Letter to our community from the King County CHIP Steering Committee

To our community:

We are pleased to share with you King County’s inaugural 2025-2030 Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP). This plan addresses needs identified by a broad set of community partners and in the King County 2024/2025 Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA). The CHIP was co-created by representatives from a variety of organizations and community sectors with a shared vision for a healthy King County. This is a plan that outlines priorities, establishes goals, strengthens connections, and collectively defines actions that local organizations will work on to improve the health of all people and communities in King County.

The recent CHNA identified social and health conditions with trends and differences by neighborhood, income, educational attainment, and race. These health inequities are shaped by underlying social drivers that impact community health, such as systemic racism. Through a collaborative and intentional process, representatives from local organizations prioritized housing & homelessness and income & employment for the 2025-2030 CHIP. These priorities recognize the importance of social drivers in influencing health and focus the CHIP on meaningful actions with measurable outcomes.

Over the spring and summer of 2025, a group of leaders representing over 90 organizations and various community sectors — including education and economic development partners, community organizations, Native/Indigenous organizations, hospitals and health systems, community health centers, philanthropy, faith-based organizations, the King County Board of Health, and government — worked together to co-create the goals, objectives, actions, and measures of progress in this five-year plan. This inclusive process centered voices representing communities most affected by health inequities.

The CHIP reduces silos through cross-sector collaboration among organizations in King County. While we recognize that addressing these priorities takes considerable collaboration, resources, and time, this plan responds to community priorities in a transparent, long-term, and systematic way. Furthermore, the CHIP creates opportunities to leverage, amplify, and inform the activities of each organization and our community at large.

We invite members of our community and organizations who share our vision of a healthy King County to join us in this effort. Together, we can effect meaningful change and advance our collective health equity goals. We encourage you to share the CHNA report and this plan within your networks to further inform and mobilize our community as we collectively take steps toward a thriving, resilient and racially inclusive King County where everyone has equitable access to health that supports their physical, mental, emotional, and social well-being.

King County CHIP Steering Committee, October 2025