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What to the (descendants of) slaves is the Fourth of July?
I greatly value history and am acutely and constantly made aware of how much history I don’t know. It is important to have a clear-eyed understanding of both the virtues and failures of one’s nation, and be able to place them correctly in the historical and contemporary contexts in order to work with others to fashion solutions that will create a better society. I am grateful to have been born in a prosperous country that has afforded me more freedoms and comforts than found in many other countries. I am also continually aware that the benefits and freedoms have not been – and are not – equally available to everyone, with racism still separating large swathes of people from opportunity.
For this reason, while the country celebrates the blessings that shower America, my tradition has been to balance the celebration by reading to my family a different excerpt each year from a historic speech that shows we fell short of our ideals, and continue to fall short, but can and must do better. Frederick Douglass’s speech delivered in 1852, “What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?” is a literary masterpiece filled with biting irony, sarcasm, biblical allusions and soaring phrases that make his irrefutable argument that July 4th was not a day of celebration, but of bitter lament, for those who were enslaved. Unfortunately, so much of it is still distressingly relevant today.
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| | Looking Back and Looking Ahead: NIMRC's First Year
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As the first national institute designed to advance best practices, provide expert services, and promote state-of-the-field knowledge in medical respite/recuperative care, NIMRC has made a significant impact during its first year. In addition to publishing several reports, issue briefs, and a comprehensive literature review, NIMRC also partnered with the CDC Foundation to support nine medical respite/recuperative care programs throughout the nation in their COVID-19 response.
“Launching NIMRC in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic was a tremendous challenge but, at the same time, the need to expand medical respite/recuperative care could not have been greater,” said Council CEO Bobby Watts. “As we continue to confront and understand the long-term effects of COVID-19, there will be an ongoing need for medical respite/recuperative care programs to provide medical, mental health, and supportive services to those who are not sick enough to be in the hospital but are too sick to return to the streets or a traditional shelter. Through NIMRC and its network of more than 100 programs and partners, we hope to continue providing care to those in immediate need, and to ensure that medical respite/recuperative care is a part of the solution to ending homelessness.”
Another milestone for NIMRC will be achieved this fall with the release of the 2021 Standards for Medical Respite Programs. Revised every five years with input from consumers, medical respite/recuperative care providers, and staff, the Standards reflect best practices in the field and serve as a framework to help programs operate safely, effectively, and seamlessly with local health care systems.
COMING NEXT WEEK: Look for our special publication highlighting NIMRC’s first year!
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| | Clinical & QI Director Reflects on Her Experience with "Culture of Health Leaders," Growing Medical Respite
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Dr. Courtney Pladsen, the Council’s Director of Clinical and Quality Improvement, is completing her third and final year as a Fellow in the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s Culture of Health Leaders program. The program brings together leaders from across different fields “who want to use their influence to advance a Culture of Health where everyone living in America has a fair opportunity to live a long, healthy life.”
Pladsen is one of 40 people in the program’s 2018 cohort, and has embraced the opportunity to learn from her peers. Her personal focus has been on improving the continuum of care for people experiencing homelessness nationally and ensuring that their voices are included in the conversation.
“The Fellowship has helped me immensely in understanding how to effectively impact system change,” she said, “and it has allowed me to take a larger and longer view of how we can coordinate across disparate systems.”
As part of the program, each Fellow designs a Culture of Health Strategic Initiative to implement in their community. Pladsen, a nurse practitioner in Portland, ME, is leading an effort to bring three organizations together to develop a 15-bed medical respite/recuperative care facility. With plans to open in the winter as part of the FQHC Greater Portland Health, it will be the first facility of its kind in the state.
According to Pladsen, “The program will provide safe living conditions for homeless individuals who are acutely ill, and provide a holistic approach with the support of both social and medical staff to ensure that individuals can be their healthiest selves.”
While the facility will provide a much-needed service, Pladsen notes that her Fellowship has helped her expand how she will view its long-term success. “It’s important to realize that creating the program is not the end. The end goal is not to launch the program, but to end homelessness.”
Pladsen sees recuperative care as an essential step in creating a continuum of health care for people experiencing homelessness in her community. Other parts of the initiative include expanding street medicine outreach partnerships, educating staff at the hospital in providing trauma informed care, and increasing access to harm reduction and substance use treatment.
Once her three-year fellowship ends this fall, Pladsen plans to remain actively engaged with other Culture of Health Leaders participants. “This is an incredible network of people dedicated to improving holistic health outcomes on a national level,” she said. “It’s truly been an honor to learn alongside these leaders and I look forward to working with them for many years to come to create more equitable systems.”
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Register Now: "Understanding and Applying SDOH Screening Data to Address Barriers to Health"
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The Council is partnering with the Association of Asian Pacific Community Health Organizations, Health Outreach Partners and MHP Salud for a webinar on Wednesday, July 21, to explore strategies to screen special and vulnerable populations for social determinants of health (SDOH) and build effective practices to begin addressing SDOH through outreach and enabling services (ES). Click here to learn more and register.
Health centers also are encouraged to apply to participate in an associated Learning Collaborative (LC) in the weeks following the webinar -- “Screening Methods and Strategies for Using Data on Outreach and Enabling Services to Address SDOH.” This LC will consist of four 90-minute sessions from August to September 2021. Each session will highlight best practices and facilitate interactions among health center program participants to share strategies, challenges, and successes. Click here to learn more and apply by Monday, July 26.
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Upcoming Listening Sessions Explore Medical Fragility
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Communities across the country use standardized tools to prioritize individuals for housing. The HCH community has long had concerns with how tools in use do not adequately assess medical fragility and have bias in scoring. The Council is embarking on work to identify alternative means of assessing medical fragility to improve housing prioritization processes.
Join us for one of two listening sessions to share what you have seen in your community:
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| | New Publication: "Lessons Learned in Data Sharing & Care Coordination"
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Health centers have long embraced the factors of health occurring inside and outside of the clinic setting. While the goal is continuity of care, the fundamentals of this kind of service integration are the collection, leveraging, and sharing of data. Hopes for improving care coordination thus hinge on the appropriate, ethical, and efficient use of data.
A new Council publication, "Lessons Learned in Data Sharing & Care Coordination," summarizes the lessons learned from conversations with consumers and providers as HCHs work to create coordinated care systems through data. Click here to learn more.
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| | Council Voices in the News
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- Homeless Residents Particularly Vulnerable During Excessive Heat (KMVT, Twin Falls, ID, June 30), featuring Director of Clinical and Quality Improvement Courtney Pladsen
- GOP's Cox: California Should Force Homeless Into Treatment (Associated Press, June 28), featuring Senior Director of Policy Barbara DiPietro
- Opinion: COVID Showed "Housing is Healthcare." Let's Build on the Lesson. (billypenn.com, June 4), featuring Monica Medina McCurdy, Vice President of Health Services, Project HOME (Philadelphia, PA)
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National Health Care for the Homeless Council
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National Institute for Medical Respite Care
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| July 7, 2021 | Volume 3, Issue 7| Archives
Copyright © 2021 National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc.
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