Ohio Pediatric Effort Wins Hearst Prize for Population Health
Healthy Neighborhoods, Healthy Families, a program launched from Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, has won the fifth annual Hearst Health prize, a partnership of Hearst Health and Thomas Jefferson University’s College of Population Health. The $100,000 prize recognizes organizations and individuals that have made outstanding achievements in managing or improving population health.
Healthy Neighborhoods, Healthy Families (HNHF) focuses on the South Side community of Columbus, by working to create positive health outcomes for children by targeting affordable housing, education, health and wellness, safe and accessible neighborhoods, and workforce development. It has improved the health status and reduced unnecessary health utilization and costs for neighborhood children. Relative to two propensity matched neighborhoods, those in the program experienced greater decreases in rates of emergency department use and probability of inpatient admission, as well as a smaller increase in the average length of stay for those admitted.
Gregory Dorn, M.D., M.P.H., president of Hearst Health, and David B. Nash, M.D., M.B.A., founding dean of the Jefferson College of Population Health, announced the prizes and congratulated the winners during the virtual Population Health Colloquium on Oct. 6.
In accepting the prize, Kelly Kelleher: M.D., M.P.H., director of the Center for Innovation in Pediatric Practice at Nationwide Children's, said that overall Columbus has a thriving economy, but some neighborhoods have been left behind due to racism and red-lining. “We cannot treat our way out of these problems. We are never going to build enough medical services. Preventing suffering before it happens is the long-term answer for our country.” HNHF works to do asset-based community development with a goal of improving outcomes for children. “Our goal is to create community where everybody has opportunity to thrive,” he said. They have seen vacancy rates decrease from 30 percent down to 6 percent and increased in high school graduation, and they are starting to see reductions in healthcare costs. He said HNHF took many groups coming together, and was designed “for the community by the community.”
Two finalist organizations won $25,000 each. One is the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, Center for American Indian Health. It has developed, implemented and evaluated promising solutions to reduce health disparities facing Native Americans through its Family Spirit program. It is currently the largest, most rigorous and only evidence-based home visiting program designed for pregnant and parenting Native American families. The program has been proven successful across three randomized controlled trials to improve parenting knowledge and self-efficacy; reduce parenting stress and maternal psychological risks that could impede positive parenting; and improve children’s social, emotional and behavioral development. “Family Spirit is first program like this designed for Native Americans by Native Americans, said Alison Barlow, Allison Barlow, Ph.D., M.P.H., the center’s director. “It builds local capacity by training and employing local paraprofessionals, and doesn’t rely on nurses.”
The other finalist was Project Dulce from the Scripps Whittier Diabetes Institute in California. The program is designed to improve health and access to care for underserved, ethnically diverse people with diabetes. It provides interpersonal and digital clinical management support while trained peer educators deliver culturally appropriate diabetes self-management education and support. Studies evaluating the program have demonstrated positive effects on clinical, behavioral and cost outcomes, including greater improvements in hemoglobin A1c and blood pressure across 10 months relative to standard care. Project Dulce has served more than 20,000 ethnically diverse (65% Hispanic) patients in San Diego County. Alameda County Public Health Services and Adventist Health in Central Valley have successfully replicated the model in California.
Past winners have included Transitions, a program of San Diego-based Sharp HealthCare, which won in 2019 for its program designed to provide home-based palliative care for patients with advanced and progressive chronic illnesses using a disease-specific prognostic model. Transitions addresses the needs of the pre-terminal population upstream before they use the hospital to manage predictable decompensations of their disease.
The Massachusetts Housing and Shelter Alliance was named the winner of the 2018 Hearst Health Prize. Its Home and Healthy for Good program is a permanent supportive housing program addressing chronic homelessness, overutilization of acute care and emergency care by removing barriers to housing.
Utah-based Intermountain Healthcare was named the winner of the 2017 Hearst Health Prize for its mental health integration program, which embeds mental health screening and treatment within primary care and select specialty practices.
Community Care of North Carolina was named the first winner of the Hearst Health Prize in 2016. Raleigh, N.C.-based Community Care of North Carolina won the award for its transitional care management model. The program is delivered to 1.4 million North Carolina Medicaid beneficiaries (including dual-eligibles) with a strong focus on identifying individuals with chronic medical conditions at risk for hospitalization or readmission.
