Health Systems & Public Health

504HealthNet created the Healthy Hospitality Initiative to increase access to care for hospitality workers in New Orleans. Clinics used this agreement to opt-in for the project, which also includes strengthening their capacity and infrastructure through quality improvement activities so that they can better serve hospitality workers and their families. This MOU serves the pupose of confirming clinic participation and outlines participant expectations.

The Michigan Health Improvement Alliance, Inc. (MiHIA) is a cross-sector collaboration working to improve population health, quality of care and patient experience, cost of care, and provider well-being in the 14-county region it serves. The strategic plan outlines the mission, vision, strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats, and strategic initiatives and priorities of MiHIA. This is an example of a shorter, yet detailed and highly effective strategic plan.

“There is mounting recognition that to truly improve health outcomes in the U.S. and curb chronic diseases there must be an interdisciplinary, coordinated, and cross-sector approach to address acute conditions and the upstream social factors that contribute to poor health outcomes.” The Public Health Leadership Forum (PHLF) and Health Care Transformation Task Force (HCTTF) developed a framework that “outlines essential elements of collaboration and presents key tactics and strategies for forming or reshaping effective partnerships.”

Brian Castrucci, CEO of the de Beaumont Foundation, and John Auerbach, President and CEO of Trust for America’s Health, discuss how “hospitals and health care systems have started to address [the] social determinants of health through initiatives that buy food, offer temporary housing, or cover transportation costs for high-risk patients. If this is what addressing the social determinants of health has come to mean, not only has the definition changed, but it has changed in ways that may impede efforts to address those conditions that impact the overall health of our country.”

“Local health departments (LHDs) and community health centers serve similar populations and play vital roles in their communities. Working together, they can better serve their communities as efficiently as possible through better coordination and an increased focus on wellness and prevention. This set of tools is designed to support collaborations between LHDs and community health centers CHCs to increase access to and quality of critical services for underserved populations.”

“The Practical Playbook is a stepping stone in the next transformation of health, in which primary care and public health groups collaborate to achieve population health improvement and reduced health care costs. Like a sports playbook, the Practical Playbook defines the role of each team member as well as actions for different situations. Throughout each stage, the Practical Playbook provides helpful resources such as success stories from across the country, lessons-learned from existing partnerships, and further guidance from industry experts.”

This article by Scutchfield, Prybil, Kelly, and Mays presents their findings from a study of 12 successful partnerships, in order to “investigate characteristics of effective collaboration between hospitals, their parent systems, and the public health community.” They share the lessons learned from site visits and interviews with key partnership participants involved in each of the 12 partnerships.

“[LIIF] developed the Social Impact Calculator, a new tool that allows you to put a dollar value on the benefits of things like an affordable home, a great school or access to transit—as well as calculate a rate of social return.”

“The Health & Housing Starter Kit is designed to help local institutions take their first steps toward creating bold and innovative health and housing initiatives. The Building Blocks cover a range of issues that local institutions will likely wade through as they start their efforts, and are drawn from themes we pulled from nearly 2 years of field research and interviews with staff at each of our case study sites. These include leadership, financing, how to develop an orientation toward health equity, forming partnerships with communities and other institutions, scaling your work to address population outcomes, developing indicators to understand and evaluate your efforts, and crafting messages to build support.”

“Housing and health systems need to work together. Public housing authorities (PHAs) are significant providers of housing to those in need, offering the health sector scale and expertise. Little was known about how PHAs worked with the health sector writ large. With a national survey, we found that PHAs across the country are engaged in a wide range of partnerships with different health organizations that address various target populations and health priorities. Barriers to housing-health collaboration, such as funding and staffing capacity, can be overcome with cross-system partnerships that seek to address these needs.”