About the Hospital Community Collaborative

HCC

Our Mission

The HCC strives to promote community health and development by connecting people, ideas and resources, and create the next generation of sustainable clinical-community partnerships in the process.

What Is the Hospital Community Collaborative?

The AHA Hospital Community Collaborative (HCC) works to strengthen connections between hospitals and community organizations to improve health outcomes in their communities.

As both an online partnership education program and a national network of community health practitioners, the HCC promotes collaboration, data-driven decision-making and the strategic use of community resources — all to strengthen working relationships between hospitals and partnering community organizations to improve patient populations’ health and well-being.

In addition to providing access to relevant research, tools and field-tested exercises that help strengthen partnerships, the HCC also includes opportunities for networking, coaching and collaboration with others doing similar work across the country.

In 2024, the HCC was refined as an asynchronous digital learning platform, allowing for users to complete the program and its activities at their own pace.

There are three foundational components to HCC:

Upon starting the program, hospital and community partner teams commit to working together to align strategies and resources with protected time for engaged collaboration.
Once involved, curated tools and resources help teams build foundational capabilities and tackle problems together.
As work progresses, a national network of peers, along with advice from community health experts, can provide teams with interactive guidance as needed.

At its core, the HCC is built for two or more organizations to complete the program together. However, as a go- at-your-own-pace learning platform, the HCC can accomodate individual users who wish to gain partnership-building skills and practice their learnings with a partner organization at a later date.

While the HCC program offers flexibility through online learning, there are opportunities throughout the curriculum to engage with and receive feedback from peers and experts in the field.

History

The Hospital Community Collaborative began in 2018 with a year-long Aetna Foundation-funded pilot program, where hospital-community teams participated in an in-person learning lab in Chicago. Throughout 2019, the program continued to support these teams.

The COVID-19 pandemic brought programming to a halt in 2020, but with new support from the Novartis US Foundation, the HCC returned later that year with an updated curriculum.

In 2021 and 2022, the HCC hosted two six-month national cohorts, focusing on hospital-community partnerships. During this time, a state-specific cohort in New Jersey was launched, offering a year-long learning experience. By 2024, the New Jersey cohort concluded, and the program transitioned into an asynchronous, self-paced online model, broadening its reach to hospital and health system professionals and their community partners.

The HCC’s evolution has centered on fostering strategic partnerships, community engagement and knowledge exchange, with its curriculum covering topics like data analytics, trust building, leadership advocacy and funding strategies. Now in its fourth year, the revamped program continues to promote better health outcomes nationwide.