Forum on Health Care Solutions Introduces Community Health Workers
NORTH ADAMS, Mass. — The closure of North Adams Regional Hospital nearly two years ago has given birth to the opportunity for the community to rethink how it views health care and to try new innovations that ultimately will make the area healthier.
One of those innovations is a new breed of outreach workers called “community health workers,” or CHWs for short, and they are growing in numbers in Berkshire County, attendees of the January Northern Berkshire Community Coalition forum, titled “Improving Our Community Health Together: Solutions,” learned on Friday.
Kimberly Kelly, manager of Community Health & Public Health Initiatives for Berkshire Health Systems, gave a presentation outlining the work these “soldiers” have been doing since the county received a Prevention and Wellness Trust Fund grant to help the county reduce rates of the most prevalent and preventable health conditions, increase healthy behaviors, increase the adoption of workplace-based wellness and address health disparities.
“Their potential is so huge in changing the way we do health care,” Kelly said.
These specially trained, paid workers fill a lot of different roles, from direct services like health screenings and home assessments to helping residents navigate systems of care and advocate for themselves. Though the concept of a community health worker is not particularly new - think village health workers and family advocates in different eras in the past - they have only been seen locally for the last few years. Kelly said the vision locally is to develop a sustainable and comprehensive CHW program, and to that end more than 15 were trained in 2015 with more to come in 2016.
“We have a lot to do here in Berkshire County in utilizing these community health workers,” Kelly said. “The people that were hired have so much passion and commitment to their community.”
Kelly said evidence from research has shown that CHWs help reduce the overall cost of health care through fewer emergency room visits, lower hospitalization rates and lower readmission rates for complex patients and they also help improve health by helping patients engaging more fully in their care and adhere to their plans and help patients better control chronic conditions like asthma, type two diabetes and high blood pressure.
So far, Kelly said, she is hearing many positive stories from around the county about the impact these CHWs are having.
“I can’t tell you how proud I am of them,” she said.
Kelly’s presentation was followed by breakout sessions in which the 70 attendees brainstormed opportunities on utilizing these CHWs as well as barriers or challenges to the CHW program.
Opportunities included training a CHW for each town, connecting local physicians to CHWs, teaming up with local colleges, workplaces and religious institutions to get the word out about CHW services, and utilizing technology like a CHW app or Skype to connect more patients with these workers.
Challenges included transportation, getting people to trust these CHWs, keeping the CHW program sustainable with both funds and education, insurance hurdles and a basic community understanding of the role of the CHW.
Polly Macpherson, network director of the North Berkshire Rural Health Planning Initiative, led the breakout sessions and vowed to take the suggestions back to her team as the Rural Health Network Development Planning Grant the county received enters another year of planning before implementation in 2017.
“The emphasis is to look at providing comprehensive services … but also to improve the health of our community,” she said. “That’s what we’re all about.”
Those community health workers are one prong of accomplishing that goal, but that does not overshadow the very real need for health care services in a community devastated by the loss of the hospital. What that health care looks like is also part of the opportunity to reshape the future, Dr. Mark Pettus, director of Medical Education and medical director of Wellness and Population Health at Berkshire Health Systems, told the forum.
“We have reached this perfect storm of recognition that there has to be a better way,” said Pettus, referring to the fact that despite advanced medical technology many chronic and complex diseases that can often be prevented - like type two diabetes and high blood pressure - are actually on the rise, as is the use of pharmaceuticals to treat these kinds of conditions. “What we need is a radically different way of delivering care.”
And that’s why Berkshire County has the chance to serve as a model to other communities throughout the country as it develops those new ways that focus less on traditional health care services and more on overall health.
“The challenge we have before us is to move how we perceive health away from doctors’ offices,” he said. “The road to healthy living is shaped by choices we make each and every day.”
Those choices are not always easy in these “challenging times,” Pettus said, admitting that the sheer magnitude of the problem of health and health care even feels overwhelming to him. But he said he tries to keep a “glass half full” kind of mentality as new models develop in Berkshire County.
“We’re in the business of providing hope,” he said. “As human beings, we do the best we can. We need each other now more than ever.”
Tags: health care, NBCC,
