| The Council's Policy Team and National Consumer Advisory Board (NCAB) leaders have been conducting interviews with HCH consumers in Medicaid Expansion states. Getting on Medicaid has brought about wonderful improvements in individuals’ lives. The Council will share these compelling stories demonstrating the power of Medicaid with national partners. Share your Medicaid success story with the Council. At the National Health Care for the Homeless Conference and Policy Symposium in New Orleans, Council staff and volunteers collected stories and photographs of consumers and advocates taking a stand for Medicaid expansion. Pictured here is Marian Bacon, a new NCAB Steering Committee Member from Memphis, Tennessee.
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Upcoming Webinar: HCH Day
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| Health Care for the Homeless Day falls on August 13, 2014, which is the Wednesday of Health Center Week (August 11 – 17, 2014). This webinar is co-presented by the Council along with the National Association of Community Health Centers and Camillus Health Concern (Miami). The webinar presentation on June 24, 2014, at 12 noon Eastern, will inform HCH administrators and consumers about the purpose of HCH Day and tips for implementing a successful HCH Day in your community.
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| Meaningfully Integrating Individuals Who Have Experienced Homelessness into Research At the recent 2014 National HCH Conference & Policy Symposium, members of the Research Committee and the National Consumer Advisory Board (NCAB) met to discuss how National HCH Council research activities can be better informed by individuals experiencing homelessness. NCAB members shared their research backgrounds, the successes and challenges they have encountered participating in research, and ideas for how the National HCH Council could better integrate their perspectives into research. This is only the first of many conversations around this topic. Please contact Molly Meinbresse if you would like to join the dialogue.
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New Projects for the HCH Clinicians’ Network In July the Clinicians’ Network will begin work on the following exciting projects: Transgender Health, Engaging Homeless Youth, the HCH Clinical Curriculum, and Adapted Anticipatory Guidance for infants and toddlers. All members are invited to participate in these projects, in addition to the Communications Committee that produces the quarterly publication Healing Hands. Learn more about these projects and how you can be involved, and contact Michael Durham if you have any questions.
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| Community Health Workers Gather in New Orleans Community Health Workers (CHWs) participating in the National HCH Council’s research study—Community Health Workers and HCH: A Partnership to Promote Primary Care—joined hundreds of other attendees at this year’s National HCH Conference & Policy Symposium in New Orleans. The CHWs participated in a full day pre-conference seminar facilitated by Matt Bennett (pictured). The seminar included training on trauma-informed care, vicarious trauma, compassion fatigue, and strategies for recognizing and addressing signs of burnout. In addition to the seminar, the CHWs attended plenary sessions and workshops throughout the conference focusing on topics such as engaging LGBTQ youth, smoking cessation, and preventing opioid overdose. The CHWs will implement the strategies and skills they learned to help integrate their study participants into primary and preventive care.
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| New Policy Briefs and Webinars Materials providing analysis and online discussions about how the ACA’s Medicaid expansion is being implemented are available on the Council's website. These emphasize the enrollment projections for HCH clients in each state, and how states are using the “private option” and other Medicaid waivers to advance coverage. Two webinars from May 2014 are now available:
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| Letter from the Executive Director
Dear Friends, More than 800 of you participated in our national conference in late May in New Orleans. Thank you for coming. You brought your commitment to healing, your skill in many fields, your lived experience of homelessness . . . Read the letter.
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| Enabling Services Best Practices Report The Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations (AAPCHO) has just published, "Enabling Services Best Practices Report." Enabling services are non-clinical programs a health center provides to address barriers that prevent a patient from receiving medical care. This timely report highlights enabling services and innovative strategies that health centers use to provide these services. AAPCHO hopes that readers will consider using the best practices outlined in this report and tailor them as necessary to ensure that more patients can access the health care services they need. A copy of the report is available for download on AAPCHO's website. If you have any questions about the report, please email Tuyen Tran.
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| Nicotine Anonymous Feasibility Study Begins The Migrant Clinicians Network Institutional Review Board approved the Nicotine Anonymous (NicA) Feasibility Study proposed by the Research Committee of the National HCH Council. NicA groups are peer-supported, 12-step, tobacco cessation groups formatted and facilitated very much like Alcoholics Anonymous (AA). Unlike AA, however, NicA has not been disseminated widely and many people are not aware of the program. Since the prevalence of smoking is extremely high in the homeless population and smoking impacts many important health outcomes (e.g. cardiovascular, hypertension, cancer),this study will evaluate the use of NicA for individuals who are homeless. Three HCH Practice-Based Research Network sites will host NicA groups for three months to explore the feasibility of offering this type of service in the HCH setting. If there are positive findings, the research team will seek funding to examine the effectiveness of NicA on smoking cessation in homeless populations.
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| Clinical Resources Posted on National Guideline Clearinghouse In the past year, the HCH Clinicians' Network updated three adapted clinical guidelines that are all available on the National HCH Council's Adapted Clinical Guidelines webpage. Two of these guidelines, one on diabetes and the other on HIV/AIDS, were approved to be published on the National Guidelines Clearinghouse (NGC) website. The NGC is operated by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality of the US Department of Health and Human Services.
Publishing guidelines on the NGC website is a great accomplishment and allows practitioners outside of our membership to access our expertise and knowledge for the betterment of their patients experiencing homelessness. Thank you to all the HCH Clinicians’ Network members who revised and helped to develop the original versions of these guidelines.
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| Healing Hands Wins Fourth APEX Award The HCH Clinicians' Network's quarterly publication, Healing Hands, has won an Apex Award for Publication Excellence for the fourth consecutive year. The Apex Award is an annual competition for publishers, editors, writers, and designers who create print, Web, electronic, and social media. The winning Healing Hands entry was " Tuberculosis: A Persistent Threat to Public Health" (January 2014).
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