Community Health

Join us for our next Community Conversation!

Tuesday, April 7, 2026 at 11:00 AM
Olive Pettis Library in Goshen, NH

Raising Healthy Kids: A Conversation with Dr. Lara Wheeler. We’ll explore practical tips, shared challenges, and how to support children’s wellbeing together. Bring your questions, share your experiences, and leave with practical tools for supporting child wellbeing. This event is free and open to the public. Children are welcome to attend.

What is Community Health?

‘Community health refers to non-clinical approaches for improving health, preventing disease and reducing health disparities through addressing social, behavioral, environmental, economic and medical determinants of health in a geographically defined population.’ American Hospital Association (AHA)

What Guides Our Work:

Community Benefit Reporting: Federal reporting requirement for “healthcare charitable trusts” which are defined as “organized to directly provide health care services, including, but not limited to, hospitals, nursing homes, community health services, and medical-surgical or other diagnostic or therapeutic facilities or services.” RSA 7:32-d, V *

Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA): Every health care charitable trust shall, either alone or in conjunction with other health care charitable trusts in its community, conduct a community needs assessment to assist in determining the activities to be included in its community benefits plan. RSA 7:32-f*

Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP): The plan shall identify the activities the trust expects to undertake or support which address the needs determined through the community needs assessment process or which otherwise qualify as community benefits and shall include all charity care in a discrete category. RSA 7:32-e, III*

Our Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA)/Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) 2024

Source: Community Health Assessment Toolkit, 2023

Every 3 years NLH engages in a CHNA/CHIP that requires us to:

Identify the health needs of our community and;
Address the identified needs by developing a focused improvement plan.

Our goal is to improve our communities’ health through the CHNA/CHIP process.

A CHNA Leader Survey was distributed in February 2024, and then a Resident Survey in March. View the final 2024 CHNA (PDF).

NLH Community Health published the 2024 CHIP (PDF). This document will drive the Community Health programming priorities of NLH over the coming years. We are also proud to share our 2025 Community Health Highlights (PDF) document with our community.

Learn more about this process from Healthy Communities.

Resources

Please visit our community resources page for more information.

Annual & Community Reports

Read New London Hospital Annual Report, Community Benefits Reporting forms, and other reports.