Roper St. Francis Healthcare’s Post

We're on the lookout for trailblazers ready to tackle anti-Black racism within our state's health care delivery system. We're thrilled to announce a new Request for Proposals (RFP) for quality improvement projects dedicated to dismantling systemic barriers and enhancing equitable medical care for Black Californians. 🌟 Grant Opportunity: Up to $150,000 for a two-year period. 🎯 Focus: Implementing and assessing impactful strategies in public or private health settings. ⏳ Deadline: January 31, 2024. CHCF encourages smaller grants that assess small tests of change or that lay essential groundwork for assessing equitable care. These efforts are often more likely to be adopted in regular operations. The goal is to fund a mix of smaller and larger efforts that can be integrated into regular operations. This is more than a grant – it's an opportunity to be at the forefront of meaningful change in our communities. Learn more. https://lnkd.in/gvUv_aTu #HealthEquity #RFP #QualityImprovement #AntiRacism #HealthCareInnovation

UCLA Health recently hosted the annual convening of the Healthcare Anchor Network (HAN), where more than 300 leaders from 55 health care centers across the United States joined together to strategize improvements to community health. Johnese Spisso, president of UCLA Health and CEO of the UCLA Hospital System, highlighted the importance of the conference during the CEO/Leadership plenary session, saying, "I think it gives us an opportunity to be a learning environment for how we can work together with our community to really start making some significant changes." Medell Briggs, MD, MPH, MSHS, chief of UCLA Health Equity, Diversity and Inclusion, co-led a session on mitigating racial and socioeconomic health inequities by investing in under-resourced communities, saying, “If we’re going to continue to promote greater health, especially within historically marginalized and divested communities, we knew we had to lean into those communities and try new community-partnered approaches to transform health and social well-being.” Read more: https://ucla.in/463bJCP

Did you catch the WKYC news segment featuring a community health worker (CHW), Fonda McLaine, and her client, Nadine Head, discussing "Addressing Cardiometabolic Health Inequities by Early Prevention in the Great Lakes Region" (ACHIEVE GreatER)? This research project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is a multi-stakeholder partnership among Better Health Partnership, Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals, Wayne State University and the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA), operating in both Cleveland and Detroit. The goal of ACHIEVE GreatER is to reduce cardiovascular complications and hospitalizations for Black patients living in public housing, and who are at risk of heart disease, by improving blood pressure, lipid, and glucose targets. The project, which seeks to determine the impact grassroots efforts can have to address cardiovascular health disparities, pays for community health workers, nurses and care coordinators to work with clients living in CMHA units and coordinate their care with clinical providers and other community resources. Better Health Partnership (BHP) is partnering with University Hospitals to offer a sustainable model for funding CHWs beyond the 5-year grant cycle via the Better Health Pathways HUB. Learn more: https://hubs.la/Q02p82PL0

In my work for Coastal Creatives, I've heard many stories of genuine life transformations that happened just from an initial moment of getting involved in a creative activity. This is real, it works, and it deserves support. But one huge note of caution: there's often a policy fantasy or even an imperative to deliver measurable change over a 3 month or 6 month or 1 year programme. What we've witnessed in our work as external project support or evaluation partners is that change is slow. Looking at a 5 year timeline gives a much more accurate idea of the impact of this kind of work. We need programmes, not short-term projects; and we need evaluation that is given its proper timeline and scope. When that happens, the value for money of these kinds of interventions becomes even more astounding.

Did you catch the WKYC news segment featuring a community health worker (CHW), Fonda McLaine, and her client, Nadine Head, discussing "Addressing Cardiometabolic Health Inequities by Early Prevention in the Great Lakes Region" (ACHIEVE GreatER)? This research project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is a multi-stakeholder partnership among Better Health Partnership, Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals, Wayne State University and the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA), operating in both Cleveland and Detroit. The goal of ACHIEVE GreatER is to reduce cardiovascular complications and hospitalizations for Black patients living in public housing, and who are at risk of heart disease, by improving blood pressure, lipid, and glucose targets. The project, which seeks to determine the impact grassroots efforts can have to address cardiovascular health disparities, pays for community health workers, nurses and care coordinators to work with clients living in CMHA units and coordinate their care with clinical providers and other community resources. Better Health Partnership (BHP) is partnering with University Hospitals to offer a sustainable model for funding CHWs beyond the 5-year grant cycle via the Better Health Pathways HUB. Learn more: https://hubs.la/Q02p82QQ0

Did you catch the WKYC news segment featuring a community health worker (CHW), Fonda McLaine, and her client, Nadine Head, discussing "Addressing Cardiometabolic Health Inequities by Early Prevention in the Great Lakes Region" (ACHIEVE GreatER)? This research project, funded by the National Institutes of Health, is a multi-stakeholder partnership among Better Health Partnership, Case Western Reserve University, University Hospitals, Wayne State University and the Cuyahoga Metropolitan Housing Authority (CMHA), operating in both Cleveland and Detroit. The goal of ACHIEVE GreatER is to reduce cardiovascular complications and hospitalizations for Black patients living in public housing, and who are at risk of heart disease, by improving blood pressure, lipid, and glucose targets. The project, which seeks to determine the impact grassroots efforts can have to address cardiovascular health disparities, pays for community health workers, nurses and care coordinators to work with clients living in CMHA units and coordinate their care with clinical providers and other community resources. Better Health Partnership (BHP) is partnering with University Hospitals to offer a sustainable model for funding CHWs beyond the 5-year grant cycle via the Better Health Pathways HUB. Learn more: https://hubs.la/Q02p82Sp0

Addressing community health in rural areas requires a comprehensive approach that goes beyond traditional clinical care, focusing on prevention, education, and collaboration with local stakeholders. Rural communities often face limited access to healthcare resources, transportation barriers, and socioeconomic disparities that impact overall health and wellbeing. Building strong relationships and trust within the community enables rural healthcare providers to better understand and respond to the unique needs of the population. Addressing community health in rural areas requires a comprehensive approach that goes beyond traditional clinical care, focusing on prevention, education, and collaboration with local stakeholders.

Last week, Black Men's Health Clinic (BMHC) was represented at the Black Men's Brain Health Conference in Las Vegas for Super Bowl Week, where BMHC board president, Dr. Larry Wallace Jr., Ph.D., spoke from an organizational perspective on community engagement. BMHC sat on a diverse panel called "Working with Community Partners" at the event. The panel was moderated by Lisa Barnes, Ph.D., of Rush University, and other panel participants were Harry Evans of Heal Black Men, José Melendrez, Executive Director of Community Partnerships of the University of North Las Vegas (UNLV) School of Public Health, and Jason Flatt, Ph.D., MPH from the Nevada Minority Health and Equity Coalition. Questions were addressed from the audience and there was notable dialogue amongst the panelists. BMHC Board President Wallace made several compelling statements, but there is one we would like to point out in this article. Dr. Larry Wallace Jr. said, "It is important that we make sure we don't go "cookie cutter" when we are working to engage the community. We need to think about our target audience, their comfortability, and understand the people we serve well enough to create pockets of safe spaces from one neighborhood to another." He went on further to express that fundamentally, we need to take the time to relate to the people we serve and show them we care. Simply because people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care. VIDEO: https://lnkd.in/g--dQUa8 Subscribe to our newsletter today: https://lnkd.in/g_GFfMYu #BMHC #BlackMensHealth #BrainHealthConference #SuperBowlWeek #CommunityEngagement #PublicHealth #LasVegasEvents #DrLarryWallaceJr #HealBlackMen #UNLV #NevadaMinorityHealth #SafeSpaces #HealthEquity #PanelDiscussion #DiversityInMedicine #HealthcareInnovation #CommunityPartners #MentalHealthAwareness #SocialDeterminantsOfHealth #HealthcareDialogue

We recently added a new company to our health portfolio with an investment in Zócalo Health. Zócalo is a digital healthcare platform that provides Latinos with culturally competent and community-oriented care. Nearly 1-in-5 Latinos are uninsured and 58% say they prefer a Spanish speaking doctor. Co-founders Erik Cardenas and Mariza H. started Zócalo to give the Latino community simpler access to healthcare. The start-up provides patients access to primary care, behavioral health, social services, care coordination, complex care management, and urgent care. The company uses community health workers to engage and build trust with Latino patients and help Medicaid payors—31.4% of Medicaid beneficiaries nationwide identify as Hispanic—better serve a large and underserved demographic. At Acumen America, we are always looking for companies with a specific focus on impact. Zócalo’s vision aligns with our goals to increase access to healthcare for a growing and historically marginalized population by leveraging tech-enabled solutions with a community focus. Zócalo currently operates in Texas, California, and Washington and is looking to expand to more states. Learn more about Zócalo at: https://www.zocalo.health/ 

Thrilled to share this publication on a cross-enterprise collaboration at Humana, led by our #healthequity and #socialimpact team, in which we explored the feasibility of screening for health literacy (HL) and perceived healthcare discrimination (PHD) in new Medicare Advantage enrollees. Some key takeaways: 💡 Validated HL and PHD screening questions have different levels of feasibility. Administering the HL screen was more comfortable than PHD for both the interviewer and the patient. 💡 Nearly 20% of patients reported low/limited HL in the self-reported screening 💡Those who reported low/limited HL were more likely to be Black, receive Part D extra help, and report food insecurity and/or social isolation. 💡 Response rate for PHD was low. About 2% of patients reported PHD and 88% of those patients who did were Black Congrats to my co-authors and study team for this first of its kind effort in a health plan: Candy Magaña, Bereket Kindo, Jill Soderquist, Faith Obanua, MS, PMP, Fawwaz Haq, MD, MBA, Jordyn Newcome, MBA, Angela Stallings Hagan, PhD, Stephanie Franklin, MPS, Tamara Smith, Juan Troy, Joanna Bugbee and William Shrank! 💚💚 Check the full paper out in the February edition of the AJMC - The American Journal of Managed Care! https://lnkd.in/eyEyhMnt #healthliteracy #healthcarediscrimination #healthequity