Blog Archives
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Increasing Birth Equity in Washington, D.C.
Black families in Washington, D.C., account for 50 percent of all births in the city and 90 percent of all pregnancy-related deaths. More than 65 percent of all pregnancy-related deaths occur in D.C.’s Black-majority wards 7 and 8, where infant mortality rates are twice the city’s average. Data from MedStar Washington Hospital Center’s Women’s and Infants’ Services (WIS) patients and needs assessments indicated that multiple social determinants of health (SDOH), including access to medical care, housing, food, and transportation, also disproportionately affect wards 7 and 8.
WIS aims to increase early interventions for adverse SDOH, decrease the number of patients experiencing birthing complications, and mitigate risk factors associated with higher mortality rates. This includes upstream efforts, such as preconception health assessments, and prenatal SDOH screenings. WIS provides trauma-informed clinical services and connects prenatal patients to resources, including support for substance use disorder; food banks; legal aid; assistance obtaining Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children benefits; and more.
A key partner in the D.C. Safe Babies Safe Moms initiative, WIS collaborates with fellow partner Mamatoto Village, a nonprofit that provides lactation consulting and other perinatal support services to primarily Black patients in wards 7 and 8. WIS also partners with Community of Hope to increase service accessibility and improve continuity of care on-site at Community of Hope’s Ward 8 location, allowing patients to see a high-risk obstetrician in the same location where they schedule their maternal and fetal medicine appointments. Additionally, MedStar Washington Hospital Center partnered with the Georgetown University Health Justice Alliance to launch the Perinatal Legal Assistance & Well-being project in 2021, which provides no-cost legal assistance to pregnant and postpartum individuals to address health-harming unmet legal needs, including employment, housing insecurity, and public benefits.
WIS has seen a clear increase in patients accessing interdisciplinary services focused on treating hypertensive disorders, anemia, depression, anxiety, and diabetes. For example, the number of patients receiving diabetes support has nearly tripled in 2020, and now, 92 percent of high-risk patients receive services for diabetes control—a nearly 30 percent increase. The rate of babies born with very low birth weights (less than 1,500 grams) decreased by more than 15 percent and rate of babies with low birth weights (less than 2,500 grams) decreased by more than 7 percent.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Memorial Mobile Health Center
Memorial Healthcare System has been a leader in mobile health since 2000. The mobile health program runs both pediatric and adult health vans, all with the goal of increasing access to care and intervention services for community members.
The mobile vans operate 21 days a month and offer free services and social needs screenings to community members, most of whom are under- or uninsured. The pediatric van offers immunizations, behavioral health services, well and sick visits, follow-up visits, and counseling events. The adult van also offers vaccines and sick visits but emphasizes helping patients apply for public assistance benefits, such as Medicaid and the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, if they are eligible. All vans are equipped with Memorial Healthcare staff, including two medical assistants, a nurse practitioner, and occasional residents.
To ensure the program meets patients’ needs, Memorial partners with many community organizations, including early learning services, homeless services, migrant services, food pantries, local universities, and local government to help identify locations to set up the clinics.
Memorial’s Mobile Health Center has built a trustful relationship with the community through its efforts. By caring for patients in the community, the vans also have reduced the burden on local emergency departments. The pediatric mobile van sees about 220 patients per month, and the adult mobile van sees about 490 patients per month.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Mobile Wellness Clinic
The Casey Foundation, an organization that works to improve the well-being of children, youth, and families in the United States, conducted an analysis of the Opelika community in 2017 that revealed areas with a lack of access to care. The foundation engaged the City of Opelika and East Alabama Health to begin a mobile medicine program to increase access to primary care within the community. First Transit donated the mobile bus in 2017, and the program officially launched in December 2022.
The mobile wellness clinic visits communities in the greater Opelika area once a week. Staff provide disease prevention resources and screen patients for chronic conditions at the designated site each week. mobile unit social worker connects patients to resources within the community through screening for social determinants of health. The clinic is funded through multiple sources, including the Casey Foundation and the local housing authority, which allows the clinic to prioritize communities with the most need.
Beyond the City of Opelika and the Casey Foundation, mobile wellness clinic partners include charitable clinics that allow referrals for patients to be seen more quickly, local schools and universities from which students work and learn in the bus , and other local community-based organizations that help the program build trust with community members.
The mobile clinic has served community members with all-encompassing care since beginning operations in December 2022. Many personal stories illustrate the clinic’s importance to the community; for example, a care-reluctant patient sought care at the mobile wellness clinic and discovered dangerously high blood sugar levels. Fortunately, the clinic staff were able to quickly intervene and saved the patient’s life.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Pediatric Mobile Health
Hennepin Healthcare’s Pediatric Mobile Health program started during the COVID-19 pandemic with the goal of ensuring that children receive preventative care such routine childhood immunizations. The racial awakening occurring adjacent to the pandemic, which highlighted the long-standing lack of access to care in the community, also fueled the momentum behind the clinic. The mobile clinic team achieved its goal by going door-to-door providing well child checks and immunizations to children. The program since has implemented additional services, including primary pediatric care, partum care for the birthing dyad, referrals back to a medical home, specialty care or community resources for social needs.
The mobile clinic brings pediatric care to families who are hesitant and/or unable to visit the hospital or off-site clinic. Full-time staff, including a nurse practitioner or pediatrician, pediatric provider trainee, and an emergency medical technician, operate the clinic. Staff also screen each family for social determinants of health. Patients who screen positive are referred to clinics or community organizations and resources to help families with their needs.
The program is grant-funded and bills insurance when appropriate. The program collaborates with other departments within the hospital, including the information technology department, to ensure the clinic has the bandwidth to document in electronic health records. The mobile clinic also partners with local schools and community organizations, such as Second Harvest Heartland to help families facing food insecurity and school districts and Head Start Centers to help with childcare resources.
The Pediatric Mobile Health Program has successfully increased access to care by ensuring continuity of care. When families are screened for social needs, community health workers ensure that patients follow through with referrals and applications are completed if necessary. The program also decreased Emergency Department visits, which helps lower costs and provider burnout.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Street Health Outreach and Wellness
During the COVID-19 pandemic, NYC Health + Hospitals recognized that New Yorkers experiencing unsheltered homelessness faced unique challenges accessing COVID-19 testing and vaccination. As the city’s public hospital system and the largest municipal health care system in the nation, the health system had a unique opportunity to leverage its size and spread to bring street medicine services across New York City. NYC Health + Hospitals launched the Street Health Outreach and Wellness (SHOW) program, which quickly evolved to include basic medical care, harm reduction education, and links to other care and services.
SHOW aims to meet patients where they are, build trust, and use longitudinal care relationships to drive positive outcomes in both health and housing. NYC Health + Hospitals currently operates five mobile street medicine units, each connected to one of the system’s facilities and staffed by providers from within those facilities’ primary care safety net (PCSN) clinics. Mobile units, based within communities those hospitals serve, each are staffed with a medical provider, registered nurse, social worker, addiction counselor, peer counselor, community health worker, and registration clerk. The program provides primary care, wound care, mental health support, harm reduction services, and basic material necessities to unsheltered residents in New York City, while connecting patients with the health system’s larger continuum of care via PCSN clinics, specialty care, and other services.
The health system works with multiple partners in this effort, including the New York City Department of Homeless Services, as well as numerous community-based organizations and service providers. These partnerships drive the program’s ability to link patients to services and shelter, as SHOW and NYC Health + Hospitals work to support and strengthen the ecosystem of care for people experiencing unsheltered homelessness.
Since the program’s April 2021 launch, SHOW teams have had more than 233,000 engagements with community members and provided 21,000 medical consultations, 9,000 vaccinations, and 60,000 social work engagements. , as the program evolved its model, more than 1,000 unique patients established care with the SHOW teams, and the program connected nearly 200 individuals with PCSN clinics for ongoing care. All this work feeds into systemwide goals of improving chronic condition outcomes for patients experiencing homelessness, and ultimately, connecting patients into housing.
By aoguagha | Categories: | Comments Off on Project Outreach and Prevention (POP) on Youth Violence
The mission of Project Outreach and Prevention (POP) on Youth Violence is to prevent and alleviate youth violence, while inspiring healthy lifestyles, positive behaviors, and accessible career opportunities. The program provides outreach services, educational seminars, as well as college and career readiness opportunities for local youth. Through partnership with community organizations, POP creates a safe, fulfilling and academically enriching environment for teens at risk.
POP is rooted in four pillars: public health awareness, violence prevention, health professions enrichment, and intervention. The organization partners with Methodist’s outreach program, the Methodist ED/trauma department, Vituity ER Group, local law enforcement in four different districts, and other local partners to educate local teens on gun safety, provide mental health resources, offer career guidance, and more.
POP interacts with local teens in five local schools and provides crisis intervention business cards to all youth seen in the emergency department at Methodist Hospitals. The cards list conflict resolution principles and include the website for Students Against Violence Everywhere, a youth-led violence prevention initiative, as well as a crisis QR code with resources on mental health, violence prevention, and bullying. For more information visit https://poponviolence.org/
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Mobile Medicine Program
Atrium Health launched two Mobile Medicine programs to improve access to care for their patient populations. Three Care Everywhere primary care units, along with Drive to Thrive, a mobile OB-GYN unit, aim to increase access to care by tackling transportation challenges, language barriers, and lack of insurance. Specifically, Care Everywhere brings clinical care to areas where traditional clinics may not be convenient or accessible, provides resources that help meet acute social needs, and connects patients to a primary care medical home. Drive to Thrive works to decrease unintended pregnancies via increased access to education and contraception and to connect patients in underserved communities to prenatal care earlier in their pregnancies to improve overall health outcomes.
The Mobile Medicine units park at different locations each weekday based on patient need. Atrium Health strategically chose locations using a data-informed approach that paired internal patient data with publicly available U.S. census data to target communities with the greatest health needs and social risk factors. Care Everywhere unit services include short-term and long-lasting health concerns, and Drive to Thrive primarily focuses on obstetrics and education. Neither program requires appointments, enabling patients to visit at their convenience. Both programs offer additional wellness services, such as referrals to other Atrium Health facilities and connections to resources for non–health care needs.
The Care Everywhere units were primarily funded by The Tepper Foundation and Truist Foundation, among other community funders. The Drive to Thrive unit received funding from a retired OB-GYN and other community donors. Both units required collaboration with nonprofits, faith-based organizations, and other community organizations to understand patient needs fully.
As a vertically integrated health care system, Atrium Health maintains an extensive inpatient and outpatient database of electronic health records that enables in-depth analysis of health care utilization and health outcomes across the system’s footprint. The Care Everywhere units launched in fall 2022, and the Drive to Thrive unit launched in January 2023. The Mobile Medicine program is expected to serve more than 480 patients by the end of 2023. Key program outcomes include increasing the establishment of ongoing support through placement with a primary medical home and connecting patients to care and social needs support through screening, diagnosis, and referrals to specialty care.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Sustainability Program
University of California (UC) Davis Health recognizes the importance of creating a resilient and sustainable health care model that celebrates the intersection between human and climate health. The goal of UC Davis Health’s sustainability practices is to reduce the health system’s environmental footprint by identifying climate mitigation strategies that meet the needs of patients and employees while preserving the quality of care. Areas of focus include procurement, resource conservation, transportation, expanding outreach and education to increase participation in sustainability efforts, waste reduction, and accountability.
UC Davis Health’s sustainability efforts reach beyond the health system into the community. With a focus on clean energy, the health system is expanding its solar energy portfolio and reducing energy usage in the operating rooms by replacing lights with LED bulbs and implementing HVAC setbacks. Another focus is reducing water use through operational adjustments in the central plant and a turf watering reduction initiative that stopped irrigating non-functional turfs on campus. The health system also provides an emission-free bus service, Causeway Connection, that runs daily between the hospital’s main campus and Sacramento.
UC Davis Health has multiple partners, including the Sacramento Tree Foundation, which helps plan California drought tolerant landscaping throughout the health system’s campus. Other partnerships, such as Copia, a food recovery company, and California Safe Soil, a manufacturer that uses food scraps for high-quality fertilizer, help divert UC Davis Health’s food waste. A partnership with Stryker, a medical technologies corporation, has helped the health system reduce the number of single-use devices used in operating rooms.
UC Davis Health has seen invaluable outcomes from the sustainability strategies. Through HVAC setbacks in the operating rooms, the emissions saved thus far are equivalent to taking 63 cars off the road. Through operational adjustments in the system’s central plant, UC Davis Health saved three million gallons of water between 2020 and 2022.
https://sustainability.ucdavis.edu/goals
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Sustainability Program
The Ohio State University has been working on a sustainability program for decades. In 2015, formal goals were set to achieve carbon neutrality by 2050, and a number of other resource stewardship goals to achieve by 2025: increasing locally sourced food, increasing ecosystem services, reducing potable water consumption, reaching zero waste, increasing energy efficiency, and developing standards for preferred products. The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center developed a formal program around 2017, and then joined the Health Care Climate Council and the Health Care Climate Challenge in 2020 to support its sustainability goals.
The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is implementing multiple sustainability strategies through a small team of dedicated employees. The sustainability program encompasses all medical center facilities and integrates the university resource stewardship goals into all we do such as obtaining supplies, diverting waste, and tracking energy use with smart meters that can obtain real-time data on utility usage throughout the buildings. The medical center also prioritizes sustainability in the operating room by switching to a lower greenhouse gas emissions alternative anesthesia and incorporating low-flow strategies and diverting clinical plastics. The medical center has purchases a bedpan made of 90 percent recycled materials, integrated through their sustainable procurement guidelines.
The Ohio State University partners with ENGIE North America, a commercial electricity provider, and Axium, a manager of infrastructure assets to increase energy efficiency. In fiscal year 2022, all medical center-owned buildings decreased energy use intensity by 4.7 percent from fiscal year 2020 and approximately 29 percent of the electricity supplied to the medical center at main campus and off-site medical center locations was carbon neutral with renewable energy credits. OSU also has adapted the College of Medicine’s curriculum to include sustainability education.
Through green building efforts, The Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center is recycling 98 percent of the waste materials from an under-construction inpatient hospital. The smart meters installed in the buildings have helped the sustainability team identify reduction strategies, culminating in a 5 percent reduction from fiscal year 2020.The medical center has reduced desflurane in the operating room by 48 percent, resulting in nearly $300,000 in cost savings over three years.
By Amanda Jepson | Categories: | Comments Off on Healthy Harvest Mobile Market
The Community Health Strategies and Innovation team at University Health created the Healthy Harvest Mobile Market program to mitigate the number of community members residing in food deserts. The goal is to provide the community with healthy and fresh food, as well as nutrition education, healthy recipes, and infographics.
The mobile market goes to local ZIP codes that are considered food deserts to serve the community members in that area. The program works closely with community members to provide health education and high-quality produce.
The program collaborates with multiple community stakeholders, including faith-based organizations, schools, and community clinics. Through these partnerships, the Healthy Harvest Mobile Market ensures that community members understand the important relationship between diet and health.
The mobile market delivers fresh produce and nutrition education to many who otherwise would not have access. Specifically, during the COVID-19 pandemic, the market delivered enough food to nourish more than 100,000 people. Since 2021, the mobile market has served around 159,000 people.
