Remaking a community beset by issues of generational poverty and poor health outcomes is messy work. Success depends not upon finding a magic wand or moon shot solution, but rather upon a number of different people and organizations coming together around a common goal, and then collaborating on several different initiatives and efforts. Progress often can be uneven and torturously incremental.
And while not every community has the necessary mix of leadership and courage to even try to tackle their biggest, most bedeviling health issues, that is what “angel investor” Esther Dyson and her team at the Health Initiative Coordinating Council (HICCup), a national nonprofit, were looking for when they founded the Way to Wellville Challenge in 2014. And the Way to Wellville was the kind of challenge Spartanburg, South Carolina, and the Mary Black Foundation (MBF) were poised to jump on.
A twenty-year-old, private, health legacy foundation in Spartanburg (a city in the western part of the Palmetto State), the MBF has approximately $80 million in assets and focuses its work in two major areas: Healthy Eating & Active Living and Early Childhood Development. Rather than just responding to funding requests from local nonprofits, the foundation has become a proactive leader in the community.
In early 2014, the foundation learned of HICCup, founded by Dyson, an angel investor in health who has been recognized by Forbes as one of the ten most influential women in the world in technology. Following great success as an investor, Dyson has turned her attention to something so important to her—people’s health. “I was walking up to the podium to speak to a group regarding the X Prize, which is for technology, and I thought ‘someone should offer a prize for health,’” one of us heard Dyson say. “By the time I got to the podium, I realized that someone should be me.”
In April 2014, HICCup announced the Way to Wellville Challenge. Its team set out to select five communities around the country to participate in a five-year collaborative process to produce better health outcomes. The criteria were very clear: the team wanted communities that had a population of 100,000 or less, were already collaborative, and had had some successes.
This was not a grant or funding opportunity. However, there was a promise to support and connect these communities with various partners, opportunities—and, ultimately, investors—over the five years to help them move the needle on areas of greatest importance to the community’s health and economic well-being. The foundation took the lead and, along with a group of Spartanburg community leaders, applied.
After much vetting and a site visit, the five Way to Wellville communities were named in August 2014: Clatsop County, Oregon; Muskegon County, Michigan; Lake County, California; Niagara Falls, New York; and Spartanburg. The five-year challenge began January 1, 2015.
Each community chose different focus areas. Spartanburg chose Access to Care for the Uninsured, Health for the Insured, Obesity Prevention, Kindergarten Readiness, and Community Pride. As we gathered with the other four communities in Tampa in September 2014, we fully expected a “to-do” list that would guide us through the next five years. Dyson had formed a team of highly skilled people with different talents who would work with us throughout the challenge. Their response was “Oh, no. This is your community. You need to figure it out.”
In Spartanburg, a core team of six people representing the health care system, the University of South Carolina Upstate campus, the Mary Black Foundation, city government, and local business meets every Monday morning to move the agenda along. The core team formed five committees around Spartanburg’s five focus areas, and each committee has two cochairs who are community leaders and subject-matter experts.
While we have great momentum in Spartanburg and there are terrific initiatives and projects under way, we have challenged the committees to find innovative ways to move the needle faster. We were clear that risk is involved, and there is no expectation that all efforts will succeed. But we don’t have time for slow and steady plodding.
Some examples of our efforts include:
- Providing an app called CareMessage to a cohort of 200 patients at AccessHealth Spartanburg. This will provide text reminders to these uninsured patients regarding doctor’s appointments, self-care, and so forth. (Begun in 2010, AccessHealth Spartanburg, a groundbreaking initiative, “promises to open doors for thousands of people in need of quality and timely healthcare,” according to its website. “Designed to be a link between the uninsured and local health professionals, AccessHealth guides eligible clients to a network of physicians that have donated their time for the betterment of the community.” Also, “AccessHealth navigates clients to a healthier lifestyle by addressing social barriers they may face.”)
- Conducting a feasibility analysis to see if social impact financing is possible in our community to allow all of our children in the city limits who are ages birth to five to have access to high-quality early learning.
- Finding ways to provide access to healthy food and places to be physically active within a half-mile of city residents’ homes.
- Hiring a neighborhood engagement coordinator to work in our five most underserved neighborhoods in the city to seek out their leaders and encourage residents’ involvement.
- Finding ways to encourage those who are insured to take advantage of all of the benefits available to them (such as annual check-ups).
The funding we have needed to date has come from the foundation, the city, and Spartanburg Regional Healthcare System. This is another great example of true collaboration!
HICCup’s involvement has let people around the country get a good look at us. This past year we have met and/or talked with IBM, Colgate, and GlaxoSmithKline regarding possible partnerships. More such opportunities are coming, we believe. These are connections we may not have had a chance to make without HICCup.
While Spartanburg’s trajectory had been unquestionably positive in many areas for several years, the Way to Wellville provided us a great “aha moment.” It became very clear we cannot work in silos.
You can’t talk about education without talking about poverty and health.
You can’t talk about health unless you talk about poverty and education.
This is extremely complex work, and these issues are woven into all of our conversations now. We are keenly aware that we will need to continue to overcome many challenges to make an impact. But we are excited to be a part of Wellville and believe it will be a significant contributor to improving the health of our community.
from Health Affairs Blog http://ift.tt/1VE7nYR
No comments:
Post a Comment