Ten hospital programs recognized for improving health of local communities

From street outreach in Burlington, Vermont to a New York City taxi network to infant mortality prevention in Detroit, ten hospital programs were named Programs of Excellence for their achievements in improving the health of local communities. Each program was awarded $10,000 through the Hospital Charitable Services Awards, a national program sponsored by Jackson Healthcare.

The awards were presented at a dinner in Atlanta to representatives from hospital community programs that spanned urban areas such as Philadelphia, Minneapolis and Oakland, to the mid-size regions of Memphis and Nashville, Tennessee, to the smaller communities of Bithlo, Florida and Cambridge, Ohio.

"These ten programs blend innovation and compassion in ways that have touched thousands of lives," said Charles R. Evans, FACHE, chairman of the Awards program. "We hope these programs will serve as models for other health systems and communities seeking proven ways to address underserved health needs."

The ten 2015 Programs of Excellence included:

• Bithlo Transformation Effort, Florida Hospital, Orlando, Florida. This is a grassroots effort to improve the economic development, education, health, safety and environment of Bithlo, a neglected, high poverty community east of Orlando.
   
• Congregational Health Network, Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare, Memphis, Tennessee. This program leverages the trust and support of faith communities to manage multiple chronic conditions.
   
• Dispensary of Hope, Saint Thomas Health, Nashville, Tennessee. This program reduces the waste of unused and unexpired medicine, while providing access to discounted or free prescriptions for vulnerable populations.
   
• Early Youth Eyecare, Phillips Eye Institute, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Given that 80 percent of early childhood learning is visually based, this program removes poor vision as a barrier to learning.
   
• Ninos Primeros en Salud, Children's Hospital of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. As part of the hospital's global citizenship focus, this is the flagship pediatric hospital in the Dominican Republic, providing pediatric care and health education to children younger than five years of age.
   
• Project SEARCH, Benihoff Children's Hospital, Oakland, California. This program offers yearlong internships for the developmentally disabled, which has resulted in high placement rates to full employment.
   
• Street Outreach, Fletcher Allen Health Care, Burlington, Vermont. This social services program works in collaboration with local business leaders to offer mobile mental health care in ways that reduce behaviors that lead to police intervention.
   
• The Taxi Network, Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer, New York, New York. This program provides medical outreach and health intervention to New York's 100,000 taxi drivers.
   
• Tina Kiser Cancer Concern Coalition, Southeastern Med, Cambridge, Ohio. This program aims to decrease the incidence of and mortality due to colorectal cancer in Southeastern Ohio.
   
• Women-Inspired Neighborhood (WIN), Henry Ford Health System, Detroit, Michigan. This program works with area health systems to eliminate infant mortalities.

Jackson Healthcare instituted the Hospital Charitable Services Awards in 2010 to identify high-impact community health programs, share their stories and offer them as models for other communities to replicate.

This year's ten Programs of Excellence were selected from a pool of 208 nominees. Each nominee had to demonstrate excellence in the following five criteria areas: community impact, innovation, collaboration, transferability and best practice.