Mission Statement

The Center for Healthy Communities is a community-academic partnership committed to improving the health and well-being of the community, educating its health professionals and serving as a force for change. The Center began in 1991 as Partners for Community Health Development and became a formal organization in 1994.

The Center for Healthy Communities was established in 1991 as Partners for Community Health Development with fiscal support from the Kellogg Foundation, the Ohio Board of Regents, Community Mutual Insurance Company, Wright State University, and Sinclair Community College.

Officially established by decree of the Boards of Directors of Wright State University and Sinclair Community College, the Center is now fiscally housed in the Department of Community Health, with the Boonshoft School of Medicine, and has administrative offices at the Wright State University Kettering Center and Sinclair Community College Building 13, in downtown Dayton.

The Community Advisory Board representing community and academic constituents of the Center provides programmatic oversight and direction, and the Deans Advisory Board representing the Boonshoft School of Medicine, the College of Liberal Arts, the College of Nursing and Health, and the School of Professional Psychology from Wright State University, and the Life and Health Sciences Division from Sinclair Community College, provides fiscal oversight.

An Innovative Partnership in Community Health

CHC’s mission is carried out through the cooperation of its community and academic partners – local hospitals and community health centers; public health, public housing, and public schools; over 100 health and human services organizations; community leaders; and Wright State University, Sinclair Community College, the Kettering College of Medical Arts, the University of Dayton Law School, and United Theological Seminary.

CHC community and academic partners work together to identify and mobilize necessary resources to improve the health of the community and prepare tomorrow's health care professionals through:

• developing innovative community based and multiprofessional curricula for local, state-wide and regional health professions programs with an emphasis on service learning
• staffing local and state-wide coalitions focused on increasing access to care for health uninsured, kinship care families, and health promotion and disease prevention
• training and employing community health workers to navigate the health and social services public safetynet; developing and implementing public policy related to broad determinants of health
• providing technical assistance to health and human services organizations through program evaluation and community based participatory research
• and administering the shared community health record, HIEx™ (HealthLink Information Exchange) through the HealthLink RHIO