 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA). This is a comprehensive look at the health challenges, opportunities and lived experiences of residents across the 10-county region LVHN serves. 

The CHNA identified not just the conditions shaping health today but the deeper forces shaping tomorrow: housing quality, access to care, food availability, social connection and more. The second half of this project, now complete, involves an action plan. 

LVHN is proud to share the 2025–2028 Community Health Implementation Plan (CHIP) for each of its campuses within the Lehigh Valley region. CHNA is like a diagnosis and CHIP is the treatment plan – a guide for how LVHN and its partners will act on the needs residents identified.

• The CHNA gathers data, listens to people in communities and identifies the most significant health needs.
• The CHIP outlines how leaders and staff at LVHN campuses – alongside dozens of community partners – will address the priorities over the next three years.

In the 2025 CHNA, LPPIH introduced the Well-Being Portfolio framework, which emphasizes seven vital conditions every community needs to thrive. They are basic needs for health and safety, humane housing, lifelong learning, meaningful work and wealth, a thriving natural world, reliable transportation and belonging and civic muscle. They should complete the array of urgent, safety-net services available in the community. 

Together these conditions and resources provide an overarching framework for leaders in the health care system to consider as they are addressing aspects of health in the communities they serve. The  conditions aren’t just abstract ideas. They drive measurable health outcomes that show where the conditions are strong, people thrive.  

During the CHNA, staff at each licensed Lehigh Valley Hospital (LVH) location worked through a rigorous, county-specific process to determine a short list of pressing health needs in that county based on data and community feedback. Then, guided by the following three criteria, each campus CHNA leadership team selected two or more priority health needs and developed strategies with measurable outcomes.

• Magnitude: How big and urgent is the need in this community?
• Capacity: Are there existing programs or partnerships we can strengthen or expand?
• Alignment: Do these priorities fit with local initiatives, community strategies or LVHN/Jefferson Health strategic goals?

The CHIP document bridges all campuses, creating one plan that blends upstream approaches (addressing root causes like food access or social connection), where possible, and responsive supports (such as crisis intervention or behavioral health services). The result is a set of locally tailored, community-specific CHIP priorities that respond to the unique challenges of each county.

Here is a snapshot of the priorities across the regions LVHN serves:

Carbon County (LVH–Carbon)

Priorities:

• Reducing stigma around mental and behavioral health
• Addressing food insecurity

Lackawanna County (LVH–Dickson City)

Priorities:

• Supporting the growing health needs of older adults
• Reducing food insecurity

Lehigh and Northampton Counties (LVH–Cedar Crest, LVHN–Tilghman, LVH–Muhlenberg, LVH–Hecktown Oaks, LVH–17th Street)

Priorities:

• Insufficient mental health and suicide prevention services
• Inequitable access to quality health care
• Lack of affordable and quality housing
• Prevalence of obesity and diabetes

Luzerne County (LVH–Hazleton)

Priorities:

• Language barriers to accessing care
• Supporting children’s health and wellness in the community

Monroe County (LVH–Pocono)

Priorities:

• Behavioral health services and stigma reduction
• Obesity and diabetes

Schuylkill County (LVH–Schuylkill)

Priorities:

• Reducing stigma around mental and behavioral health
• Improving access to primary care

The CHIPs represent a commitment — not just from LVHN, but from a broad coalition of community partners — to work toward a healthier region. Over the next three years, LVHN will track measurable outcomes such as:

• People reached with mental health education
• Children served through school-based behavioral health
• Families connected to health insurance
• Participants in diabetes prevention programs
• Community partnerships formed
• Housing-related improvements initiated

This work is iterative, collaborative and rooted in the belief that improving the health of the most vulnerable improves the health of everyone.