AcademyHealth Announces 15 Selected Communities for the Community Health Peer Learning Program

AcademyHealth Announces 15 Selected Communities for the Community Health Peer Learning Program

Following a competitive National Call for Applications, AcademyHealth is excited to announce the 15 communities selected to participate in the Community Health Peer (CHP) Learning Program. Through the CHP program, communities working with AcademyHealth will identify data solutions, accelerate local progress, disseminate best practices and learning guides, help inform national strategy around population health challenges, and align with other delivery system reform efforts driving toward better care, smarter spending and healthier people.

Aimed at improving community health through expanded sharing and use of electronic data across sectors, the CHP Program brings communities across the nation together to learn from shared experiences and promising practices. The CHP Program recognizes that, because so many factors outside of health care - such as food, education, and housing - influence health, greater sharing of data across sectors is needed to improve community health. CHP communities will be doing just this – linking critical information from within and outside of health care to address challenges ranging from pediatric asthma to at risk individuals facing housing insecurity.

Over the next 17 months, AcademyHealth and its partners, NORC and the National Partnership for Women and Families, will lead this peer learning collaborative to help develop concrete and strategic action plans to address specific population health challenges within each community. AcademyHealth will also cultivate relationships with leading initiatives related to the CHP program by helping to build a virtual network of networks, designed to accelerate peer learning and progress by providing expert guidance, technical assistance, and facilitation of cross-sector stakeholder engagement. For example, AcademyHealth will closely coordinate grantee learning efforts with Data Across Sectors for Health, a new initiative designed to support community-based, multi-sector data sharing initiatives.

"With this program, we are providing the expertise and resources necessary for participating communities to strengthen connections with partners, expand data sharing and use, and develop and begin piloting high-impact Community Action Plans for addressing a specified community-level population health challenge," said Alison Rein, Senior Director, Evidence Generation & Translation at AcademyHealth and CHP Program Director. "We are confident that we can continue to cultivate the data and research infrastructure needed to advance a culture of health, and are excited to support engagement of critical sectors and data sources to advance that aim," she added.

The following communities, ten Participant communities and five Subject Matter Expert communities will be participating in this national peer learning collaborative:

Participant Communities

The following communities will receive awards of $100,000 to engage in a 17 month process to design - and begin implementing aspects of – concrete and high-impact Community Action Plans (CAPs) for improving community health through the expanded collection, exchange and use of electronic health data:

• All Chicago Making Homelessness History
• Children's Comprehensive Care Clinic
• Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center
• Dignity Health Foundation
• Louisiana Public Health Institute
• North Coast Health Information Network
• Providence Center for Outcomes Research and Education
• UH Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital
• Vanderbilt University Department of Health Policy
• Vermont Child Health Improvement Program (VCHIP)

Learn more about the Participant Communities.

Subject Matter Expert Communities:

The following communities will receive awards of $50,000 to engage in the development of topical Learning Guides designed to provide guidance and to facilitate sharing of population health lessons"

• California Family Health Council
• Greater Detroit Area Health Council
• Minneapolis Heart Institute Foundation
• San Diego Health Connect
• The University of Chicago Medicine

Learn more about the SME Communities.

About the Community Health Peer Learning Program

In July 2015, the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) awarded AcademyHealth $2.2 million to lead the Community Health Peer Learning Program (CHP). Throughout this two-year program, AcademyHealth will work in partnership with ONC to establish a national peer learning collaborative for 15 competitively-awarded communities to address specified population health management challenges through increased sharing and use of data. Learn more.

About AcademyHealth

AcademyHealth is a leading national organization serving the fields of health services and policy research and the professionals who produce and use this important work. Together with our members, we offer programs and services that support the development and use of rigorous, relevant and timely evidence to increase the quality, accessibility, and value of health care, to reduce disparities, and to improve health. A trusted broker of information, AcademyHealth brings stakeholders together to address the current and future needs of an evolving health system, inform health policy, and translate evidence into action.