By Hannah Lambalot | Categories: | Comments Off on Guiding Principles: Aligning Systems with Communities to Advance Equity through Shared Measurement.
By Hannah Lambalot | Categories: | Comments Off on Health Equity Report Card
By Jamie Cetrone | Categories: | Comments Off on Housing is Health
Central City Concern (CCC) responded to Portland’s crisis in housing and homelessness with the Housing is Health campaign, initiated by CCC’s executive director and health system CEOs. With a lead gift of $21.5 million by a pioneering collaboration of six local hospitals and health organizations—Adventist Health Portland, CareOregon, Kaiser Permanente Northwest, Legacy Health, Oregon Health & Science University and Providence Health & Services–Oregon—the Housing is Health initiative will bring homes, health, and healing into the Portland community where they are needed most.
The Housing is Health initiative is an unprecedented push to build 379 new homes designed specifically for individuals and families who are homeless or at risk of becoming homeless. These buildings are spread across three separate locations, one of which is anchored by a critically needed health care clinic. All locations will offer residents a variety of support services, including substance use disorder recovery support, mentoring, life skills training, and help re-entering the workforce.
Housing is Health enables health care systems to work together to address social determinants of health such as housing and employment. Central City Concern’s Recuperative Care Program (in the Blackburn Building) gives homeless people who are exiting hospital stays more time to get better in a safe environment. Employment specialists in the Housing is Heath collaborative help residents to enter/reenter the workforce.
All three Housing is Health buildings are under construction. Charlotte B. Rutherford Place (51 family-housing apartments) in North Portland and Hazel Heights (153 work-force apartments) in Southeast Portland will open summer 2018. The Blackburn Building (51 units of respite care housing, 124 units of transitional housing, as well as a primary care clinic and pharmacy) will open in 2019.
By Jamie Cetrone | Categories: | Comments Off on Violence Interrupters
In November 2016, the Northern Ohio Trauma System (NOTS) launched the “Violence Interrupters” program at MetroHealth Medical Center with a goal of curbing violence. This collaboration with the Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance and United Way places a person, the “violence interrupter,” in the hospital emergency department to work with patients who are victims of violence. The initial goal is to defuse reactions to conflicts and prevent retaliation. Victims, their friends, and their families are then advised about community resources providing alternatives to continued violence.
Violence interrupters are former gang members or reformed criminals trained to be mediators in their community. Mediators work from 7 p.m. to 3 a.m., Monday through Thursday, when admissions are highest for violent injuries. They guide and counsel victims (ages 15 to 25) and their families. Cleveland Peacemakers Alliance and United Way provided pilot funding.
Social workers within the hospital are key to the program, and externally, the Victims of Crime staff help coordinate additional support in the community for patients and families.
In January 2018, a research project will be launched to evaluate who is being reached, the level of engagement, and if attitudes and behaviors are changing.
As of the end of 2017, MetroHealth has worked with 90 patients, their families, and friends. The view is that immediate intervention is the reason none of these patients has been seen at MetroHealth Medical Center as a repeat gunshot wound victim.
By Jamie Cetrone | Categories: | Comments Off on Spartanburg’s Way to Wellville
In 2015, Spartanburg was one of five communities in the nation chosen to participate in the Way to Wellville; a challenge to develop new and innovative solutions that amplify and accelerate community health. Sponsored nationally by HICCup, Spartanburg’s Way to Wellville is working to improve health outcomes through five focus areas in the City of Spartanburg: obesity prevention; kindergarten readiness; access to care for the uninsured; health for the insured; and community pride.
A Core Team of cross-sector leaders serves as the key navigator for Spartanburg’s Way to Wellville. This leadership group monitors progress, supports committees in meeting their goals, and explores and evaluates other potential partnerships and related opportunities. Way to Wellville committees create goals and develop specific projects and programs for each of the five focus areas. The hospital and participating organizations leverage resources and equally share the expenses of the Coalition. Although the Way to Wellville focuses on all residents in the City of Spartanburg, particular emphasis is placed on the vulnerable and the very young.
Hospital leadership sit on the core team and look for multiple ways to include the health system in the work. Programs working to find access for the uninsured, a small business wellness cooperative, home visitation programs for new moms…..all involve the health system in some way.
The Way to Wellville explores innovative and creative ways to address critical health issues in the City of Spartanburg. Examples include:
By Jamie Cetrone | Categories: | Comments Off on East Alabama Medical Center
By Jamie Cetrone | Categories: | Comments Off on Worcester ACTs
The HOPE Coalition (Healthy Options for Prevention and Education), funded by UMass Memorial Medical Center, is launching a new initiative, Worcester Addresses Childhood Trauma (Worcester ACTs) for children who have witnessed violence. This program is a response to research conducted by the coalition’s director Laurie Ross, PhD in partnership with the Worcester Youth Violence Prevention Initiative (WYVPI).
For over a decade, the Worcester Police Department (WPD) has actively worked to reduce gang-related violence, and progress has been made in lowering the occurrence of violent incidents involving city youth. But young men of color — particularly Latinos — are still highly involved in serious incidents. In 2012, as the research partner with the Safe and Successful Youth Initiative (SSYI), a state program, Dr. Ross read case histories of young men who are a proven risk for gun or knife violence. Thirty percent had their first violent experience (as a victim or witness) before age 12, and 30 percent were parents, creating the potential for an ongoing cycle of violence. Analysis of WPD data encompassing 24,000 men (younger than 27) and 98,000 incidents showed that if they had been a victim or witness to violence before age 12, they were 49 percent more likely to have a violent incident later and participate in three more recorded incidents than those not involved with police at an early age.
Even more surprising was that if they had been a witness only, they were more likely to experience violence later in life than those who were victims only. While most social services support victims, Worcester ACTs will introduce timely trauma-informed family support for children under 10 and their families who have witnessed an incident. Within 72 hours of a call to the police, a culturally competent Community Health Worker (CHW) will help the family with emergent and longer term needs.
Worcester ACTs includes the below partners, who work together to address an identified gap in the connection of young children who have witnessed violence to needed social and mental health services:
All 400 WPD officers have already received training on how trauma affects a child’s brain development and hiring of CHWs is underway. The program launches in January, 2018.
By Jamie Cetrone | Categories: | Comments Off on Youth Mental Health Model
UMass Memorial Medical Center provides funding to support the coordinator role of the Healthy Options for Prevention and Education (HOPE) Coalition, a youth-adult partnership created to reduce youth violence and substance use, and promote adolescent mental health. HOPE addresses public health concerns affecting at-risk youth, including tobacco and alcohol use, violence, and access to mental health. Several programs initiated through this effort include; HOPE Peer Leaders, a program that works closely with the City of Worcester Health & Planning departments to change local policies that regulate outdoor signage of tobacco products; HOPE Mental Health model, provides on-site mental health services at youth-serving organizations; and Youth Worker Training Institute, a thirteen-week program that trains Youth Workers on protective factors in order to work better with adolescents.
HOPE peer leaders co-chair the Youth Substance Abuse Prevention Task Force with the Worcester Division of Public Health (WDPH). In fiscal year 2016, peer leaders focused on changing the city’s tobacco purchase policy and, by working with the WDPH, successfully raised the minimum age for tobacco purchases in the city to 21.
In 2016, the program served approximately 631 youth through one-on-one counseling, therapeutic groups and crisis intervention delivered by You, Inc. Since its launch, the model has served over 5,000 youth who otherwise would not have had access to mental health support.
By Jamie Cetrone | Categories: | Comments Off on Caught in the Crossfire
In 1993, Sherman Spears, a paraplegic former gunshot victim working at local CBO Youth ALIVE!, began visiting young gunshot wound (GSW) victims at the Oakland hospital where he had been treated. This became Caught in the Crossfire, the first hospital-based violence intervention program – now a national model.
The program serves youth and adult survivors of intentional injury (gunshot, stab wound, and physical assault) with immediate response upon hospital treatment in the golden moment when the patient is open to long-term support. Continuing post-discharge for 6-12 months, trained intervention specialists from the peer community of the patients will provide case management, mentoring, linkage to mental health and services, safety assessment/retaliation prevention, and other services in the field/community in order to prevent retaliation and reinjury and to promote physical, social, and emotional healing from trauma.
This program coordinates with hospital Administration, Social Services, and Trauma to access patient records, coordinate hospital access to visit patients, and to communicate about follow-up care. Community partners include Youth ALIVE!, Eden Medical Center, Children’s Hospital Oakland, Alameda County Emergency Medical Services, and the City of Oakland.
Program measures include positive outcomes such as attachment to mental health services, education/employment and housing, and reduction in negative outcomes such as arrests and injury recidivism. Without intervention, nationally, up to 44% of patients recidivate within 5 years. In the program, it is less than 3%.
By Jamie Cetrone | Categories: | Comments Off on Aqui Para Ti
Aqui Para Ti (APT) was created in 2002 to support Latino adolescents who are often raised in a different culture than that of their parents. APT became a certified Health Care Home in2010, and a certified Behavioral Health Home in 2016.
The program serves to consult and educate teens and families about topics such as health, relationships with family and friends, concerns with weight/height, mental health, abuse of drugs and/or alcohol, family planning, and sexual health. The program provides complete physical exams, pregnancy tests, treatment of common diseases, pregnancy care testing, and treatment for sexually transmitted infections (STIs).
This program works closely with the staff of the Family Medicine department and the Whittier Clinic where the program is located. The program is funded by the Eliminating Health Disparities Initiative of the Minnesota Department of Health. Aqui Para Ti is also closely affiliated with the Between Us Initiative, another Latino teen focused program that helps build communication between teens and their parents.
Aqui Para Ti currently has 300+ active patients with 70 new patients added each year.
