April is National Stress Awareness Month, an opportunity to recognize the very real ways stress affects the health, the work, and daily lives of not just those in the health care field, but also the patients and communities you serve.
This focus is especially relevant for our region, where chronic stress has been identified in the 2025 San Diego Community Health Needs Assessment(CHNA) as a leading and crosscutting health issue — one that affects every population we serve and drives both health outcomes and system demand. This reality is reinforced by national research, underscoring the urgent need to address stress as a foundational component of health and well-being.
The 2025 CHNA found that stress in our region is widespread and persistent, emphasizing the overall burden of daily stressors. Community members spoke candidly about what chronic stress feels like in their daily lives — constant, compounding, and shaped by pressures such as financial strain, rising housing costs, the challenge of navigating complex systems, and concerns about safety.
It’s not just adults who are dealing with chronic stress. Parents and caregivers consistently shared concerns about the toll that ongoing stress is taking on their children and families, heightening the urgency around better supporting youth and family well-being before it impacts long-term development. No matter the region, age, or background, the message was strikingly consistent: Our community is overwhelmed. Hospitals see this firsthand.
As one key informant in our CHNA put it, “Our patients are in a chronic stressful reaction.” This pattern is reflected across our health systems through increased behavioral health demand, workforce strain, higher-acuity emergency visits, delayed care, and cycling through care without addressing root causes.
What we are seeing makes one thing clear: While health systems can manage the consequences of chronic stress, they cannot address its root causes alone. The drivers of stress — economic pressure, housing instability, food insecurity, safety concerns, and fragmented systems — extend well beyond the walls of your hospitals. Meaningful progress, therefore, requires strong, sustained collaboration across sectors — health care, public health, community organizations, philanthropy, and others — and a commitment to listening closely to lived experiences to identify system gaps.
By acknowledging chronic stress as a shared challenge and addressing it collaboratively, we have a meaningful opportunity to improve patients’ health, strengthen our systems, and support the long-term‑ well‑being of the communities we serve.