Civitas Gets Grant to Help Disseminate Gravity Project Standards

Oct. 18, 2022
The 12-month project, which kicks off Nov. 1, will provide opportunity for shared learning, training and technical assistance, and in-person multi-stakeholder convenings

Civitas Networks for Health has received a $1 million award from Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to further the implementation and dissemination of Gravity Project social determinants of health (SDOH) standards.

With rapidly increasing interest in collecting social risk data, the Gravity Project is a direct response to calls to action around the development of national standards for SDOH data reported in electronic health records (EHRs). The initiative seeks to identify coded data elements and associated value sets to represent SDOH signifiers documented in EHRs across four clinical activities—screening, diagnosis, planning, and interventions—with a focus on three social risk domains: food insecurity, housing instability, and transportation access.

Civitas also recently announced a letter of intent with the Gravity Project and HL7. In addition to being a national multistakeholder collaborative, Gravity Project is an HL7 Fast Health Interoperability Resources (FHIR) Accelerator. Civitas plans to partner with the parties on implementation, dissemination, and learning communities.

The 12-month project, which kicks off Nov. 1, 2022, will provide opportunity for shared learning, training and technical assistance, and in-person multi-stakeholder convenings. Civitas will center presentations and learning opportunities around the project at its 2023 Annual Conference.

When Civitas launched in October 2021 through the formal affiliation of the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement and the Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative, the newly formed organization set a goal to seek grant funding for programs that are strategically aligned with the work of its members and key priority areas for the national network and industry in advancing health equity through data-driven health improvement and information exchange.

In a statement, Civitas Networks for Health Board Chair and CEO of Contexture Melissa Kotrys said, “The opportunities this award brings are so well aligned with the Civitas mission and future direction. We strongly support the advancement of SDOH data exchange, standards, and social care through our network of health data and information exchange implementers across the country.”

“We are grateful for the support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which will help communities leverage existing health data and interoperability infrastructure and strengthen learning communities to accelerate adoption of Gravity Project standards,” added Civitas CEO Lisa Bari, in a statement.

“The Gravity Community has long said that we may identify social risks in clinical settings, but we solve them in communities. Now that the Gravity Project has crafted data standards to identify and address social risks, we must support communities with sustainable and equitable implementation. We are thankful that Civitas, with support from RWJF, will offer direct support to communities central in this work,” added Sarah DeSilvey, director of terminology, for the Gravity Project, in a statement.

Civitas will partner closely with Gravity Project leadership to support implementation work already underway and to build on the work that has been accomplished by the national collaborative to date.

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