KEY WASHINGTON HEALTH FOUNDATION KEY STRATEGIC INITIATIVES:
THE HEALTHY COMMUNITIES INITIATIVE AND HEALTH DISPARITIES
Early in its revitalization, the Washington Health Foundation articulated its attention to improving health, not just growing or improving health care. This was notably the essence of its newly adopted mission statement: to improve the health of the people of Washington.
In part, WHF pursued its mission by making sure that its activities reflected this aim, even when the activity was more limited in design. For example, case management services provided to patients in need of health care through CHAP and ACAP were encouraged to follow up after the health care intervention with health prevention opportunities. Similarly, grants and technical support provided to rural and other organizations and communities would challenge the participants to expand their focus to broader health improvement.
The Foundation thought it necessary and important to go beyond these actions and to create a major strategic footprint toward health improvement. It decided to do so in the mid-1990s by establishing a Healthy Communities Initiative. Led by WHF staffer Katharine Sanders and WSHA volunteer Jeff Mero, the Foundation built a state and nationally recognized effort to improve health.
The Healthy Communities Initiative was a collaborative approach that used a series of grants, technical assistance, education and other tools to advance the notion of community based health improvement. It relied on, joined, and helped lead a national effort to do so through the Healthy Communities movement, an effort led by the National Coalition for Healthy Cities and Communities.
This model approached health improvement on organic, locally led efforts, and this philosophy and practice was adopted by WHF. In general terms, it tried to grow local health improvement by encouraging WHF participants to advance the seven patterns of a healthy community recognized in the national organization: Cultivates Leadership Everywhere, Creates a Sense of Community, Connects People and Resources, Knows Itself, Practices Ongoing Dialogue, Shapes its Future, and Embraces Diversity.
Practical activities by WHF covered a broad strategic play. Early on, it developed and conducted data studies that would help the state, communities and local partnerships consider how best to improve health, such as several county level health assessments and functional health status assessments.
It sponsored and led an annual Healthy Communities Symposium, hosting hundreds of leaders across the state to come together around the Healthy Communities for a couple of days each year. It developed an innovative and comprehensive Developer’s Guide for Creating Community Health Networks. It led several research and exploratory efforts to specifically incorporate health improvement objectives and processes into emerging managed care strategies, such as physician-hospital organizations.
The Foundation also made a major investment in two sites testing the concept of community health networks, urban and rural. One was in Spokane and the other rural Pacific county. Smaller grants and technical assistance was provided over the years to other communities.
The Foundation also sought to build a supportive statewide effort around health improvement, organizing two distinct efforts to build a statewide healthy community partnership. The Foundation included in this the hope to build a collaborative health policy agenda among statewide organizations, and WHF advocated for a number of major health improvement policies over the years, including stabilizing local public health funding and preventive care.
With the creation of the Healthiest State in the Nation Campaign, the aim of health improvement and many of the Foundation’s specific actions were built into the Campaign. This included the development of key health improvement metrics for the Healthiest State Scorecard.
The Campaign also provided an opportunity for WHF to deepen its commitment to an issue that was part and parcel of its health improvement agenda for many years- the commitment to eliminate health disparities, especially among racial and ethnic sub-groups in the state.
The Campaign adopted disparities into its metrics and its messages. Central was a message that we can only become the healthiest state by eliminating, not just reducing, these disparities.
WHF backed this up with a variety of grant and other program activities. Health disparities was a topic for many of its grants and it also adopted a major Healthier Washington grant program on creating structural change at the organizational level. The Foundation actively reached out to diverse organizations to include them at various events, sponsoring their attendance if necessary to assure inclusion. The Foundation took particular interest in including Native Americans and tribes in its work, and even sponsored the work of the American Indian Health Commission.