NYU Langone Receives Grant to Assess Hospitals’ Role in Improving Community Health
NYU Langone Health’s Department of Population Health is establishing the Office for Enhancing Hospitals’ Role in Improving Community Health, funded by a major grant of close to $800,000 from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF).
The Office for Enhancing Hospitals’ Role in Improving Community Health will explore and assess how hospitals and healthcare systems currently use resources to effect change beyond their walls, and will provide thought leadership on how to most effectively work with their surrounding communities to improve health outcomes. “The office will do this by tracking and synthesizing trends, innovative approaches, and evidence from healthcare systems across the country; supporting and sharing learning among hospital leaders and groups working to improve population health; and providing guidance to RWJF on opportunities to leverage efforts across the country,” NYU Langone Health officials said in a press release.
“The Office for Enhancing Hospitals’ Role in Improving Community Health reflects NYU Langone Health’s own culture and aspirations to go beyond the walls of our healthcare system so that we not only treat sickness, but help our patients and community stay well,” co-director Leora Horwitz, M.D., associate professor of population health and medicine at NYU Langone and director of its Center for Healthcare Innovation and Delivery Science, said in a prepared statement.
“We are pleased to have been selected to play this important role in assisting the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and hospitals and health systems across our country to most effectively work with their surrounding communities and improve health outcomes,” co-director James Knickman, Ph.D., clinical professor of population health at NYU Langone and Derzon Clinical Professor at NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service, said in a statement.
“Hospitals and health systems can and do play a critical role in improving the health and wellbeing of their communities, especially in their ability to address the social and economic factors at the root of health inequities,” Abbey Cofsky, RWJF director of Healthy Communities, said in a statement.
NYU Langone Health has a number of initiatives bridging its healthcare system with surrounding communities through a variety of academic, clinical, and outpatient efforts, including its Department of Population Health and NYU Langone Health’s Community Service Plan, which works on initiatives designed and implemented in partnership with Manhattan- and Brooklyn-based neighborhood organizations, such as reducing childhood obesity and working with high-risk populations on smoking cessation.
The Family Health Centers at NYU Langone provides affordable outpatient primary healthcare and support services as one of the largest Federally Qualified Health Center networks in the nation, with 9 primary care sites, 11 homeless shelter sites, 37 school based health and dental clinics. And, NYU Langone Hospital—Brooklyn participates in the Delivery System Reform Incentive Payment, or DSRIP, a 5-year, federal and state-funded partnership between the hospital and more than 200 primary care and mental health providers, social service organizations, nursing homes, pharmacies, and other community-based organizations.