Laramie County Community Partnership Named a Finalist in National Initiative to Improve Local Health and Well-being
April 2015
(Partnership Includes Cheyenne Regional Medical Center)
Laramie County Community Partnership (LCCP) officials announced this week that it has been named one of 57 finalists being considered for grant funding from the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) to become a leading community on health improvement, as part of an initiative known as SCALE (Spreading Community Accelerators through Learning and Evaluation).
With two years of grant support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, SCALE will work with communities to improve health and spread effective community-driven approaches across the United States.
Cheyenne Regional Medical Center is member of the LCCP, with the LCCP executive director being Joshua Hannes, who also serves as the epidemiologist for the Wyoming Institute of Population Health. The Institute is a division of Cheyenne Regional.
According to LCCP officials, the partnership will use the SCALE initiative to continue to build on Laramie County’s capacity to leverage the collaborations in place within the existing partnership. The initiative will allow the LCCP to test the culture of health metrics and learn how to use these metrics for improvement while improving the equity in Laramie County. The partnership will work with SCALE technical support to help determine the social and behavioral determinates of health in the community.
The SCALE initiative, the LCCP and its action teams will not duplicate the current community assessments that have been conducted or are being conducted but will build on those assessments. The LCCP and its action teams are looking forward to the opportunity of the SCALE initiative to learn and receive technical support as the social and behavioral determinates of health are isolated within Laramie County.
Finalists were selected from nearly 200 applicants. The finalist pool will be narrowed to approximately 30 communities by mid-April. SCALE aims to match up to 10 “mentor communities,” those with a recent track record of achieving better health, with 20 “pacesetter communities” that are seeking to accelerate their pace of change.
“This has been an incredibly competitive selection process that began with hundreds of outstanding communities,” said Soma Stout, MD, MS, Principal Innovator in SCALE and Executive External Lead, Health Improvement, IHI. “All of the finalists should be incredibly proud of the accomplishment of getting to the finalist stage.”
SCALE communities will work to improve health outcomes, incorporate effective best practices as quickly as possible to realize improvements in healthand become beacons and resources for any community, anywhere, striving to obtain the best health possible—especially those most vulnerable to poor health due to poverty, violenceor lack of social supports.
SCALE marks the first community-based program of the recently announced global initiative100 Million Healthier Lives, led by IHI and 115 founding project partners. Through collaboration, this initiative aims to achieve 100 million people living healthier lives by 2020. To date, more than 400 patients, community members, leaders, organizations and implementers in public health, community health, health care, policy, academia, businessand financing have joined the 100 Million Healthier Lives initiative.
About the Laramie County Community Partnership
The Laramie County Community Partnership (LCCP) was formed in 1997 as part of a comprehensive strategic planning effort for Laramie County. The voluntary partnership consists of nearly 65 organizations, groups and agencies. LCCP is a tax-exempt 501 (c) (3) organization that acts as a fiscal agent on behalf of its members. Early results of the partnership included establishment of the Cheyenne Community “Free” Clinic and the Cheyenne Health and Wellness Center, now HealthWorks. Also, the partnership created the Laramie County Central Pharmacy to dispense donated medications. The partnership has received grant funding to address poverty, at-risk youth behavior, lack of academic opportunity and underage drug usage. Recent funding has provided two after-school initiatives: After School for Kids (ASK), an academic enrichment program for elementary age children, and a partnership in the local junior high schools called Alternative Centers for Community Involvement and School Success (ACCISS). Other LCCP programs include those that address juvenile drug and child maltreatment prevention; strengthen families; address youth suicide; and provide host families for homeless youth in our community, in partnership with Cheyenne Regional Medical Center and Catholic Charities.
The LCCP uses comprehensive community data and a comprehensive plan to drive its work. The most recent Community Health Needs Assessment and Community Health Improvement Plan were created in 2012, when action teams formed to work on Accessible Care, Strong Families, Healthy Youth, Healthy Adults with Healthy Behaviorsand Supportive Physical Environment. Looking forward, the LCCP and its members will continue to approach community health improvement with discipline and rigor. The community is currently in the process of creating the 2015 CHNA, which will facilitate the development of the 2016-2019 CHIP. From this work, the community’s priorities will emerge and community action teams will cultivate strategic plans.
