Overview:
The 2025 Baystate Franklin Medical Center Community Health Needs Assessment has identified food security as a health need to prioritize in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region, in addition to other regional-focused needs such as maternal and infant health, behavioral health and substance use disorders. The report, which is conducted every three years, highlights the impact of poor nutrition on health and the increasing levels of food insecurity in the region, with the North Quabbin region having the highest percentage of those reporting they don’t have enough for groceries, utilities, housing and health care.
GREENFIELD — As part of the 2025 Baystate Franklin Medical Center Community Health Needs Assessment, food security was identified as a health need to prioritize in Franklin County and the North Quabbin region, joining other regional-focused needs in the areas of maternal and infant health, behavioral health and substance use disorders.
Health care professionals from across the region gathered over Zoom on Thursday to discuss the Community Health Needs Assessment, which is conducted every three years.
Baystate Franklin is a member of the Coalition of Western Massachusetts Hospitals/Insurer, a partnership formed in 2012 that has grown to include 10 hospitals, clinics and insurers in the region. The coalition coordinates resources and activities for conducting Community Health Needs Assessments, and the resulting reports identify coalition-wide prioritized health needs and coalition member-identified needs.
Changes since 2022
The new report states that much of the same needs exist since the last assessment was conducted in 2022.
“The Baystate Franklin service area, the Franklin County/North Quabbin region, continues
to face the same prioritized health needs identified in its 2022 Community Health Needs
Assessment (CHNA),” the report’s executive summary explains. “Persistent inequities affect people of color, immigrants, older adults (65-plus), young children and their caregivers, LGBTQIA people and people with lower incomes. While the COVID-19 pandemic has subsided, its economic and mental and physical health impacts linger.”
The methodology of the assessment examines existing reports, quantitative and qualitative data from existing data sources, and new surveys, focus groups and interviews. These are then incorporated into the assessment and used to examine future action items.
Phoebe Walker, director of community health at the Franklin Regional Council of Governments, said the Baystate Franklin Community Health Needs Assessment has evolved due to the availability of data through state dashboards, while also recognizing limitations within the nine months of putting together the 2025 report, including that some of the data is from 2019 and 2020.
“Our [Baystate Franklin] CNHA has … evolved from focusing less on capturing every single health issue, and more on diving deeply into priority issues and populations to find out what we can about their needs,” Walker said.
Still, Walker said the Franklin County and North Quabbin region was “well-represented” within the focus groups used to form the assessment.
“We really feel like we were able to hear from a lot of people,” she said.
Coalition-wide needs
Lead writer of the assessment, Ann Darling, presented the regional areas. Regarding adult mental health and substance use, Darling highlighted some data points, indicating both improvement and continued need for improvement.
Opioid-related deaths have declined since a 2021 high of 48 deaths in Franklin County and Athol, with only 12 in 2024. By comparison, 2022 saw 28 deaths and 2023 saw 32. Improvements have come from increased attention to and resources for overdose death prevention, between the overdose reversal medication naloxone, expanded state-funded services and mobile care units to close accessibility gaps. Non-fatal opioid overdoses have also declined since 2022, Darling said, but are still higher than in pre-pandemic years.
Darling said challenges do still exist. A few areas of difficulty include increased need for wound care, insurance issues, and treatments for mental health and substance use recovery differing, creating challenges.
Meanwhile, substance use among youths has continued to trend downward, with Darling saying these declines are “a real success story” and that the good work needs to continue.
However, Darling said the picture is “a lot less pretty” for youth mental health. She said mental health indicators started to worsen around 2015, with spikes in self-reported symptoms of depression and anxiety, but with some “slight improvements recently.” Still, 38% self-reported in 2024 that they were too depressed for usual activities, and 44% were too anxious for usual activities.
“We really need to be sure we use those positives, those strengths, to build on in addressing some of the challenges that we face,” Darling said.
One “local bright spot” that Darling pointed out is a decline in neonatal abstinence syndrome, which is when a fetus is exposed to opioids before birth. Since 2015, the rates of this occurrence at Baystate Franklin have declined, with only one such case in 2023 and three in 2024, compared to 17 in 2015. Darling highlights the Moms Do Care coalition at Baystate Franklin for its work in helping pregnant and postnatal people who struggle with opioid use disorder as playing a key role in this turnaround.
Still, challenges impact Franklin County and North Quabbin region, as highlighted by statewide data from the Department of Public Health that includes access to adequate prenatal care, low birthweights and preterm births.
“Privately insured people and white people are more likely to have adequate prenatal care [and] less likely to have low birthweight or preterm babies,” she explained. “We do have enough data to say this was true in Franklin County, where, for instance, 84% of white pregnant people had adequate prenatal care versus 69% for Latinos.”
Per the qualitative findings from this regional focus area, other challenges exist, with needs for health insurance assistance, bridging gaps in mental and behavioral health, and support for Spanish-speakers.
Baystate Franklin priorities
In addition to the coalition-wide issues identified, the Baystate Franklin Community Benefits Advisory Council has added food security as a priority health need for Franklin County and the North Quabbin region.
The Community Health Needs Assessment states the priority was added due to the impact that poor nutrition has on health, while trends show increasing levels of food insecurity.
“The negative impacts of inadequate nutrition are far-reaching and include increased risk
of poor birth outcomes; chronic conditions such as diabetes, obesity, hypertension and
heart disease; a lowered immune response to infection; and mental health disorders,” the assessment states. “Nutritional status and how to improve it are thus of the utmost importance to medical practitioners and all who work in public health.”
Darling highlighted 2023 data from the Department of Public Health’s Community Health Equity Survey, which surveyed 1,300 people from western Franklin County, central Franklin County, the North Quabbin region and Greenfield.
The data highlights how residents report struggling to afford basic needs, with the North Quabbin region having the highest percentage of those reporting they don’t have enough for groceries, utilities, housing and health care.
The assessment dives into more detail on what constitutes food insecurity, the role of state and federal benefits like the Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) and the Healthy Incentives Program (HIP), the scope of food insecurity and the role of local farms.
Darling made it clear that state and federal benefits don’t cover all food needs. Only 32% of food-insecure households have access to SNAP.
“They are helpful and they are worth fighting for,” Darling said about the benefits. “They were never enough to completely stabilize [a] family’s economic situation.”
Action points for curbing food insecurity include support for legislative agendas by the Massachusetts-based advocacy group Project Bread, and a goal of greater local collaboration for assisting people on SNAP and other Department of Transitional Assistance programs.
To read the full 2025 Baystate Franklin Medical Center Community Health Needs Assessment, visit tinyurl.com/bdbfbryd.