Community Health Improvement Plan

This Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) serves a dual purpose: it helps the Partnership engage community members in efforts to improve health and empowers community members to shape the outcomes that affect their lives. Through outreach and collaboration, the Partnership fosters meaningful connections, involves residents in discussions and decision-making processes, and ensures shared input to drive informed, community-centered decisions. By encouraging active participation, the CHIP helps the Partnership strengthen relationships and promote open, transparent dialogue across the community.

At the same time, this CHIP is focused on empowerment—giving community members the tools, resources, and confidence to take initiative, advocate for themselves, and lead transformative efforts to address their own needs and priorities. The CHIP emphasizes self-reliance, self-determination, and positions the community as a driving force for sustainable change.

Fairfax County is a vibrant community where people live, work, play, and learn—but persistent racial and social inequities continue to create significant disparities in outcomes. To address these challenges, Fairfax County embraced a vision of One Fairfax, a declaration that all residents deserve an equitable opportunity to succeed, regardless of their age, race, color, sex, sexual orientation, gender identify, religion, national origin, marital status, disability, socio-economic status, neighborhood of residence or other characteristics.

Aligned with this vision, the CHIP prioritizes equity in its goals and actions to enhance community health. The plan focuses on identifying barriers, closing opportunity gaps, and strategically directing resources to create a healthier, more inclusive future for all.

As the CHIP work teams worked to develop goals and key actions, they were guided by a set of principles designed to ensure this plan will have a lasting impact.  Teams considered whether their recommendations were:

• Clear and specific, focused and without ambiguity.
• Feasible, with sufficient community resources and achievable within the CHIP timeframe.
• Impactful, addressing key gaps to yield positive outcomes.
• Sustainable, built upon lasting community partner support.

In crafting these goals and actions, teams prioritized closing the gaps the community clearly identified or supported with data. The teams sought to amplify and enhance existing efforts to address the evolving needs of our community, aligning them with local initiatives while laying the groundwork to mobilize resources effectively. By following these guiding principles, the teams ensured that every goal and every action carried the strength and potential to create a brighter, more inclusive future for all.

As the Partnership embarks on collectively working towards the goal of implementing the CHIP, it is imperative that a diverse set of voices are continually present. This CHIP outlines overarching shared goals as set forth through the first stages of development. The Partnership will rely on community members to bring this CHIP to life through the implementation of key actions with flexibility to learn, iterate, and improve on the approach to improve the health of all Fairfax communities.