Life Expectancy on the 1-90 Corridor

Did you see this picture in The Spokesman Review today? 

This map helps to highlight the motivation behind a lot of the work we do at Better Health Together. When it comes to health, not all zip codes are created equal. BHT is committed to addressing not just access to health care, but the social determinants of health outcomes as well. Things like access to healthy and affordable food, a safe house to sleep in, clean air, walkable streets, and the emotional support people need to be healthy. Working collaboratively to close the gap on these health disparities is crucial to ensuring health for all in Eastern Washington.

Good news for School Nurse Day

Today is National School Nurses Day, which makes it the perfect day to share some good news from Newport. Thanks to funding from the Group Health Foundation, Newport School District has been awarded a grant to enact a School Population Health Program. This will allow for the School District and Newport Hospital Health Services (NHHS) to hire a new nurse, serving population health efforts on both campuses.

School nurses are a crucial community installment in health transformation; they help to reduce absenteeism due to illness, educate students early about their health, and address emergent health issues among the student population. This program aims to do exactly that, focusing on the following measures for children in rural Newport schools:

  1. Increase immunization compliance, and HPV education
  2. Reduce absenteeism due to asthma, diabetes, and other chronic health conditions
  3. Improve health education and health literacy

In addition, the nurse will work on the NHHS hospital campus in the Primary Care Clinic, serving as a population health nurse for adults, helping to forge stronger linkages between the school’s health program and the primary care services available throughout the hospital system. This connection will facilitate more timely education and interventions for students presenting with chronic conditions like diabetes and asthma. The new nurse will be hired this summer to start at the beginning of the 2016 school year.

This program will rely heavily on collaboration with the Pend Oreille Health Coalition, a grassroots community coalition to improve health outcomes in Pend Oreille County through a network of local partnerships. The Coalition will help Newport School District continue the program by solidifying sustainable funding past the grant period.

This is a great example of a community collaborating and crafting linkages to impact health. The benefits of these linkages, and the direct services the nurse will provide students and schools, are bound to ripple through Pend Oreille County. We are happy to celebrate National School Nurses day by spreading this good news! 

Newport Community Hospital: Free Screening Clinic

Bridging the care gap for patients in rural communities is a current priority among health care organizations across our region. In Pend Oreille County, Newport Hospital & Health Services is partnering with Shriners Hospital for Children to address the health needs of children through a free clinic for anyone 18 years and under living with orthopedic conditions, spinal cord injuries, cleft lip and palate, or burn injuries. The clinic will be held on Saturday, April 23rd from 10 AM to 2 PM in the Family Health Center. No appointment is required. Once accepted for services, patients will be referred to Spokane Shriners Hospital for further treatment, regardless of ability to pay. If you or someone you know might benefit from services offered by Shriners and this event, please share this information so we can continue to bridge the health disparities gap in our rural communities.

For additional information please contact Dale Cooper (509)325-1536 or Bob McVicker (509)489-1756 or visit Newport Hospital & Health Services and Shriners Hospital for Children.

A Community of Change

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I love Spokane. My family and I feel blessed to live in a place that is filled with beautiful landscape, amazing people and an independent spirit that makes things possible. There is a secret sauce in Eastern Washington that makes our Accountable Community of Health work. We are not waiting to be told what to do; we are making it happen.

You see this in the building of much needed Housing First housing by VOA, Catholic Charities, the City and County (plus some super generous donors and finance folks). You see it in the collaborative ways that our community partner organizations come together for our weekly client management meetings.

You see it in our rural communities as they figure out how to solve their most pressing issues, often without the resources of the big city. And you see it in community investment strategies that are not perpetuating the status quo (way to go, United Way, City of Spokane and Empire Health Foundation for pushing us to be more strategic, innovative and impactful).

Why is this happening here? Our success can be partly attributed to our frontier spirit that permeates our approach. It is also because we have not always had choices—we have needed to take action to achieve the change we want in our communities.

I am grateful to be here in Eastern Washington, leading this important work. Better Health Together is not limited to implementing specific parts of health care reform plan. Instead, I believe, it is a social movement—dare I say revolution?—to make our communities healthier, more equitable and better places to live, learn, work and play.

This movement is not just about saving money for our health care system; it is a movement that
balances and respects individual rights to health and wellbeing with our collective responsibility to each other. This is a movement that implores us to change how we work as a community health system, to be more impactful and to behave in different ways. I am grateful for the chance to be on the front lines of this revolution with you all.