2005 Educational Audio Conferences
The Association for Community Health Improvement offers educational audio conferences to members and non-members throughout the year. These sessions address a range of topics, including: population health improvement, access to care, collaborative service strategies, planning and outcomes measurement, and more.
Dates: January 20; February 17; March 17; April 21; May 5 (Cover the Uninsured Week special); May 19; June 16; September 15; October 27; November 10
(See descriptions of ACHI's 2004 audio conferences.)
November 10, 2005
Remaking American Medicine: A New PBS Series and its National Campaign for Local Change
| Barbara Lohman, Sr. Vice President Lee Allen, Project Director Devillier Communications Washington, DC |
Are you looking for a way to further mobilize efforts to improve the quality of health care within your community? If so, this ACHI audio conference should be a great opportunity to learn about a planned, four-part PBS television series entitled Remaking American Medicine...Health Care for the 21st Century, produced by Crosskeys Media.
A national outreach campaign on Remaking American Medicine is underway, focused on helping local community health organizations come together to leverage the series to foster dialogue and collaboration on key local health quality issues. The presenters will share tools and resources, and describe how you can get involved in local coalition efforts in over 30 sites across the country - or how to start your own coalition building effort in your community.
Patient- and family-centered care is one of the overarching themes of the Remaking American Medicine series, which will highlight the efforts of providers and patients to improve acute and chronic disease management, provide safe and effective medical treatment, and reduce medical errors. The series and the outreach campaign will promote best-practice models, raise public awareness about opportunities for improving quality, and encourage Americans to become their own health care advocates.
October 27, 2005
Project Dulce: Culturally Competent and Financially Sustainable Diabetes Care in Uninsured Populations
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Chris Walker, MPH, Project Director Whittier Institute for Diabetes, Scripps Health San Diego, CA |
Project Dulce has been improving diabetes care and health status among diverse uninsured populations - in an economically sustainable fashion - since 1997. Join us as project director Chris Walker, MPH of Scripps Health’s Whittier Institute for Diabetes shares program details and tangible results of their nurse case management/peer education approach.
The key is Scripps’ use of an important community resource: trained peer educators (promotoras) from multiple backgrounds who address the myths and beliefs that can interfere with diabetes management. Project Dulce has achieved beneficial, measurable outcomes in patient physiology, patient behavior and attitudes, and the financial bottom line. The cost-effective success of the program has led to peer-reviewed articles in Diabetes Care and The Annals of Pharmacotherapy, as well as the American Hospital Association’s 2005 NOVA Award.
Ms. Walker will share tools and methods you can adapt for use in your community, just as they have been adopted and supported by 17 primary care sites in San Diego County.
Download a sample of Ms. Walker's presentation here.
September 15, 2005
Improving Community Health and Working to Contain Costs:
Experiences and Data from the It's Your Life Program
| Cindy Bjorkquist Executive Director Foundation for a Healthy Community Jackson, Michigan |
Amy Schultz, MD Director of Performance Management Foundation for a Healthy Community Jackson, Michigan |
Preview the presentation here!
Tune in September 15 to find out how thousands of Michigan residents have succeeded in measurably improving their health status with the help of facilitated behavior changes. These Foote Health System service area residents are given customized wellness assessments and assigned personal health coaches through the It's Your Life Health Management Program.
Cindy Bjorkquist, Executive Director and Amy Schultz, MD Director of Performance Management for the Foundation for a Healthy Community in Jackson, Michigan will share their community oriented health management model, and its use in a Michigan county burdened with overall average to poor health. The discussion will include both health behavior and status changes, and the impact of these changes on health claims costs among this population.
June 16, 2005
Outcomes from a Logic Model: A Collaborative Success
| Kathy Tiernan, MS, CHES Director, Community Health Programs University of Texas at Galveston Galveston, TX |
Looking for successful examples of logic models that make a difference? You have heard of and possibly used logic models. You have run or participated in community collaboratives. But have you seen a logic model successfully used in a collaborative, multi-partner setting? Join Kathy Tiernan from the Galveston County Community Access Program as she shares the struggles and joys of creating a logic model and intervention objectives - and the immediate successes when confusion turned to cooperation and cooperation created outcomes
This group, one of the 2001 HRSA grant CAP communities, started out like the other grantees in having to develop a logic model and then a program plan. Join us to hear several examples of how evaluation results they generated and shared widely led to the inclusion of new community partners, new programs and a Robert Wood Johnson grant and other funding.May 19, 2005
Community Benefit and an Organizational Strategy to Engage Physicians
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Paul Hattis, MD, JD, MPH Assistant Professor of Family Medicine and Community Health Tufts University School of Medicine Boston, MA |
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Gayle Goldin Volunteers in Healthcare Pawtucket, RI |
| Janet Walton Volunteers in Healthcare Pawtucket, RI |
This audio conference will focus on an issue which often poses significant challenges to those working on hospital community benefit programs: how to get physicians productively engaged in these community efforts.
Dr. Hattis will first describe the nature of the challenge of physician engagement in community benefit, using both data from a study funded by HRET and his own observations and experiences in hospital community benefit over the years. Then, Janet Walton and Gayle Goldin from Volunteers in Healthcare will talk about the extent of organized clinician volunteerism in the U.S. and its potential role in connecting with hospital community benefit efforts.
The presenters will highlight recent legislative developments supportive of organized volunteerism, and discuss the continuing challenges and the need for local institutional providers to take a more proactive role in helping to shape organized volunteer efforts.
May 5, 2005
Brewing up Support for the Uninsured (A Free Cover the Uninsured Week Special)
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Marilyn Richards Director of External Affairs Cooley Dickinson Hospital Northampton, MA |
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Darby O'Brien Darby O'Brien Advertising |
Featuring the work of Cooley Dickinson Hospital in Northampton, Mass., this session will describe not only a volunteer provider model of extending care, but also an innovative venture to get business involved in supporting the uninsured. It will illustrate ways to attract business partners and to create models of care that are financially sustainable.
The hospital partnered with a local fair trade coffee roaster, Dean's Beans, to create and sell a special coffee blend that helps to raise visibility and money for the uninsured, and helps to link people with the health coverage and care they need.
If you'd like to learn about a positive, practical and truly innovative approach to the problem of the uninsured, please join us for an informative and entertaining free hour.
April 21, 2005
Making the Case for Value: Tools and Methods of Economic Evaluation
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Graham Clyne, HBA, MA Research Director, Prevention Dividend Project Director, Canadian Institute for Economic Evaluation London, Ontario |
Health organizations in both the public and not for profit sectors are increasingly being challenged to demonstrate the impact - the tangible costs and the benefits - of their work. This is particularly the case for community health, community benefit and public health activities. Understanding the cost-effectiveness of services and demonstrating a “return on investment” is becoming a much more important part of making the case for financial support. There are however, few people from these sectors who are trained to understand or use economic forms of evaluation.
Join this session for an introduction to the concepts and practical tools of economic evaluation, and gain insight into how you can use them to strengthen both your understanding of your programs' impacts and the case you make for stakeholder support.
Graham Clyne of the Prevention Dividend Project and the Canadian Institute of Economic Evaluation is a dynamic presenter who teaches economic evaluation in the U.S. and Canada, and has worked with the Catholic Health Association, VHA, Inc. and individual hospitals and health systems in the U.S.
March 17, 2005
Meeting Nutritional Needs for the Chronically Ill and Food Insecure: An Overlooked Health Improvement Strategy
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Shawn Fleet Program Manager, Healthier Communities Spectrum Health Grand Rapids, MI |
Join us to learn about one creative and effective solution to an often-overlooked health issue - adequate nutrition for low income, chronically ill persons. It is widely known that proper nutrition is vital for healing. What is not understood is that more than 75 percent of families who are "food insecure" also have a family member in poor health. Spectrum Health's grant-winning Nutritional Options for Wellness program addresses this gap in novel yet commonsense ways.
In this session, you will hear about:
- one health system's partnership with food pantries and community health centers;
- a "food prescription" and referral system;
- an initiative to supplement the quality and quantity of food available in food pantries; and
- efforts to assess the program's impact on health care system utilization and costs, health status and mortality.
Combined with cooking classes, community gardens and a program to introduce children to vegetables in a positive light, Spectrum Health and its partners are taking charge to help assure that low income populations with chronic illnesses can help keep healthy by the food they eat.
February 17, 2005
Diabetes and Obesity Prevention in Youth: A Multi-Partner Community Strategy
| Janice Bacon, M.D. Clinical Services Director G. A. Carmichael Family Health Center Canton, MS |
Doriane Miller, M.D. Senior Director, Quality and Clinical Initiatives Health Research and Educational Trust Chicago, IL |
Chronic disease prevention and management is more than a clinical exercise, and perhaps nowhere is that more true than for children and youth. This session will explore the multiple community strategies in an initiative led by G.A. Carmichael Community Health Center in Canton, Mississippi.
G.A. Carmichael acquired skills for this work in conjunction with the Bureau of Primary Health Care's Health Disparities Collaborative and in partnership with the Institute for Healthcare Improvement. As a participant in the Health Research and Educational Trust's (HRET) Co-Management Learning Network, G.A. Carmichael is on a mission to prevent diabetes in the low income (80% Medicaid or self-pay), minority (92% African American) youth it serves.
School-based clinics, WIC, day care providers and others each play a role in this community-oriented chronic disease prevention and care model. Learn how one community health center is extending health care into the community, and ask questions about their findings on Body Mass Index, exercise, hours in front of the television and other measures. Dr. Janice Bacon of G.A. Carmichael will share the local experience, and Dr. Doriane Miller of HRET will place it in the context of the national movement toward community- and patient-focused prevention and care that may be our best hope for reversing chronic disease trends.
January 20, 2005
Institutionalizing Excellence in Community Benefit: Examples from a National Demonstration Project
Sponsored by: ACHI's Community Benefit Interest Group
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Eileen L. Barsi Director, Community Benefit Catholic Healthcare West San Francisco, CA |
Kevin Barnett, DrPH Principal Investigator Public Health Institute Oakland, CA |
Join us to learn about one current approach to planning and implementing community benefit programs. Three health systems and three independent hospitals in CA, TX, AZ, and NV are participating in the Advancing the State of the Art in Community Benefit Demonstration (ASACB). A key component of this demonstration project's approach is to align the governance, management and operations of participating nonprofit hospitals to make optimal use of limited charitable resources, in part through Institutional Policy Measures. Kevin Barnett will share selected measures, present how different demonstration partners are implementing them, and discuss issues of interest with conference call participants. The Institutional Policy Measures are available as a chapter in the ASACB User's Guide.
Catholic Healthcare West - one of the ASACB partners - is moving to ensure that its community benefit work is given the same planning, resources and diligence as that of its hospitals' operations. Eileen Barsi will share the incremental steps CHW specifically has taken to build its effective infrastructure, including the development of a new Community Benefit Policy and a job description for Community Benefit Coordinators, the review and revision of Standards for Mission Integration, and the establishment of a long-term metric goal in Community Benefit for CHW Hospital Presidents. These steps have resulted in increased accountability of the organization for its effective community benefit programming and reporting.
This will be a 90-minute session, from 9:00-10:30 a.m. Pacific Time.
This web page may contain links to sites that are not owned or maintained by the Health Research and Educational Trust (HRET) or the American Hospital Association (AHA). The views expressed by audio conference presenters listed on this page do not necessarily reflect the views of the Health Research and Educational Trust or the American Hospital Association.
