HWI Executive Summary
From Healthy Family Wiki
Spring 2008
For the past four years CAVU has sought to improve the healthcare of underserved children in Massachusetts through engaged partnerships with Community Health Centers (CHCs). By working with our partners to identify key unmet health needs, and then providing them with the financial resources and technical assistance required to address those needs, CAVU has been able to improve healthcare for hundreds of children in six medically underserved Massachusetts communities. The Healthy Weight Initiative (HWI) continues our commitment to identifying, developing, and supporting community-driven programs that address significant healthcare needs of underserved children.
Pediatric overweight/obesity disproportionately affects low-income populations, which are the primary CHC patient population. CHCs do not have a common clinical implementation to address pediatric overweight/obesity. Furthermore, CHCs do not have a venue for ongoing collaboration around pediatric overweight/obesity or a common platform for data and information sharing. In light of the above problem set, HWI seeks to achieve the following goals:
- HWI will be a leader in addressing pediatric overweight/obesity in low-income populations.
- HWI will standardize the care of pediatric overweight/obesity in MA CHCs.
- HWI will successfully implement a condition-specific collaboration platform that is replicable for other conditions.
- HWI will successfully implement a data sharing capability that can be replicated for additional collaborative efforts.
Rather than fund disparate programs at multiple CHCs, the HWI employs a collaborative approach of replicating a single clinical model (the Healthy Weight Clinic) at each health center, supported by centralized technical assistance and data collection. The HWI focuses on enhancing CHC existing core competencies by utilizing clinical, nutritionist and case management resources that are familiar and/or available to many CHCs. Much of the HWI activity is also billable to insurance in a way that can provide a sustainable revenue stream to fund the Healthy Weight Clinic in the long term. The collaborative meetings and infrastructure and centralized technical assistance ensure that the CHCs are improving their clinics via constructive feedback and that feedback is being disseminated across CHCs to all participants. The frequent collaborative interaction and utilization of data promotes rapid and constant learning by the CHC participants and improves the continuity and quality of care for overweight/obese pediatric patients.
To date, we have completed a brief but intense three month planning period culminating in a request for proposals process that has identified three promising HWI collaborative sites in addition to the Whittier Street Health Center pilot site. The three additional CHCs are Holyoke Health Center, Greater Lawrence Family Health Center and Codman Square Health Center. Each of these sites has demonstrated organizational commitment, a track record of addressing overweight/obesity, a sizeable patient need for services, and energized champions, and each appears to be in a high state of readiness to conduct the Healthy Weight Clinic. To this core group we have also added Coastal Family Health Center (Gulf Coast Mississippi), whose participation in the HWI is being funded by Johnson and Johnson. We have a strong and diverse phase one group of CHCs that will provide an excellent learning and execution platform for year one of the collaborative.
On April 22 we will conduct our first collaborative meeting, followed by monthly collaborative conference calls with this pilot group. We will conduct site visits on a quarterly basis, and will create and maintain an information sharing infrastructure to allow participants to interact using online tools (e.g., an HWI blog to both encourage interaction and document the progress of the collaborative). In many ways, the success of HWI is reliant on the success of the collaborative interaction and therefore we will focus much of our evaluation on this aspect of the HWI.
Our long term vision for the HWI is far-reaching, yet achievable. We seek to create and nurture a collaborative platform, rich in communication and data, that will be replicated in all Massachusetts CHCs with the potential to be replicated by others beyond state lines. As an organization, CAVU is designing this Initiative so that the structure can be replicated for other health conditions and that the HWI infrastructure will serve as a valuable asset for participating CHCs going forward. The HWI is designed to enable CAVU to become a leader in promoting innovative, high-efficacy pediatric interventions that will have major impact on the care of underserved kids.
