Yesterday marked the release of San Diego County’s 2025 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA). Reflecting three years of thoughtful collaboration by hospitals and community partners, this report represents the voices of more than 1,600 community members who spoke candidly about their health, lives, and experiences with a system too often stretched thin.
Every hospital and health system in San Diego County contributed to this collaborative effort. Together, we listened carefully — not only to the data, but also to the real-life stories behind it. Those insights were shared yesterday with more than 170 community members who joined our virtual release event, where our research partners at the San Diego State University Institute for Public Health shared the findings. Chief among those findings was that chronic stress is the region’s top health concern.
The discussion underscored how stress is compounded by challenges like rising housing costs, limited access to care, and environmental threats such as pollution in the Tijuana River Valley. Attendees also highlighted resources available to help address these stressors and discussed ways to work together in response to the findings.
On behalf of HASD&IC and all our member hospitals, thank you to the many community partners whose leadership and expertise made this work possible. Their commitment helped ensure that this report reflects a wide range of perspectives, including those too often left out of traditional research.
This CHNA is not a solution in itself — but a starting point. With the recent enactment of federal legislation that slashed health care resources, health care and social service providers with less funding and fewer resources will need to work together to support patients.
In this constantly shifting health care landscape, the CHNA can serve as a foundation for action that highlights both shared challenges and opportunities for collaborative work toward a more compassionate health system.