Measure to also address the shortage of healthcare workers in the state

FRANKFORT, Ky. (WTVQ/PRESS RELEASE) — Rep. Kim Moser’s proposal to increase access to care and address the shortage of healthcare workers in Kentucky passed the Senate Health Committee on Wednesday. and well-being. According to the Legislative Research Commission (LRC), the measure, HB 525, streamlines the certification process for community health workers, who are frontline healthcare professionals helping medically underserved communities overcome barriers to care.

According to the LRC, community health workers have a unique close relationship and understanding of the area they serve and generally provide services through local clinics of all types. These health workers are trained to help meet people where they are and focus on connecting communities with available health and social services, whether through education, support or simply navigation. in the health care system. HB 525 would make these services a reimbursable Medicaid service.

“Despite advances in modern medicine and Medicaid providing health care coverage to more than a third of the state’s population, Kentucky has seen no significant improvement in health outcomes,” Moser says. , chairman of the House Health and Family Services Committee. “The state continues to rank among the worst in the nation for the majority of health indicators, including chronic conditions and comorbidities. We need to focus our Medicaid dollars and target the programs that work. By expanding certified CHWs, we will improve health outcomes in Kentucky and realize long-term savings in Medicaid expenditures.

“Most people know how difficult it can be to navigate health services and the medical system, and it shouldn’t be that way,” Moser continued. “Our goal is to bridge the gap between health disparities, which starts with meeting people where they are with someone they know and trust. Because of their familiarity and of the nature of their area and their resources, they often create a more comfortable environment for those otherwise reluctant to seek treatment.

According to the LRC, Moser and community leaders representing the underserved emphasize that having health insurance does not always mean access to preventive care and ongoing services. These hurdles, along with finding the right outlet for engagement, underscore what many see as the Commonwealth’s most pressing health issue.

“Our state currently ranks near the bottom nationally in many health metrics, including diabetes, cancer and heart disease,” said Moser, a longtime advocate for better health. Population. “That’s why this program is essential to our public health system. Small steps like getting your annual exams or screenings can identify illnesses earlier when treatment is much more effective and less expensive. Community health workers are extremely successful in helping people understand the importance of maintaining their health.

The measure would directly affect about 70% of the state’s population, according to the LRC. Community health workers have long been recognized for their effectiveness in improving health outcomes and reducing medical costs.

According to the state’s Rural Health Information Center, for every dollar invested, $11 in drugs and services provided in Eastern Kentucky between 2001 and 2019. According to the LRC, HB 525 will also create a classification system for community health workers and a certification process. with college credit through the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. This is in line with the Maison’s commitment to strengthening the talent pool in the field of healthcare.

HB 525 moves to the Senate for consideration.

A year after Mass Gen. Brigham pulled out of an attempted takeover of Exeter Health Resources, the New Hampshire health system has a new suitor in Massachusetts: Beth Israel Lahey Health.

BILH announced on Tuesday that it had signed a letter of intent to acquire the system, which includes Exeter Hospital, Base Physicians and Rockingham Visiting Nurse Association & Hospice. The parties expect to sign a definitive agreement within the next 90 days, which would kick off federal and New Hampshire regulatory approval.

“The combination of the fact that New Hampshire residents were already regular commuters to [Massachusetts]including to our facilities for both routine and complex care, and the fact that we think New Hampshire is an important place for us locally to be able to provide care, just meant that it was something that made absolute sense for both parties,” said Kevin Tabb, president and CEO of Beth Israel Lahey Health.

The deal will bring 2,400 New Hampshire Hospital, Physician Network and VNA employees into the 36,000-employee BILH system, adding one hospital to BILH’s 12 and increasing the company’s footprint for the first time. BILH out of state.

Exeter officials said the integration into a wider system was intended to strengthen the organization for the future.

“The opportunity to be part of BILH’s integrated healthcare delivery system provides Exeter with access to critical resources that will underpin healthcare delivery in the future,” said Kevin Callahan, President and CEO. from the management of Exeter Health Resources, Inc. The determining factors in the selection of BILH by our Board of Directors were its demonstrated commitment not only to maintaining local care within the community, but also to investing deeply in the advancement of this care.

Governance of the New Hampshire system is still under discussion, although Tabb said Exeter’s leadership would not change as part of the deal.

While BILH’s academic medical centers are likely to gain referrals through expansion, Tabb said the goal of the acquisition was to strengthen care in New Hampshire. Immediately, that will mean installing a new electronic medical records system in Exeter, bringing specialty care to the New Hampshire market, and boosting recruitment of primary care physicians in the state. Ultimately, the system may seek to expand outpatient sites or other locations in New Hampshire.

Beth Israel Lahey Health was created in 2019 through the merger of five health systems. The organization added Joslin Diabetes Center specialty hospital in 2021. Despite its size, the system remains a lower-cost provider in Massachusetts, in part because Massachusetts regulators instituted price caps for seven years.

Since Exeter is outside of Massachusetts, it would not be subject to the same price cap limit, although Tabb noted that a conversation about expenses and costs would take place with the New Hampshire attorney general. during the State’s review of the transaction.

MGB had attempted to acquire Exeter in 2018, seeking to combine the Exeter-based system with Wentworth-Douglass, a Dover-based hospital that Mass General Brigham had acquired the previous year.

The deal faced regulatory backlash, and in 2019 the Granite State Attorney General’s Consumer Protection and Antitrust Office issued a notice of intent to halt the transaction due antitrust issues. Mass General Brigham eventually backed out of the deal in January 2021.

BILH picks up where MGB left off. Tabb said Exeter was looking for a partner and approached BILH as part of a year-long competitive assessment of various health systems in the state and region.

Although Exeter suffered an operating loss of $20.6 million in financial year 2020, the most recent year available, the system reported black trading from at least 2016 to 2019 Tabb said the acquisition plans were not due to financial peril, but because Exeter saw the benefits of being part of a system, particularly during the pandemic.

“Everything from the ability to respond with agility to increased patient numbers, the need to move resources, people and equipment and other things meant that hospitals that were part of a system were just better able to weather the storm,” Tabb said. . “My feeling is that before the pandemic they thought (joining a system) was important, but it’s really been reinforced during the pandemic.”

This is the second time this year that BILH aims to expand its market. In January, BILH announced it would partner with Cape Cod Health, bringing more doctors from Boston and Burlington to the Cape and expanding the brand of the largest hospital further south.

While other systems such as Mass General Brigham have sought to expand into several states surrounding Massachusetts, Tabb said the expansion into New Hampshire was not a sign of bigger ambitions for growth outside of it. State.

“There’s no grand plan bigger just to get big for fun,” Tabb said. “We will continue to assess opportunities as they arise. But I don’t think it signals a significant shift in our strategic approach.

Jessica Bartlett can be contacted at [email protected]. Follow her on Twitter @ByJessBartlett.

The institute’s press officer said that employees had received a letter last week from the general secretary of the social ministry, Maarjo Mändmaa, telling them that the tasks of the organization would be divided among other agencies.

Mändmaa told news portal Delfi that the plan is indeed to hand over TAI’s tasks and people to other parts of the ministry.

The closure of TAI is part of a wider reform of the social ministry which also aims to merge the National Medicines Agency and the Health Council.

Mändmaa, who is responsible for the proper execution of the reform, said the aim is to make state systems more efficient.

“For example, today we have the Board of Health, the TAI, the Health Insurance Fund and the Labor Inspectorate who are all in charge of prevention efforts. in one place,” he said.

Another problem is that the fragmented agencies currently don’t have enough money to carry out plans, Mändmaa suggested.

He said the ministry wanted to map all the work done at the institute by the end of April to understand where different tasks could be moved.

The proposal to reorganize TAI’s work and merge the Health Council with the National Medicines Agency is expected to land on the Riigikogu’s agenda before the summer recess.

The ministry hopes to complete the reform early next year.

Critical Director of Ministry Plan

The director of the National Institute for Health Development (TAI), Annika Veimer, criticized the decision to close the institute, saying that it is not based on any kind of analysis and that the work continued by TAI is required.

“The only content analysis that we know of is from 2016. Its conclusion was that it makes sense to keep TAI in its recent form and that the agency does its job.

“The director of the Unemployment Insurance Fund, Rain Laane, has embarked on the ambitious plan to be responsible for health promotion in Estonia. This leaves the fund with the choice of whether or not to fulfill its main task of improving the availability of medical care and improving the efficiency of the health system, or organizing prevention with the help of health insurance funds,” said Veimer.

“We do not approve of the moving of coins [of the healthcare system] around based on trial and error in hopes it yields something good. If the desire is to improve and streamline things, the steps should be carefully considered and discussed with those involved,” she added.

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Rep. Kim Moser’s proposal to increase access to care and address the shortage of health care workers in Kentucky passed this week on the 94th floor of the House and has been sent to the Senate.

The measure, HB 525, streamlines the certification process for community health workers, who are frontline healthcare professionals helping medically underserved communities overcome barriers to care.

Community health workers have a unique close relationship and understanding of the area they serve and typically provide services through local clinics of all types. These health workers are trained to help meet people where they are and focus on connecting communities with available health and social services, whether through education, support or simply navigation. in the health care system. HB 525 would make these services a reimbursable Medicaid service.

“Despite advances in modern medicine and Medicaid providing health care coverage to more than a third of the state’s population, Kentucky has seen no significant improvement in health outcomes,” Moser says. , chairman of the House Health and Family Services Committee. “The state continues to rank among the worst in the nation for the majority of health indicators, including chronic conditions and comorbidities. We need to focus our Medicaid dollars and target the programs that work. By expanding certified CHWs, we will improve health outcomes in Kentucky and realize long-term savings in Medicaid expenditures.

“Most people know how difficult it can be to navigate health services and the medical system, and it shouldn’t be that way. Our goal is to close the gap between health disparities, which starts with meeting people where they are with someone they know and trust. Due to their familiarity and the nature of their region and resources, they often create a more comfortable environment for those otherwise reluctant to seek treatment.

Moser and community leaders representing the underserved point out that having health insurance does not always equate to access to preventive care and ongoing services. These hurdles, along with finding the right outlet for engagement, underscore what many see as the Commonwealth’s most pressing health issue.

“Our state currently ranks near the bottom nationally in many health metrics, including diabetes, cancer and heart disease,” said Moser, a longtime advocate for better health. Population. “That’s why this program is essential to our public health system. Small steps like getting your annual exams or screenings can identify illnesses earlier when treatment is much more effective and less expensive. Community health workers are extremely successful in helping people understand the importance of maintaining their health.

The proposed measure would directly impact approximately 70% of the state’s population. Community health workers have long been recognized for their effectiveness in improving health outcomes and reducing medical costs. According to the state’s Rural Health Information Center, for every dollar invested, the Medicaid program saved $11 in drugs and services provided in eastern Kentucky between 2001 and 2019.

HB 525 will also create a classification system for community health workers as well as a certification process with college credit through the Kentucky Community and Technical College System. This is in line with the Maison’s commitment to strengthening the talent pool in the field of healthcare.

BJC HealthCare, the hospital system that operates Barnes-Jewish Hospital and more than a dozen others in the St. Louis area, unveiled a strategic plan on Wednesday aimed at reducing health disparities among local residents. richer and poorer in the city, especially the gap in health outcomes for blacks and whites.

BJC staff will work with organizations in the parts of St. Louis and northern St. Louis County most affected by health inequities to help people buy homes and start businesses. They will also work to provide access to healthy food, reduce infant and maternal mortality, and make schools healthier.

“I don’t want this announcement to be congratulations,” said Jason Purnell, BJC’s Vice President of Community Improvement. “We are here and we want to work with the community to achieve better results in real life.”

As one of the region’s largest healthcare providers, BJC has a responsibility to help its most vulnerable residents, he said.

Purnell is one of the authors of “For the Sake of All,” a 2014 report that outlined the severe health inequities between white and black residents in the area. The report found an 18-year difference in life expectancy between residents of northern St. Louis and those in the city’s wealthy western suburbs.

The report describes how social, geographic and economic circumstances can directly affect people’s health or illness. The strategic plan is one way to address those disparities, Purnell said.

“We know that these social and economic factors are closely linked to health outcomes,” he said. “You have to address these upstream cause health issues.”

BJC will work with school districts, food banks and financial institutions to create plans to improve the health of residents and determine how to measure their success.

New health system plans include increasing the number of doulas in clinical settings to improve black maternal health, increasing the availability of psychiatrists, counselors and social workers in schools, and increasing community participation in the production and distribution of safe food.

BJC will develop and support programs with local organizations and can also provide funding. Most of the beneficiaries will be patients at BJC Christian Hospital in northern St. Louis County, a spokeswoman said.

Some partnerships come with purse strings. For example, the health system gives local banks money to distribute in the form of business and housing loans.

Improving the financial health of communities makes sense, said Alex Fennoy, vice president of business services for the St. Louis Community Credit Union, which is part of the partnership. Many people forgo medical services to pay rent or other expenses instead.

“It’s outside the traditional box for a large healthcare organization,” he said. “But if you peel the onion a bit, it becomes much lighter.”

Five businesses, including a pest removal business and a funeral home, have already received a combined loan of $2.8 million under the program with BJC.

“One of the biggest drivers of health outcomes is the lack of financial resources,” he said. “If you don’t get funding, if you don’t have paying jobs, if you don’t have transportation, all of those things are much more difficult. You’re fighting the cycle of survival.”

BJC is also committed to hiring and promoting more black people who live in St. Louis and northern St. Louis County in its own hospitals.

But the arrangements aren’t just financial, Purnell said.

“We could have done it behind closed doors with just BJC staff, but we think we have to be intentional to make it an inclusive process and understand that we can’t improve community health without the community,” he said. he declares.

BJC officials developed the plans with the help of focus groups made up of community leaders and health workers who work in the targeted neighborhoods.

Support from a large organization like BJC can boost awareness for smaller organizations, said Jocelyn Fundoukos, director of communications for Operation Food Search, an Overland-based nonprofit that distributes free food and personal care items to local families and provides nutrition education.

The health system and food service organization worked together to provide healthy meals for people with diabetes at Christian Hospital.

“There is a real opportunity to work with a great organization like BJC,” Fundoukos said. “I think this is a great opportunity to add some kind of weight to this concept of food as medicine.”

BJC will also work with My Blooming Health Lab and the North Sarah Food Hub. The plan also calls on hospital officials to lobby state and federal lawmakers to reform SNAP qualifying requirements and use Medicaid funding to pay for doulas and school-based health services.

Follow Sarah on Twitter: @Petit_Smudge

The Dallas-Fort Worth Area Health System has used the pandemic to increase supply chain transparency and add technologies to increase the diversity of its supplier pool.

Shaun Clinton is one of the few supply chain leaders who can admit he didn’t run out of personal protective equipment during the early days of COVID-19. Texas Health Resources staff were able to continue using new PPE, while maintaining clinical protocol. Once the supply chain team determined that there was enough product available and in the pipeline chain, they wanted to be transparent about what was available and usage statistics, explains clintonSenior Vice President of Supply Chain Management for the Dallas-Fort Worth Region Health System.

“I’m a big proponent of shortening supply chains for critical items,” he says, which came in handy during the early months of the pandemic. Texas Health already had a partnership with Prestige PPE manufacturer Ameritech, located outside of Fort Worth. The health system was getting them 100% of their N95 respirators when the pandemic hit, along with a good chunk of their isolation gowns. In January 2020, Clinton sat down with the company and said “we know this is probably the biggest one we’ve been talking about in a long time. What’s it going to take me to gain control of the supply chain on some critical PPE and continue our partnership with you?”

Getting enough PPE was important to Clinton, who is responsible for all centralized purchasing for Texas Health, a system with 25 acute hospitals and about 30 outpatient surgery centers, 15 imaging centers, 18 urgent care facilities and 250 medical practices.

Clinton didn’t want to be beholden to long supply chains, one of the reasons for the Prestige Ameritech partnership. It was not a protectionist program, he said, “It’s just a practical reality. The shorter the supply line, the easier it is for me to manage it.” In May, Texas Health was among 15 health systems, plus Premier, to take a minority stake in Prestige Ameritech, committing to purchase a portion of the ventilators for the next six years. Early in the pandemic, Clinton supplemented orders for N95s with purchases from other companies, as well as isolation gowns from another nearby source.

Create transparency with a dashboard

The pandemic accelerated Clinton’s goal of making Texas Health’s supply chain more transparent. Supply chain transparency is difficult for several reasons. First, it is difficult to explain to people what the supply chain is. “I live in an esoteric world. I can’t even explain to my parents what I do for a living,” he says. Until COVID, supply chains were taken for granted. “Nobody really dives deep into supply chain unless you’ve made it your career.” This means that supply chain staff need to explain what it is, so people can understand why it is impacting the healthcare system.

The second reason transparency is difficult is that the supply chain is opaque. It is difficult to know where an end product is made, let alone go back to know the source of all the components that make up the end product. “People are looking to the Far East to be economically viable in the supply chain,” he says. When products are made far away, it is more difficult to be transparent.

To show the healthcare system what essential supplies they had on hand, what they burned daily, and how many days they had on hand, Clinton’s team developed a dashboard. They’ve since expanded the list of included items, showing available days and availability of those items to 30, 60, and 90 days, and sometimes beyond. “We’re in the middle of a tough 18-24 month period due to external factors impacting the global supply chain,” he says, “so we have to be very transparent there.”

The dashboard, created by its staff and updated automatically, is consulted by many teams, from senior management to materials management, who make decisions based on the dashboard. At first, some staff thought the health system needed 200 days of inventory. Translating this into storage needs, people realized that there was no 10-story building available to store everything. “Part of transparency is saying, ‘Here’s what you need, and how much is it, and can you store this on site?’ Or, ‘If you want more, you’ll have to find a place to put it,'” he says.

Some supply chain staff may fear transparency, while others may question decision-making and performance. But “being opaque causes more angst than being transparent,” says Clinton.

Increase diversity

Technology has also helped Clinton pursue her goals of increasing supplier diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) efforts. Although DEI has always been important to Texas Health, he says, over the past 18 months they realized they could do more. He sees DEI as a top priority, “making sure what we do with vendors represents our community as a whole.” It’s not just about providing excellent health care, but also about creating fair and equitable opportunities for all members of the communities they serve, he says.

In the past, Clinton and other Texas Health supply chain professionals struggled to find more diverse suppliers. “I just didn’t know who you were and what company you were in,” he says, leading staffers to ask vendors they knew to provide paper tenders. They created a flowchart of their procurement process and realized that suppliers didn’t know how it worked. They codified it and started using an online auction tool, allowing them to reach a wider audience. “Now we don’t just deal with people we know,” he says. They also created a diversity dashboard to track goals by month and by category, instead of just using Excel.

Texas Health has found its biggest opportunity to increase diversified spending so far in purchased services, such as using window cleaning companies or pool cleaning companies for their fitness facilities. They also favor the use of various subcontractors in construction projects.

Data and supply chain trends

Clinton finds the data useful for benchmarking. There are plenty of opportunities, he says, to benchmark against other health systems, but standardizing the data is difficult. “I can look at my peers and see how they’re doing. But if they’re all shit and I’m just the best shit,” that doesn’t help Texas Health, he says. However, there are many opportunities for comparison between Texas Health entities, to see if they are using the right amount of supplies based on the census, for example. “I have to meet Texas Health goals. That’s why I look through our system, make sure we’re always improving.”

Macroeconomic trends in the global supply chain are a “total disaster,” he says, and that’s impacting Texas Health. He likens it to playing a game of whack-a-mole. “Every day is something different,” he says. He sees the future including artificial intelligence and machine learning to create faster demand signals, which will allow him to make the best supply decisions.

As the world emerges from the pandemic and enters an endemic phase, Clinton also sees a well-managed healthcare supply chain as a competitive advantage, just as it has happened in some other industries. As the supply chain normalizes, it should remain highly visible to senior management. “It will encourage everyone to become more transparent.”

CHICAGO — The collective trauma of seeing 13-year-old Adam Toledo shot dead in police body camera footage in March 2021 was not a new sensation for young black and brown men on the city’s West Side.

But this time, the researchers were watching. Researchers who knew exactly how they felt.

“That’s the lived experience that these young people are dealing with,” said Claudio Rivera, a pediatric psychologist at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital in Chicago and an assistant professor of psychiatry at Northwestern University.

The research — presented recently at Lurie Children’s in hopes of raising $20 million to foster youth-led strategies on community healing and mental health improvement in Chicago — was a collaborative effort between the hospital, Voices of Youth in Chicago Education and Communities United, Chicago’s survivor-led, intergenerational, racial justice organization.

The two-year study prompted the creation of Ujima, a cohort of black and brown men aged 21 and under, who based their work on the premise that, given their experiences, young men of color are best equipped to research their own community’s experience with mental health and make recommendations for effective change.

Trained in research ethics, Ujima researchers conducted surveys, interviews and focus groups with peers on mental health. Their report found:

• Two-thirds of respondents reported facing mental health issues.

• Trauma is often normalized for young men of color;

• One in four respondents said they “feel anxious, constantly worried or extremely nervous” four or more days a week;

• The main systemic factors related to mental health are schools, jobs, racism and poverty.

• Young men of color feel that they are viewed by society through the lens of race and gender and related stereotypes, rather than seen as individuals with contributions to bring to the world around them.

Ujima, who takes her name from the Swahili word for collective work and responsibility, also made recommendations based on her research, which ranged from integrating more mental health professionals of color into the system; to transform abandoned buildings in Chicago into community centers where young people can participate in art, music and classes on topics such as coping mechanisms, leadership development and de-escalation tactics.

The data in the report will inform the holistic 10-year plan the grassroots organization and medical institution is developing with the help of a $1 million planning grant in 2021 from the Foundation’s 2030 Racial Equity Challenge. WK Kellogg.

If Chicago wins the next phase of the challenge, the plan could receive up to $20 million to complete. The awards, to be announced this summer, are to be used to develop and scale concrete ideas for transformative change in the systems and institutions that maintain racial inequality.

The study proved eye-opening, even for Ujima members whose life experiences mirrored those of their subjects.

Alexander Villegas, 20, an Albany Park resident and founder of Ujima, said he was surprised young men of color were uncomfortable seeing a counselor or therapist because they feared their story was unsure or thought the professional was only talking to them for the paycheck.

Jermal Ray, 17, another Ujima scholar and a senior at Curie Metropolitan High School, agreed.

“I’ve learned that young men of color don’t see counselors or receive mental health support for fear of being sent to a psychotic facility or that they won’t be taken seriously,” said Ray. “I got involved in this project because I know people who have gone through mental health issues, and it’s hard not being able to help them.”

Participants said they believe society sees them only through a lens of race and gender – and the stereotypes that go with it – rather than as people in their own right.

“When it comes to men of color, we’re sort of eliminating mental health,” said one participant. “When we admit that we have problems like PTSD, people will deny it. They say to us, ‘How is this possible?’ and that there is nothing wrong, so they are not helping us. But if a white person said they had it, they would treat them right away.

The study benefited from the experiences of its younger researchers, said Rivera, co-principal investigator of the Kellogg proposal.

“The demand has been there because they recognize what the need has always been,” he said. “It only further reinforces what has been the clarion call: ‘We want this. We needed this. We want better now. And we know the best. These recommendations are long overdue, but they are also within reach.

The details of the report are startling and show the benefit of giving voice to young men at the center of the research, said Dr. John Walkup, chair of Lurie’s Department of Child Psychiatry and principal investigator of the Kellogg proposal.

“Lurie Children’s has always been about young people…but we haven’t always listened to the kids in the community,” Walkup said. “I think we’ve become more aware of the voices of young people in the city of Chicago, not just about cancer and heart disease and things like that, but about racial injustice, about discrimination, and about public schools in Chicago and the mental health system, and access.

“We are creating a new dialogue, and it will continue,” he added. “We are listening and listening hard now. Even when we don’t like what they have to say, because they’re pressuring us to be better in a way we need to be better, we can deal with that.

Rivera, who has been involved in research and wellness checks through her work at Lurie Children’s, recalls the feelings shared by young people after Toledo, who was like them, from communities like theirs, was killed by a Chicago police officer almost a year ago. . The video was another thing young people were dealing with at the time, including their personal traumas and the mental shock of the pandemic.

But the research created a safe space where participants knew they could share openly and would have support.

It was having “that feeling of letting them know that this was a safe, private space to be vulnerable that this stuff emerged,” Rivera said.

Villegas and Ray want to see mental health professionals who live in or come from the neighborhoods they serve. In this way, they understand the stressors of the environment when working with young people in these communities.

As he did the research, Ray said he became more open-minded towards other young men facing different challenges.

“The research wasn’t just to learn about our situations, but how it connects to other boys of color and leads them to help themselves,” Ray said. “It gives me confidence to show myself.”

Both want change, and if Kellogg’s proposal doesn’t win, Villegas said Ujima will continue to push to raise awareness for mental health resources in black and brown neighborhoods because “the job is never done.” .

And I hope partner organizations and others in the city will continue to answer their call for change.

“I think it’s throwing down the gauntlet to a place like Lurie and others to say ‘Do you all want to listen to us?’ Rivera said, “The immediate follow-up will help demonstrate that young people in these communities are centered and validated in what they say. And that they are in fact seen as partners.”

One of the tenets of UVA Health’s mission is community and health equity. The health and well-being of members of his community, especially those who face social determinants of health, can be improved through community-based care.

With that in mind, UVA Health and its partners launched WellAWARE, a program that provides community health services to targeted neighborhoods in Central Virginia.

The UVA Health Data Science team identified and prioritized neighborhoods in need through geospatial analysis, which integrated SDOH proxies with medical record data and provided operational support to the program.

By reducing barriers to healthy living and connecting people to primary care, one of WellAWARE’s goals is to increase utilization of primary care services to reduce emergency room visits and hospitalizations for low acuity patients. .

Christian Wernz, Senior Data Scientist, UVA Health System, who will be discussing how to improve community outcomes using geospatial analytics at HIMSS22, explained that UVA Health Community Health Worker-based programs are pilot projects at this stage.

“We track outcomes, but the data is insufficient to assess program effectiveness,” he said. “The preliminary work we’ve done is to understand the needs of the community and focus initial program resources on the most vulnerable neighborhoods.”

He noted that information from medical records can be used at the population level to understand chronic disease prevalence and health needs.

Aggregating this data allows community health officials to gauge the level of need within a community.

“These leaders are always faced with the problem of where to focus limited resources,” Wernz said. “Having an accurate picture of health issues and needs plays a huge role in crafting the best solution for communities.”

Although health systems play a crucial role, they are not the complete solution to improving community health: collaboration with nonprofit organizations plays an important role in community health.

“We didn’t limit ourselves to medical data. In patient care, the social determinants of health play an important role in improving a patient’s health,” Wernz said. “Combining health data with the social and economic needs of the community creates an understanding that enables the collaboration of medical systems and nonprofit organizations to work together to improve the community. This is achieved by limited data sharing and interactive feedback between entities.

The UVA Health Data Science team created a system that geocodes addresses within their corporate data warehouse, allowing the team to aggregate information based on location.

This allows them to answer questions such as “how many of our patients in a given census area have diabetes?” Or which region has the highest prevalence of hypertension? And then, do these areas correspond and by how much?

“Because different neighborhoods require different types of interventions, i.e. rural versus urban, we use different measures from different regions to ensure valid and useful comparisons,” Wernz said.

Many of these data elements needed to characterize a region are available in information from the American Community Survey, which the AVU integrates and updates in its EDW.

“We can also add the Area Deprivation Index, which is hosted by the University of Wisconsin, as a component of our analysis,” he added. “This data is often used to adjust risk and improve analysis.”

Nathan Eddy is a health and tech freelancer based in Berlin.
Email the author: [email protected]
Twitter: @dropdeaded209