Summary
Clients: West Side United
Project: A refreshed five-year strategy to guide West Side United through 2030 as it becomes an independent 501(c)(3), advancing its long-term goal of closing the life expectancy gap between the West Side and the Loop.
Outcome: A strategy that advances West Side United’s mission to close the life expectancy gap between the West Side and the Loop and focuses the organization on three areas with clear goals: economic mobility, community investment and capital deployment, and health access and outcomes.
Grounded in stakeholder interviews, a community priorities survey, and cross-stakeholder workshops, the plan defines WSU’s role as a catalyzer, connector, and champion for the West Side and sets shared goals its hospitals, community partners, and funders can rally behind.
Challenge
Pictured: CCA Principal, Veenu Verma (L), speaks at a West Side United’s Strategic Retreat
Photo courtesy of West Side United
On Chicago’s West Side, residents lose more than a decade of life expectancy than people a few miles east in the Loop: a gap rooted in generations of disinvestment across ten neighborhoods. In West Garfield Park, that gap jumps to nearly 18 years.
West Side United (WSU) was formed in 2017 to close that gap and has grown into a 15-person backbone organization coordinating more than 100 partners. One of its most powerful levers is the “anchor mission,” in which hospitals and anchor mission partners that are part of the West Side United collaborative hire and purchase goods and services from the local community to increase opportunity on the West Side. In 2025, that meant $51 million spent with West Side vendors and more than 1,200 West Side hires. The 2024 opening of Fillmore Linen Service in North Lawndale to service hospitals’ laundry needs created 73 new jobs, more than three-quarters of them filled by West Side residents.
The landscape has shifted since WSU’s last strategy was developed in early 2020. WSU has rallied more than 100 partners behind catalytic projects like Fillmore Linen and Sankofa Village Wellness Center, and its role has grown from coordinating its hospitals’ anchor work into broader community development. It is also becoming an independent 501(c)(3). Stakeholders describe WSU as the trusted “glue” between the community and its institutions, but the organization was also stretched thin and needed clearer focus and criteria for what work to undertake.
As a partner that helped build West Side United and has supported it at every inflection point, CCA was asked to lead a strategy refresh that would set WSU’s direction for the next five years.
Action
Building on nearly a decade of partnership with WSU, CCA led a three-phase strategy refresh alongside WSU leadership and its hospital partners:
Discover: CCA interviewed WSU staff, leaders from five hospital partners, community partners, and funders, and surveyed stakeholders on the West Side’s biggest needs. The team paired that input with public health and economic data to assess WSU’s past impact, its strengths, and the main drivers of the life expectancy gap.
Design: At a midpoint workshop, WSU leadership, hospital partners, and community leaders aligned on three focus areas where community need is greatest and WSU is best positioned to help: economic mobility, community investment and capital deployment, and health access and outcomes.
Deliver: The team presented WSU’s 2030 strategy under two banners. Thrive West Side commits to placing 10,000 historically underserved residents in jobs above the living wage with health benefits and catalyzing or convening $1.25 billion in investment in the West Side’s seven most in-need zip codes. WSU’s hospital partners aim to contribute 2,000 of those jobs and $350 million of that investment. Live Healthy West Side focuses on cardiometabolic disease and maternal and infant health, where Black, Latine, and other marginalized communities have faced systemic inequities, with goals to reduce heart disease risk by 1% over three years and infant mortality by 10% over five. The strategy defines roles for WSU, hospitals, and community partners in reaching each goal, plus a rollout plan that cascades the goals from hospital C-suites to HR, procurement, and operations teams.
There was additional support provided under the Thrive West Side bucket to 1) refresh and align the West Side Anchor Committee to serve as an important driver for the five-year strategic plan and 2) analyze and assess purchasing data to identify additional joint business opportunities like Fillmore Linen.
Impact
Closing a life expectancy gap of more than a decade is bigger than any one hospital or program; it takes a coalition working toward the same goals. The new strategy gives West Side United’s partners those shared goals and a clear filter for where WSU leads – in economic mobility, community investment and capital deployment, and health access and outcomes – and where it supports strong partners already leading on education, healthy food access, violence prevention, and opioid overdose rather than duplicate their work.
There is also encouraging news: from 2023 to 2024, life expectancy increased in every West Side neighborhood by an average of 1.7 years, and from 2021 to 2024 it climbed an average of 4.4 years, almost twice the 2.6-year gain nationally. The average gap with the Loop narrowed from 16.7 years in 2021 to 10.8 years in 2024. That is real progress, but a gap of more than a decade shows how much work remains.
“CCA has walked alongside us since we formed in 2017. The strategic alliances they helped us form give our hospitals, community partners, and funders goals we can all align with and execute, so more West Siders can live longer, healthier lives.”
