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Community Health

For a number of reasons, residents of our region experience a high prevalence of chronic health problems such as asthma, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, cancer, diabetes and obesity. We believe that it is critical to the region’s vitality to curtail the rise in occurance of these chronic health conditions. In order to affect this issue, we plan to support programs to improve residents’ health, as well as efforts to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the delivery of health services. We will also continue to support research that is critical to the local economy and that focuses on regional health needs.

In order to ensure greater access to quality primary and preventive care and adequate heath insurance for area residents, we will:

• Encourage community- and neighborhood-based efforts to facilitate enrollment into health insurance plans that share costs and are affordable to people and businesses
• Advocate for affordable health insurance for all in public forums
• Partner with insurers to discover and implement best-practice solutions to care access and cost coverage
• Partner with providers, insurers, and other stakeholders to assess and improve the provision of preventive, primary, and acute care

To reduce the local incidence of chronic health conditions, particularly those related to obesity/eating disorders, vascular and pulmonary conditions and diabetes, the Foundation will:

• Encourage new and innovative strategies for providing effective health education across communities and age groups, including evidence-based models that involve the arts, primary and secondary education and neighborhood-level engagement (e.g.: block clubs, community centers, faith-based institutions)
• Advance research into understanding and addressing disparities in health outcomes based on culture, race, gender and age

By supporting the following areas, we strive to ensure that providers and insurers cooperatively emphasize system-wide, evidence-based disease prevention and management.

• Implementation of evidence-based, standardized treatment protocols for chronic conditions such as asthma, renal disease, diabetes and endocrinology, and vascular diseases at both the institutional and primary care provider levels
• Broad involvement in independent assessments of and strategic planning around health care improvement by convening stakeholder meetings
• Introduction of an Electronic Medical Record keeping across the health care system