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History

PartnerSHIP for a Healthy Community began as the Health Care Cost Summit several years ago, functioning as a community-based health improvement partner and was one of the first seven “SHIPS” with this designation across the Commonwealth. The Health Care Cost Summit dissolved and our current agency was born when we incorporated in August 2006 and acquired 501c3 status in 2008.

We are an affiliated agency with the Pennsylvania Department of Health as a State Health Improvement Plan partner, working to improve the health status of the Erie community and eliminate barriers to good health. We are one of a total of sixty-three “SHIPS” serving the sixty-seven counties across Pennsylvania.

Since our inception, we have progressed from being an all-volunteer organization to staffing the agency and hiring our first executive director in early 2008. Our current corporate board of directors includes more than twenty health professionals, business professionalism, and civic leaders from across Erie County.

In April 2008, the SHIP formally adopted a Strategic Direction Plan, which will focus on twenty-six health improvement projects to be executed over the next five years in Erie County. These “projects” have been refined during our strategic planning process with cost assignments. We can use the information as our agency Business Plan. Some of the initiatives of the Strategic Direction include:

• Establishment of community-based medical clinics in Medically Under-served and Health Professional, Dental Professional Shortage Areas.
• Neighborhood and faith based clinics
• Political health care advocacy on behalf of Erie County
• Comprehensive cultural and linguistic training for health care professionals
• Health education
• Chronic disease management groups
• Healthy family centers
• Centralized case management
• And more…