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Photo credit: Jay Ash, Twitter June 6, 2019. |
CareZONE Featured on WBUR
On June 12,
Care
ZONE was featured in a story by WBUR entitled
"The Van Vs. An Opioid Addiction: Taking Treatment To The Streets."
Showcased in the story is the work of our partners at Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program and the Boston Public Health Commission's AHOPE program, as they bring compassionate, high-quality care to Boston's most vulnerable populations. Many thanks to the GE Foundation for their ongoing support and for making the program possible!
New Partnership Will Expand Addiction Services to Youth and Young Adults (YYA)
This fall, The Kraft Center is partnering with The Grayken Center for Addiction at Boston Medical Center, Bridge Over Troubled Waters, and Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program to expand mobile addiction services to YYA. The initiative includes
the planning and implementation of a 12-month pilot to expand the CareZONE program's mobile services to youth living with addiction in the Greater Boston area.
The initiative will kick off this fall with a 3-month needs assessment before locations and hours of youth-oriented clinics are determined.
Care
ZONE by the Numbers
Between January 2018 through June 2019, CareZONE staff have logged >6,600 harm reduction outreach encounters at all clinical sites and distributed 2,281 life-saving Naloxone kits. The medical staff have seen 228 unique patients who participated in 796 clinical visits for a variety of health care services. The program continues to expand access to addiction treatment with over 477 prescriptions provided for medication for addiction treatment for 103 unique patients. The CareZONE team is also preparing for expanded hours and plans to launch two additional clinical sessions in the West End and Dudley Square in the coming weeks.
Next Steps for Program Evaluation
Having demonstrated the demand and need for mobile addiction services during the
CareZONE pilot, The Kraft Center has now granted two awards to research teams to advance the second phase of program evaluation. Dr. Danielle Fine, a research fellow in the Department of Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital, along with Drs. Travis Baggett and Zirui Song will be evaluating the effect of
CareZONE on health service utilization, assessing cost offsets associated with the program, and determining the acceptability and appropriateness of the
CareZONE delivery model among homeless and marginally housed individuals. Additionally, Dr. Thomas Stopka, Associate Professor of Public Health and Community Medicine at Tufts University School of Medicine, along with Dr. Claudia Santelices, an anthropologist at Northeastern University, is conducting an evaluation of enhanced harm reduction strategies in use by the program and its harm reduction partners at AHOPE. Both projects will inform the development, refinement, and potential return on investment of mobile addiction programs such as
CareZONE.
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Our friends from the City of Worcester Department of Health & Human Services joined us for a tour of the CareZONE van on June 12. |
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On April 29, the RIZE Massachusetts Foundation hosted a Mobile Addiction Services Convening in Marlborough, where organizations from across the state shared their efforts and experiences in mobilizing addiction services. We welcomed MA Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mary Lou Sudders, who led a group discussion about addiction services, including harm reduction programming across the Commonwealth. Secretary Sudders chaired the state's Harm Reduction Commission whose report in March included a recommendation to expand mobile health programming to address the opioid epidemic statewide. To read the Harm Reduction Commission report,
click here
. At the convening, the CareZONE team presented our working model and shared lessons learned to help other organizations looking to implement mobile programming. Future convenings will focus on fostering a culture of harm reduction and increasing readiness and capacity for mobile addiction program implementation.
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Dr. Beverly Moy & Dr. Ryan Nipp present on their findings for their cancer care equity work at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting. |
Decreasing Financial Burden of Clinical Trial Participation - Project Update
Dr. Beverly Moy, Clinical Director of the Breast Oncology Program at Mass General, has been leading a project that reduces barriers to participation in clinical trials for underrepresented populations including uninsured and racial/ethnic minority patients. Major findings of their work, namely that expense reimbursements significantly reduced travel- and lodging-related financial burdens, have been published in The Oncologist and can be accessed here. Their work was also highlighted during two education sessions at the 2019 American Society of Clinical Oncology (ASCO) meeting. Additionally, Dr. Moy spoke in July to patient advocates at the Translational Breast Cancer Research Consortium about financial barriers to clinical trial participation.
3rd Annual Bridging the Divide Symposium
- April
12, 2019
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Dr. Kelly Irwin presents at the 3rd Annual Bridging the Divide Symposium |
On April 12, the 3rd Annual Bridging the Divide: Mental Health and Cancer Care Symposium was held in Cambridge, Massachusetts. P
articipants interacted with national experts, heard narratives from people with lived experience and joined panel discussions on caregiving, palliative care, and developing teams that meet people where they are. Dr. Kelly Irwin, a psychiatrist at Mass General and a grantee of the
Trefler Cancer Care Equity Program,
gave a presentation at the symposium about how her
research with people with serious mental illness and her work to improve equity in cancer care. Dr. Irwin
is also the Director of Collaborative Care and Community Engagement at the Mass General Cancer Center who made the event possible.
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Becky Gelinas reflects on the 3rd Annual Bridging the Divide Symposium
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For reflections on the event from an advocate, stakeholder, and patient, please read Becky Gelina's post on the
Engage Initiative blog.
As cancer patients with mental illnesses are less likely to receive timely
, high quality cancer care, the ENGAGE Initiative hopes to bridge the divide between mental health and cancer care. ENGAGE serves as a community for patients, families, and caregivers, and a coalition for health equity, ensuring that mental illness is never a barrier to cancer care.
We also encourage you to share your story, join the coalition, and t
ake the pledge to make cancer care accessible to all people affected by cancer and mental illness. Don't forget to also s
ave the date for the 2020 Bridging the Divide Symposium on April 17, 2020. All are welcome!
Trefler Cancer Care Equity Grant Recipients Convene to Discuss Program Successes, Challenges, and Other Updates
Recipients of the 2018 Trefler Cancer Care Equity Grants convened in Boston in May to discuss updates and best practices for their ongoing cancer care equity projects. Charles River Community Health, Codman Square Health Center, and The Dimock Center shared their successes to date as well as their challenges encountered while implementing their projects to reduce disparities in screening rates and outcomes for colorectal, breast, and cervical cancers.
Be on the lookout for our second request for proposals for the Trefler Cancer Care Equity Grants program coming this fall! Greater Boston community health centers interested in reducing inequities in cancer care and outcomes through new and innovative strategies should consider applying.
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We are excited to announce that two programs led by Kraft Center Executive Director, Dr. Elsie Taveras, were recently awarded federal grants. The National Institutes of Health has funded the STIMULATE Grant to disseminate
Connect for Health
, an evidence-based childhood obesity screening and management program, at Boston Medical Center. This initiative looks to improve the quality of obesity care delivered in pediatric primary care settings.
Dr. Taveras's team has also been awarded a three-year grant from the Maternal and Child Health Bureau in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services to better engage fathers in the first 1,000 days period. This project will leverage the extensive infrastructure created for the
First 1,000 Days Program
, a unique Collective Impact initiative in the Greater Boston area funded by The Boston Foundation to prevent obesity and related racial/ethnic and socioeconomic disparities among mother-infant dyads in early life.
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Audrey Provenzano, MD, MPH
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For this edition's alumni spotlight, we are pleased to feature Dr. Audrey Provenzano, a graduate of the Kraft Center Fellowship program, class of 2015! In her years since finishing the program, Audrey has continued to focus her work on community health care. At
Dimock Community Health Center, she developed and implemented a program to prevent the risk of falls and went on to become the health center's Director of Quality. She then joined the MGH Chelsea Health Center where she became a Substance Use Disorders (SUDs) clinician champion examining quality issues related to SUDs care. In February 2019, she became the Unit Chief of Adult Medicine at MGH Chelsea Health Center, which she describes as being both a great challenge and opportunity.
Audrey is also the host of a podcast
called
Review of Systems ab
out the changing healthcare landscape
in partnership with the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care. Episodes focus on primary care health services research, QI, medical humanities, and improving primary care for patients and providers. Audrey regularly writes about healthcare that covers various topics, such as opioids, caregiving, and screens in medicine. We at The Kraft Center are very proud of Audrey's many accomplishments which embody the mission of the Center's Fellowship Program of training champions in community health!
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Annabelle Aguirre |
Our summer intern, Annabelle Aguirre, has been hard at work on multiple community health projects across The Kraft Center. Annabelle has assisted in evaluating
the implementation of the Build Our Kids' Success (BOKS) program in Revere, MA. BOKS is a free physical activity program that improves children's physical and mental health through movement.
In addition to her work on BOKS, Annabelle has assisted with the planning and development of our CareZONE mobile health expansion to youth and young adults, community engagement campaigns, and communications initiatives. She has attended community meetings, participated in site visits, and designed program brochures to support Kraft Center programs. We cannot believe her last day with us is in early August! Her dedication and enthusiasm will be greatly missed!
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Current and former participants in The Kraft Fellowship and Practitioner Programs continue to leave their impressive mark on the field of Community Health. Below are highlights of their work, including notable publications, career moves, and other personal news.
We encourage all Kraft Center alumni to send us updates by emailing
cregis1@mgh.harvard.edu
.
Leah Zallman, MD:
Leah presented at the Health Affairs Briefing Community: Care for High-Need Patients. She was featured in over 30 media articles, including CNN, Washington post, and a WTOP radio interview. Leah also published a research article entailed "
Care for America's Elderly and Disabled People Relies on Immigrant Labor
" in Health Affairs Journal. Congratulations on all of these achievements, Leah!
Mark Viron, MD:
In addition to Mark's role as Behavioral Health Division Medical Director, he was promoted to Chief Medical Officer at Advocates. In his new position, Mark will supervise all agency medical practices, and support clinical risk management, strategic planning, and engagement with the larger health care system. Congratulations on the new promotion, Mark!
Sural Shah, MD, MPH: As of July 1, 2019, Sural is the Chief of the Division of Primary Care at Olive View-UCLA Medical Center. Congratulations on the new promotion, Sural!
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