Fall 2018              
Dear Friends,
 
It is an exciting time in community health here at Mass General. The year ahead holds tremendous promise for tackling vast disparities in health based on race, ethnicity and wealth.
 
We are embarking on two significant efforts to address these issues collaboratively. For the first time ever, Boston hospitals, the City, Boston community health centers and other organizations have joined together to conduct a collaborative community health needs assessment. And, there is a similar joint effort happening in the rest of Suffolk County, including Chelsea, Revere and Winthrop (read more below).
 
Together, we are looking at bold new ways to tackle disparities, and we invited a special guest from Chicago to tell us about an exciting partnership aimed at reducing White/Black health disparities in mortality by half (story below). We already have many of the pieces in place here at MGH, and over the next year, we will be working hard with our partners to take all of this to scale in a more comprehensive and integrated way.
 
We know that, together, we can have a powerful impact. Thank you for taking this journey along with us, and stay tuned!

Best,

     
 
 
Joan Quinlan
Vice President, Community Health
Top Stories

Darlene Hightower, JD, Associate Vice President Rush University Medical Center
 
Working to Close the Health Disparities Gap
Learning from Chicago's West Side United

The Center for Community Health Improvement and the Executive Committee on Community Health at Mass General recently sponsored an event where hospital and community leaders learned about an exciting initiative on the West Side of Chicago to reduce the 16-year mortality gap between Whites and Blacks. 

 

Read More.
 

Boston Mayor Marty Walsh announcing plan.
MGH Invests in Citywide Youth Substance Use Prevention
Four Boston Coalitions Receive Funding

This past summer, Mass General President Peter Slavin announced that the hospital would invest $1.3 million over the next 5 years to support the City of Boston's first ever Youth Substance Use Prevention Strategic Plan.

 

To date, MGH has awarded a total of $180,000 to four Boston community coalitions to strengthen their prevention efforts in the city.  

 

Read More.
 

Collaborative Health Needs Assessments Underway in Boston and North Suffolk

We are proud to join with other hospitals, community organizations, health centers, the Boston Public Health Commission and others on the first-ever citywide Community Health Needs Assessment (CHNA) for the City of Boston. This historic collaborative was launched at an event in Roxbury on September 17th with an ambitious timeline concluding in June of 2019. Access the one page information sheet here, and read the full press release here.
North Suffolk CHNA kickoff meeting.
Key stakeholders from Revere, Chelsea and Winthrop , including Revere Mayor Brian Arrigo, Chelsea City Manager Tom Ambrosino, and Winthrop Interim Town Manager David Cressman, came together this past summer to kick off the North Suffolk Community Health Needs Assessment. The CHNA process is being co-led by Danelle Marable , CCHI Sr. Director of Evaluation, Assessments & Coalitions.

The group will continue to meet throughout 2018 and 2019 to guide the process and make decisions leading to a joint implementation plan to improve the health and well-being of these three communities.  
ECOCH Update

(b - l to r) Chana Sacks, Charles Rickert and Nicte Mejia

(f - l to r) Antonia Makowsky, Katrina Armstrong and Joan Quinlan
The Executive Committee on Community Health (ECOCH) is charged with promoting community health improvement and ensuring health equity, leveraging all four components of the MGH mission: patient care, teaching, research and community health.
 
ECOCH is pleased to announce its 2018 grant awards to five clinical departments that proposed creative, innovative ways of incorporating community health and health equity into their work. 

For the list of awardees and their research projects,   click here. 
People in the News
    

Sylvia Chiang, Director of the Revere CARES Coalition, was recently honored at the Massachusetts State House with the Latinx Excellence on the Hill award. Sylvia was nominated by the Speaker of the House, Robert DeLeo.

 

Read More.

 
 
Sarah Coughlin, Director of the Charlestown Coalition, has been named President of the Board for the National Association of Social Workers-Massachusetts (NASW-MA). Sarah began her tenure as President-Elect this past month, and she will serve as President for three years starting in 2019.
Out and About
It has been a busy season here at CCHI with staff presenting at local and national conferences and sponsoring some interesting trainings. Pictured above (l-r):
 
Danelle Marable, Sr. Director of Evaluation, Assessments & Coalitions with Sarah Oo, Sr. Director of Community Health Improvement in Chelsea, presented Deploying Impactful Strategies for Patient & Community Engagement at the Third Annual Value Based Care Summit in Boston.
 
Joan Quinlan, Vice President for Community Health, spoke at the MGH Charlestown's 50th Anniversary Celebration. Read more about the event in the Harvard Gazette.
 
Jennifer Kelly, Director of the Healthy Chelsea Coalition, is pictured with Dr. Jeff Likenbach from the Montana Institute at the Science of the Positive and the Positive Community Norms Approach Training, a two day program held in Chelsea for community members and partners focusing on community strengths and resilience. 
 
Joan Quinlan was part of expert panel at Massachusetts Health & Hospital Association's The Role of Social Determinants and Cultural Awareness in Caring for Populations and Patients.
 
Danelle Marable and Cassandra Tavaras from our Evaluation Team, both presented at the American Evaluation Association's Annual Conference in Cleveland. Cassandra's session was titled Evaluating a STEM Mentoring Partnership: Utilizing Participant Voice and Engagement for Program Improvement, and Danelle presented on Evaluating the CPP Community Health Worker Program at Mass General Hospital. 
 
Coming Up:
 
Leslie Aldrich, CCHI Executive Director, is traveling this week to San Diego to speak, along with Magarita Alegria, PhD, Kiara Alvarez, PhD and Amanda NeMoyer, JD, PhD from the MGH Disparities Research Unit, at the American Public Health Association's 2018 Annual Meeting & Expo. Their presentation is Promoting Adolescent Mental Health Equity Through Youth and Community Partnerships.