ERIE — The Erie County Department of Health (ECDH) recently announced the completion and publishing of the 2025 Erie County Community Health Needs Assessment.

The previous community health needs assessment was completed and published in 2018. Past iterations of the assessment have been published as reports including information on data collection, demographics, maternal and infant health, infectious diseases, chronic diseases, mortality and more. This assessment is designed to provide information on the health of a community to residents and leaders. This data will be used to help inform decision making and set priorities to improve the overall health of Erie County. 

In order to improve accessibility of this information and to make it more user friendly, this assessment has been published in the form of a series of interactive dashboards. This format allows individuals to engage with the data more easily. By presenting the data in this way, it is the hope of ECDH that community members will feel empowered to make decisions based on the data available to them.

The data collection process involved a widely promoted survey to collect primary data from Erie County residents and an analysis of secondary data available from a variety of local, state and federal agencies. Additionally, The ECDH collaborated with Mercyhurst University’s Public Health Program to conduct focus groups with Erie County community members to provide qualitative data.

Through the compilation and analvsis of this data, three priorities to improve community health have been identified:

• Chronic diseases and behavior change, including obesity among children and adults, access to healthy foods, youth food insecurity and substance use disorders.

• Early detection, prevention, and control of diseases, including breast and colon cancers, infectious disease and sexuallv transmitted infections.

• Maternal and infant health, including maternal health care and infant mortality.

These focus areas will drive the creation of the next Erie County Community Health Improvement Plan. ECDH will lead the development of that document beginning this fall.

The community is invited to view the newly released Community Health Needs Assessment at: https://erie-county-community-health-assessment-ecdh.hub.arcais.com/