Creating and Sustaining Partnerships: Community Stakeholder Meeting #3

EMPART Monthly Community Stakeholder Meeting Report

Equipping Muslims with PCOR-Based, Action-Oriented Research Tools

Fighting COVID-19 Together

Creating & Sustaining Partnerships for Health Equity

Monthly meeting was held virtually on January 31st, 2021

Report prepared by Luma Mahari, (PhD candidate, Organization Development & Value-Based Leadership) Published in February 2021 WFC Newsletter

Objective of the Monthly Stakeholder Meetings:

The objective of the monthly stakeholder meeting includes learning the patient-centered research tools to improve the delivery of equitable, efficient, and effective care. The research institute strives to improve quality and outcomes of care by including innovative technologies, workforce issues, incentive structures, and service designs. The program puts extra attention on subsets of the population that show strong evidence of healthcare disparities and a lack of healthcare data. These include racial & ethnic groups, rural populations, LGBTQ communities, and people from lower social-economic status. (https://www.pcori.org/about-us/our-programs).

The Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute, PCORI, funds and oversees projects including stakeholder engagement, creating a national research infrastructure, and developing a framework for evaluation and analysis programs. Among other national priorities for research include focusing on patient-centered approaches to improve the healthcare system’s design for increased effectiveness. Researchers also aim to improve clinical effectiveness by comparing different clinical options. This includes the use of different assessments for prevention, diagnosis, and treatment options to fill the clinical information gaps (https://www.pcori.org/about-us/our-programs).

The current EMPART PCORI project began by “Engaging Muslim Americans for Research on Community Health, EMARCH”. The first mosque-PCOR conference took place in October 2019. In February 2020, The Mosque PCOR Toolkit was developed to better equip Muslims with PCOR-Based Action Oriented Research Tools. With the help of key stakeholders, we aim to disseminate the Mosque-PCOR toolkit between August 2020 to September 2021. Since October 2020, Community Health Workers, CHWs, were trained to conduct outreach online and take calls to guide community members. The planning of the EMPART PCOR project was based on the key PCOR engagement principles which include reciprocal relationships, co-learning, partnerships, and transparency. Collaborative partnerships will be developed and valued throughout different project activities. During the meeting, emphasis was placed on understanding and properly expressing the different types of listening by Stephen R. Covey. The different types of listening discussed included empathic listening, attentive listening, selective listening, pretend listening, and ignoring.

Melissa Maguire brings to us thirty years of experience in community health and shares her insights and tangible implementation tactics’ secrets. As the executive director of IAFCC, Ms. Maguire has helped numerous Free Clinics develop a bank of resources, management processes, and partnerships to run the clinics successfully. Her presentation provided a didactics for creating effective partnerships includes developing a shared mission and an understanding of the reciprocity in reciprocity in relationships. Other key elements of an effective partnership include clear communication, well-defined roles, and clear benchmarks. She also emphasized developing metrics and criteria for evaluation and analysis of projects and how to implement continuous quality improvement for establishing the programs which are keys for successful partnership as it allows to build accountability and transparency for all partner

EMPART Monthly Community Stakeholder Meeting Report

Representatives from Advocate-Aurora Health, AAH, also participated to demonstrate the effectiveness of community engagement through partnerships. Dr. Thaer Ahmad, the assistant program director from Advocate Christ Medical Center emphasized the need to address health inequities through strategic partnerships. They currently partnered with the Chesterfield community and Trinity hospital to address health inequities and access to care. They are also working with Trinity hospital where there is a pharmacy food pantry program. Other key partnerships they intend to develop include the University of Chicago, who are offering funding to organizations to continue their work in addressing health care inequities. Dr. Thaer Ahmed and his team are currently developing post-discharge assistance programs at their Trauma Center. They have received a grant to open a trauma recovery center that assists patients with their psychological, emotional, and medical needs post-discharge from the hospital. The goal is to continue building recovery centers and to better understand the needs of the community.

Other physician representative from the Emergency Department of Aurora-Advocate Health, Drs. Okubanjo Oyinkansola and Donna Okoli also shared her passion and commitment for community health.

Technology needs including health systems literacy were also discussed in the meeting including the use of enhanced automation and the use of Internet of Things (IoT) devices, and aggregation of patient data sources to better operationalize the data flow for improved integration in the workflow. Other projects we plan on working on include developing and integrating taxonomy codes that better define the basic needs of the patient. Taxonomy codes will be developed according to the core principles of the social determinants of health. All these projects are intended to further enhance the clinical decision support system to lead to better healthcare for payers and consumers.

Through these monthly meetings the EMPART project team aims to build capacity by fostering a culture of Co learning an reciprocal relationships to facilitate partnerships across the entire continuum of healthcare discipline from grassroots involvement in patient centered research to implementation of systems that worked for patients and their caregivers.

For more:

Powerpoint

Recording of Presentation

References:
Our Programs. (2017). http://www.pcori.org. https://www.pcori.org/about-us/our-programs

Participate in Research Studies

Previous Mosque PCOR Project

Project Collaborators