Drexel University's Stephen and Sandra Sheller 11th Street Family Health Services is one of eight organizations chosen to participate in Advancing Integrated Models, a multi-site demonstration promoting innovative, person-centered strategies to improve care for adults and children with complex health and social needs. Made possible with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and led by Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), AIM will assist health system and provider organizations in designing and piloting new approaches to integrate care for people with complex needs with a focus on improving health outcomes and fostering health equity.
"11th Street Health Center provides quality, comprehensive health services to the clients we serve. In addition to our direct services mission, 11th Street provides an exemplary model of nurse-led, community-based care and is a Sanctuary Model trauma-informed certified organization," said Roberta Waite, EdD, executive director of the Stephen and Sandra Sheller 11th St. Family Health Services and professor and associate dean of Community-Centered Health & Wellness and Academic Integration in Drexel University's College of Nursing and Health Professions. "Our motivation for engaging in promoting racial justice is central to 11th Street's strategic goals. We desire to create change that is not merely academic; this change will become rooted in the DNA of our organization."
This multi-site demonstration will accelerate opportunities to align best practice approaches in care delivery for children and adults with complex health and/or social needs, including: complex care management; trauma-informed care; physical and behavioral health integration; and mechanisms to address health-related social needs. While many organizations have implemented one or more of these strategies, few have adopted all and even fewer have effectively aligned these efforts internally or externally with community partners.
"There is enormous energy across the complex care field to implement various strategies to improve health and social service delivery for people with complex needs; however, these strategies are typically siloed in isolated programs," said Allison Hamblin, MSPH, president and chief executive officer at CHCS. "Advancing Integrated Models seeks to promote greater integration of these approaches and create sustainable partnerships and financing pathways to support this work."
Drexel's 11th Street Family Health Services was competitively selected to participate in the initiative, along with seven additional programs. Each pilot site offers clearly defined opportunities to build on existing pioneering care models and meaningfully involve consumers in improving care delivery. Sites will collaborate with Medicaid partners to identify supportive payment models for their planned approach. Additional programs are: Bread for the City, Washington D.C.; Center for the Urban Child and Healthy Family at Boston Medical Center, Boston, Massachusetts; Denver Health, Denver, Colorado; Hill Country Health and Wellness Center, Round Mountain and Redding, California; Johns Hopkins HealthCare, Baltimore, Maryland; Maimonides Medical Center, Brooklyn, New York; and OneCare Vermont, Vermont.
Through AIM, 11th Street Family Health Services Center will continue to adhere to the Sanctuary Model commitments of engagement and a trauma-informed lens with the goal of developing an antiracist culture to guide its strategies, practices, programs, policies, and collaborations. Varied initiatives will target staff, patients and community members and will be applied to all services which spans prevention and healing-based services and enable this project to help ensure positive steps towards realizing health equity for populations served. The proposed approach will advance health equity because all staff need to be aware of structural racism, how to recognize and address bias and promote race consciousness in clinical/patient education encounters and programming.
"These innovators in the field are truly at the cutting edge of person-centered care for adults and children with complex needs," said Susan Mende, MPH, senior program officer at the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. "AIM is providing an exciting opportunity to build on their efforts and support a vision for meaningful health system transformation to improve health outcomes."
Over two years, each site will receive tailored technical assistance and access to national subject matter experts and participate in a peer learning collaborative to accelerate solutions across sites. Throughout the initiative, CHCS will identity and share lessons and tools from the sites' experiences to help stakeholders across the nation increase the effectiveness of integrated care models. Look for more information at www.chcs.org.
About the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
For more than 45 years the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation has worked to improve health and health care. We are working alongside others to build a national Culture of Health that provides everyone in America a fair and just opportunity for health and well-being. For more information, visit www.rwjf.org.
About the Center for Health Care Strategies
The Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS) is a nonprofit policy center dedicated to improving the health of low-income Americans, especially for individuals with complex, high-cost needs. CHCS works with state and federal agencies, health plans, providers, and community-based organizations to advance innovative and cost-effective models for organizing, financing, and delivering health care services. For more information, visit www.chcs.org.