Learning Collaborative to Support Ecosystem Approach to Complex Health
The National Center for Complex Health & Social Needs, with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, is convening a Community Ecosystem Learning Collaborative to support organizations as they develop and strengthen “ecosystem” approaches to addressing the root causes of individuals’ and populations’ complex health and social needs.
Complex care ecosystems are composed of organizations across sectors within a community, working collectively and intentionally to better address the gaps that keep people with complex needs from achieving health and well-being.
Beginning in April 2021, at least five selected communities will be chosen to receive 15 months of individualized technical assistance from National Center staff and will participate in a learning collaborative consisting of all of the teams. Participants will share their respective experiences and mutually support each other’s efforts. Experts at the National Center will support team efforts to develop aims, outcome measures, and evaluation strategies that include feedback from the community served. Additionally, the National Center will conduct an evaluation, in close collaboration with learning collaborative participants, to assess which modalities for ecosystem development are the most effective.
Learning collaboratives combine learning and social connectedness to provide both peer-to-peer and expert-to-peer learning. Through learning communities, peer organizations from around the country come together to focus on a problem, explore that challenge, and co-create solutions.
In a blog post, Rebecca Koppel, the National Center’s program manager for field building and resources, described the concept of a complex care ecosystem.
“Across the country, advocates and model-builders are developing programs to address specific complex needs and help patients navigate fragmented systems. There is increasing understanding, however, that the impact of these initiatives will be limited when a robust, supportive complex care ecosystem is lacking in the local community,” she wrote.
“Complex care ecosystems are interrelated groups of organizations across health and human services sectors working collectively and intentionally to better impact vulnerable and often marginalized populations. The National Center introduced the concept in its Blueprint for Complex Care. “However, limitations in data sharing, payment mechanisms, and trust between sectors that serve people with complex needs make building complex care ecosystems no easy task — especially in the current crisis state,” Koppel noted. “Furthermore, individual advocates and model-builders cannot bridge these gaps alone. Creating functioning, collaborative ecosystems requires building relationships within communities as well as with peers doing similar work across the country.”
She said the hope is that the collaborative will help the selected sites build robust complex care ecosystems in their communities, and that lessons from the learning collaborative will also provide the complex care field with key insights into ecosystem development.
There is a request for proposals that includes more information, and applications are due by Jan. 15, 2021.
