The Yale New Haven Health System and its five hospitals are anchor institutions in the communities they serve from Westchester County, New York, through southern Connecticut to Westerly, Rhode Island. As anchor institutions, we are “rooted” or “anchored” in our communities, and it is part of our mission to improve the long-term health and wellbeing of our communities. We know that poor health is often caused or exacerbated by a lack of access to resources. We are working to improve the social determinants of health and living conditions, particularly those neighborhoods that suffer from pervasive inequality and social disadvantage. Long term, this will improve health equity, giving everyone a fair and just opportunity to be as healthy as possible.
Our anchor strategy includes a multi-prong approach to align our everyday business activities in a way that improves living conditions in our communities and health equity. We work together with our communities and invite like-minded organizations to do the same.
Yale New Haven Health is also a proud member of the Healthcare Anchor Network, a national organization dedicated to improving the health and wealth of local communities by fostering inclusive and sustainable local economies. As part of our Anchor Mission, Yale New Haven Health is committed to addressing the public health disparities caused by racism. Read more about the commitment we have made along with other health systems across the country.
YNHHS is committed to purchasing from local and diverse vendors that provide value and high quality goods and services. We know that strengthening this select business community makes good business sense and contributes to the overall economic growth and expansion of our community. Specifically, we aim to increase spending with certified Minority, Women, Veteran and Disadvantaged Business Enterprises (MBEs) and with local businesses across our service areas.
To learn more or to register as a vendor with Yale New Haven Health, click here.
Part of our strategy includes providing information, access and assistance to community members so they can pursue employment opportunities with our health system and stay with us as they learn new skills and move up through our organization. We work with our community and local workforce organizations to create training programs for our high demand jobs and intentionally hire individuals from our underserved communities. In this way, we will not only help to transform neighborhoods, but we will also ensure that our employee profile is truly reflective of our community.
To find out about careers at Yale New Haven Health, click here.
Investing in local communities can help improve the social determinants of health. We have five priority areas where we focus our work: health, education and youth, housing, food and economic vitality. We provide financial support for many community initiatives in these priority areas. For example, we provide numerous community-based health care services, screenings and health education in each of our five regions. We support or run local youth programs and provide scholarships for education. We support the creation of affordable, healthy homes by supporting Habitat for Humanity home builds, partnering to run medical respite programs and offering low cost first-time mortgages to employees who buy a home in New Haven or New London. We also run community food giveaways, support local food banks and connect people to healthy food resources.
Learn more about some of our initiatives in the community:
YNHHS employees provide hours of volunteer support each year to improve the health and wellbeing of our communities. Our Community and Government Relations Department plans several volunteer events through the year, such as Read Aloud Day, the United Way Day of Caring, Junior Achievement and toy, food or school supply drives. All of our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Council members volunteer regularly in the community as part of their work, and our Community Health team actively volunteers in the community as they implement our Community Health Improvement Plans.
We encourage our employees to give their time and talent to our local communities by providing a discount off of our health benefits for employees who volunteer their time in our community. If you are an employee, and would like to volunteer in our community, please contact Community and Government Relations at 203-688-2503.
Just as climate change negatively impacts the social determinants of health, activities that promote sustainability can also improve health outcomes for those who are most vulnerable. The health care industry is among the most carbon-intensive service sectors in the industrialized world, and the U.S. health care system is responsible for about a quarter of all global health care green house gas emissions. As a leading health care provider committed to improve the health of our community, Yale New Haven Health System is committed to assessing the impact our organizational practices have on perpetuating the effects of climate change and setting a course to reduce our carbon footprint. Our efforts are focused on four initiative areas: Energy, facilities, transportation and supply chain.
Learn more about our Center for Sustainable Healthcare.
Yale New Haven Hospital employees volunteer at Read Across America at the Strong School in 2019.
Finance employees volunteering for Junior Achievement at Bridgeport’s Capital Prep Harbor School in 2019.
Greenwich Hospital Community Health’s Kids in the Kitchen Health Cooking Class.
Neighborhood clean-up across from L & M Hospital.
Northeast Medical Group employees collect backpacks for the community.
Yale New Haven Health and Bridgeport Hospital employees volunteering at a monthly food giveaway at Bridgeport Hospital.
Westerly Hospital staff helps out at the Warm Shelter.
