Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP)
What is a CHIP?
A Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) is a multi-year roadmap for our community to address its health needs & priorities. The plan is based on the results of our community health assessment, and helps to set priorities, coordinate efforts, and target resources. It defines the vision for the health of our community through a collaborative process and should address the gamut of strengths, weaknesses, challenges, and opportunities we encounter in our effort to promote wellbeing (Source: Public Health Accreditation Board).
As part of our youth empowerment initiative (Healthy Youth & Parents through Partnership & Empowerment, HYPPE), GLHA also conducted a youth-led community health improvement planning process. The 2025 Youth CHIP applies the same community-activated process to generate an action plan to address the most pressing needs as defined by youth themselves.
The CHIP is a Community-driven Initiative
Bringing together community members, leaders, agencies, and businesses to help create objectives and develop strategies. In collaboration with Tufts Medicine Lowell General Hospital, we hosted listening sessions to engage our community partners, and set our course for the future. Over several months we held 23 listening sessions and spoke to more than 230 people. These workshops solicited ideas for how the community can collaboratively advance towards a shared vision for a healthier, happier Greater Lowell for all.
Community is the heart of well-being; together we thrive.
Identifying Shared Goals
Though previous CHIPs have generated domain-specific objectives, a new approach emerged during our most recent CHIP process. Community members highlighted the pressing need for a more holistic, integrated, collaborative approach to wellbeing, one that challenges our previous framework of domain-specific organizing. Therefore the 2026 CHIP reflects a more explicit emphasis on community-driven implementation. Rather than organizing strategies by sector, this CHIP presents 7 overarching community goals, each with a more specific set of objectives and a flexible activity menu that any organization, municipality, or individual can adapt to their context and capacity. Every activity in the menu was suggested by community members, another nod to our commitment to centering community members are co-designers of action.
The Goals for the 2026 CHIP are:
- Protect access to basic needs amid rising costs and service strain
- Improve access to affordable, high-quality, culturally-affirming healthcare
- Improve mental health through cultivating community connections, belonging and social-clinical support
- Improve chronic disease prevention and expand resources for managing lifelong conditions
- Prevent and address substance misuse, addiction, and other high-risk behaviors across the lifespan
- Strengthen services that promote healthy reproductive, perinatal and early childhood outcomes
- Create safe, accessible physical environments where all residents can gather and connect
Read more about how you can help us make progress towards achieving these goals in the CHIP!
How the CHIP Can Help You
- Aligning agency strategic plans with broader CHIP goals
- Applying for grants and sponsorships
- Choosing internal agency priorities
- Fine-tuning project ideas to be better suited to community needs
- Identifying metrics to track
- Selecting advocacy efforts
- Drafting legislation
- Allocating funding to projects that fit within CHIP priorities
- and so much more!
Wellness is a connection of paths: knowledge and action.
Turning Data into Action
The CHIP is intended to inform action both within and beyond the GLHA. We encourage all our partners to consider the ways their strategic plans, internal programming, grant funding, or policy actions can be in alignment with some or all of the goals defined by the community and synthesized in the CHIP.
Within the GLHA, the CHIP plans will turn into action through multiple routes. First, our GLHA task forces create work plans to address needs identified in the CHIP. Task force can undertake collaborative projects, pursue projects with partners, or help support the activities of our partner agencies that align with CHIP goals. GLHA will be reporting back to the community on their goals, objectives, and progress in each task force.