HealthierHere celebrated May with a milestone. On May 13th, 2019, HealthierHere issued over $1.5 Million to 46 community-based and social services organizations in King County for engaging with HealthierHere in its work to transform the system of care for our region’s most vulnerable individuals.

“This marks a really significant step in our work,” notes Marya Gingrey, Director of Equity and Community Partnerships. “HealthierHere is working through very intentional processes to engage with community in meaningful ways, and this is our first round of incentive payments to organizations for completing deliverables as part of our Community Partner Selection Process.”

This first round of 46 local community organizations will each receive $33,937 for completing deliverables related to participation, registration and contracting. These organizations met HealthierHere’s definition of a Community Partner and were selected based on Community Partner Selection criteria established by HealthierHere’s Governing Board. During this phase of the selection process, HealthierHere identified organizations whose mission and work most closely align with providing or promoting services that help community members achieve better health outcomes and address health disparities.

Community organizations provide critical services that enable community members to achieve the health outcomes that they desire for themselves. However, nonprofits often struggle to participate in regional planning activities due to limited staff capacity and budget constraints.

As part of our commitment to lead with equity, HealthierHere is helping to resource community organizations’ participation in system transformation activities together with clinical providers. Doing so helps lay the foundation for co-designing effective strategies and innovations, and for building stronger linkages between community organizations and clinical providers.

“No one organization or sector or government alone can make the kind of significant, lasting change that our community’s health care system needs. The network of partners that we’re building is essential to improving health equity in our region,” shares Executive Director Susan McLaughlin. “We’re thrilled with the level of engagement we’ve experienced, and by our Governing Board’s commitment to incentivizing participation for community, tribal and clinical partners.”

Want to learn more?
Our 2019 Selection Process for Community Practice Partners – a subset of our current Innovation Partners that will implement specific projects to help improve local health metrics – is going strong. Click here for the update from our April Governing Board meeting. You can also click here to check out the Consumer Voice Listening Project – another exciting HealthierHere-Community collaboration.