Featured Image: A St. Luke’s mobile medical unit outside Raub Middle School in Allentown. (provided by SLUHN)

St. Luke’s University Health Network is pleased to thank and celebrate the greater Lehigh Valley community for responding to over 15,000 surveys and actively participating in nine forums during its 2025 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) process.

The St. Luke’s Department of Community Health oversees the CHNA, which it conducts every three years as part of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. The goal of the assessment is to identify critical health disparities faced by populations within St. Luke’s service areas.

“St. Luke’s is the only regional health network in the Lehigh Valley to conduct surveys directly with community members. We are incredibly grateful to our community for their overwhelming participation in the 2025 CHNA process,” says Whitney Szmodis, Ph.D., M.Ed., St. Luke’s Community Health Epidemiologist.

Szmodis said the community’s responses to the surveys and during key interviews and the active involvement of nearly 300 community members and partners at nine CHNA forums have been invaluable.

“St. Luke’s is dedicated to understanding and addressing identified needs and priorities. These contributions have provided us with critical insights and a deeper understanding of our community’s needs and priorities. The information gathered through their contributions will significantly influence our efforts to enhance community health and well-being,” she explains.

St. Luke’s is currently analyzing data collected from the 2025 CHNA process and creating reports on its findings. The St. Luke’s campus presidents will review the drafts in January, and the Network will hold board presentations in the spring when the reports will be reviewed and approved. The final documents will be available on the St. Luke’s Department of Community Health webpage in June. Then, next fall, the Network will hold open community forums to share the 2025 CHNA results.

The top priorities outlined in the CHNA and the implementation strategy serve as a guide to support St. Luke’s strategic initiatives through the Network’s pillars of Prevention and Wellness, Care Transformation and Research and Partnerships. For example, the top three health needs in our community based on St. Luke’s 2022 CHNA are:

• Promoting access to care;
• Preventing chronic disease; and
• Promoting mental health.

Achieving the high level of participation seen in the 2025 CHNA requires teamwork both within the Network and among the community. To distribute the survey, the Department of Community Health works collaboratively across the Network as well as with its community partners, including non-profits and local schools, city health bureaus, and more.

“The CHNA work profoundly underscores St. Luke’s commitment to genuine community partnership,” Szmodis explains.

 

“Community Health liaisons work with our campuses to ensure that the top priorities established through the CHNA are supported and meaningful. This extensive collaboration highlights St. Luke’s proactive approach in fostering meaningful relationships and ensuring that community voices are integral to shaping health initiatives.”

 

About St. Luke’s

Founded in 1872, St. Luke’s University Health Network (SLUHN) is a fully integrated, regional, non-profit network of more than 20,000 employees providing services at 15 campuses and 350+ outpatient sites.  With annual net revenue of $4 billion, the Network’s service area includes 11 counties in two states: Lehigh, Northampton, Berks, Bucks, Carbon, Montgomery, Monroe, Schuylkill and Luzerne counties in Pennsylvania and Warren and Hunterdon counties in New Jersey. St. Luke’s hospitals operate the largest network of trauma centers in Pennsylvania, with the Bethlehem Campus being home to St. Luke’s Children’s Hospital.

Dedicated to advancing medical education, St. Luke’s is the preeminent teaching hospital in central-eastern Pennsylvania.  In partnership with Temple University, the Network established the Lehigh Valley’s first and only four-year medical school campus.  It also operates the nation’s oldest School of Nursing, established in 1884, and 52 fully accredited graduate medical educational programs with more than 500 residents and fellows. In 2022, St. Luke’s, a member of the Children’s Hospital Association, opened the Lehigh Valley’s first and only free-standing facility dedicated entirely to kids.

SLUHN is the only Lehigh Valley-based health care system to earn Medicare’s five-star ratings (the highest) for quality, efficiency and patient satisfaction.  It is both a Leapfrog Group and Healthgrades Top Hospital and a Newsweek World’s Best Hospital.  The Network’s flagship University Hospital has earned the 100 Top Major Teaching Hospital designation from Fortune/PINC AI 10 years in a row, including in 2023 when it was identified as THE #4 TEACHING HOSPITAL IN THE COUNTRY.  In 2021, St. Luke’s was identified as one of the 15 Top Health Systems nationally.  Utilizing the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) system for both inpatient and outpatient services, the Network is a multi-year recipient of the Most Wired award recognizing the breadth of the SLUHN’s information technology applications such as telehealth, online scheduling and online pricing information.  The Network is also recognized as one of the state’s lowest-cost providers.

 

Information provided to TVL by:
Sam Kennedy