Pathways Newsletter - Highlights for Partners and Friends
March 26, 2012
Altarum’s Center Leads Early Childhood Track of Building a Healthier Future Summit Featuring First Lady Michelle Obama
Altarum Institute’s Center for Healthy Child and Youth Development played a leadership role in the Partnership for a Healthier America’s Building a Healthy Future Summit, which took place on November 29–30, 2011, in Washington, DC. More than 800 corporate and civic leaders gathered for the Partnership’s inaugural summit, which featured honorary chairwoman First Lady Michelle Obama. The summit supported a convergence of efforts to improve children’s health and welfare by ensuring the integration of major efforts ultimately leading to a coordinated and succinct national agenda. As the operating foundation behind the First Lady’s Let’s Move! campaign, the Partnership for a Healthier America works with the private sector to garner commitments of significance to end childhood obesity within a generation. More...
The Effects of Changes in WIC Food Packages on Redemptions
A new study conducted by Altarum Institute on the Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program in Wisconsin shows that participants overwhelmingly accepted the new foods offered to them through changes to the WIC program. The study was funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, which administers WIC. More...
Applying Lean to Improve the Delivery of Care at Community Health Centers
Federally qualified health centers (FQHCs) represent the largest primary care system in the United States, serving 20 million predominantly low-income, medically underserved patients each year. As part of its internal research and demonstration agenda, Altarum Institute partnered with FQHCs in Maine, Michigan, and Virginia to pilot the Lean process improvement approach (“Lean”). Lean is best known for its origins in the manufacturing industry and has been gradually adopted in the health sector by some of the nation’s leading health care organizations. Altarum and its FQHC partners applied this innovative approach to improve administrative and clinical processes and, in turn, enhance patient care. Lean was also used to implement elements of the patient-centered medical home model, which promotes the delivery of comprehensive and coordinated care across the patient’s life span. More...
December 21, 2011
Altarum and the Navy Bureau of Medicine and Surgery Using Cell Phone Messaging to Address Veteran Behavioral Health Issues
Behavioral health professionals working with the nation’s 2 million veterans of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan face a tremendous challenge: effectively treating the nearly one-in-five returning veterans who have post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or a similar mental illness. Current approaches to treating PTSD are difficult as therapists rely on a veteran’s memories of emotions and symptoms days and weeks in the past to assess their progress. Because these memories are not perfectly accurate, particularly when PTSD causes short-term memory loss, it is often impossible to develop a full picture of a veteran’s mental health state. One analyst at Altarum Institute had a novel, but simple solution to the problem—use a veteran’s cell phone to track and treat their symptoms and connect them to care every day. Altarum’s Internal Research and Development (IRAD) program allowed this project to get off the ground. The technology not only helps track symptoms, but it also automatically triggers a support network when something goes wrong. More...
Altarum and Aetna Foundation Partner to Improve Health of American Indians
The Aetna Foundation has awarded Altarum Institute $131,000 to study the ability of American Indians living on tribal lands in Arizona to buy fruits, vegetables, and other nutrient-dense foods that are prescribed by the federal government’s Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC). Altarum Institute’s study is aimed at improving the nutritional intake and health of American Indians who receive WIC benefits and who are at high risk of obesity and diet-related chronic diseases, such as diabetes and hypertension. Preliminary data suggest that many of the nearly 65,000 WIC participants who live on tribal lands are unable to benefit fully from the program because their food outlets have difficulty stocking fruit, vegetables, whole grains, and other healthful foods prescribed by the WIC program. Cultural barriers may also play a role in limiting the use of WIC benefits. More...
Guiding the Development of Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Public Health Services and Systems Research Agenda
“An investment in knowledge pays the best interest,” Ben Franklin astutely remarked. That lesson, which stands true today, is understood by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) as it invests in ways to improve the quality and impact of the public health system. One such area of investment is in public health systems and services research (PHSSR), which examines how public health systems and services are organized, financed, and delivered to protect and promote the public’s health and safety. When the Foundation and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) sought to increase the visibility and level of investment in the emerging field of PHSSR, the Foundation asked Altarum Institute, a leader in health systems research, to assess the current state of PHSSR and facilitate the development of a comprehensive research agenda. Altarum supported the Foundation and CDC in this initiative by synthesizing the PHSSR literature and bringing together representatives from the research and practice community to identify research gaps and establish new research priorities to guide future PHSSR studies and investments. More...
September 19, 2011
Project Studies WIC Food Package's Impact on Vulnerable Communities
As part of its internal research and demonstration agenda, Altarum Institute invested $2.5 million to develop and pilot systems change models to confront the epidemic of childhood obesity. Through this initiative, called the Childhood Obesity Prevention Project, researchers’ piloted systems change models in three critical domains: public health and health care, early learning, and food and nutrition systems. As part of the food and nutrition domain, Altarum staff completed an evaluation of the Federal Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants and Children (WIC) program, which is well positioned to promote healthy diets among young children and their families. WIC helps to prevent childhood obesity, reduce premature births and low birth weight, lower infant mortality, and improve cognitive function. More...
Altarum Leverages Gift from Kresge to Bring Better Health Care to Michigan
To a small physician practice in rural Michigan, the world of electronic health records (EHR) can be daunting. Doctors are experts on the health of their patients and usually not experts in hardware configuration, software contract negotiations and redesigning practice workflows to capitalize on technology. Altarum Institute’s Michigan Center for Effective IT Adoption (M-CEITA), funded with grants from the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT and The Kresge Foundation, makes EHRs accessible to primary care physicians around the state by helping those offices select, adopt and implement EHR systems. M-CEITA staff provide physician practices with extensive resources to evaluate options and the technical expertise to ‘effectively’ modernize offices. In addition to direct benefits to providers and their patients, this effort will also bring up to $200 million in federal incentive payments to Michigan providers. More...
Commonwealth and Altarum: Working for Mary
Mary, 90, lived at home alone when she fell down the stairs and broke her shoulder. She had been able to manage her diabetes and heart failure on her own, later with the daily help of her son and his wife. Still, by the time that her son found her at the bottom of the stairs, she was dehydrated and disoriented. At the hospital, Mary couldn’t tell the clinicians what medications she was on or in what doses. As the hospital stay progressed, she seemed increasingly confused, and a short stay in a skilled nursing facility was recommended. In the meantime, her medications had been adjusted, and Mary was no longer certain of when to take them. No one had thought to call her internist; after all, the family thought, doesn’t the health care system work together? More...