The Hospital Charitable Service Awards was conceived
and sponsored by Jackson Healthcare to build a community of
individuals and hospitals around evidence-based best practices in
community benefit and charitable services.
In 2010, 110 hospital programs were accepted as official
nominees for the Awards program. All hospital-funded community
programs were eligible to participate regardless of the size, tax
or ownership model. Each program was evaluated by an independent
advisory board of hospital executives based upon five criteria
areas: community impact,
innovation, collaboration,
transferability and best
practice.
What follows are the ten programs deemed "programs of
excellence," whose commitment to their community reaches beyond
"community benefit" and "free care." Each has demonstrated
measurable improvements in community health and increased access to
healthcare education and services.
Being named the most obese and unhealthy community in the United
States is a wake-up call for anyone in the so-named community. For
a hospital in that community it's a call to action.
The infant mortality rate in Detroit is a startling 14.9 per
1,000 live births, which is twice the national average and
comparable to rates in some developing countries. Even more
troubling, it is double among African Americans, compared with
Caucasians, according to the Michigan Department of Community
Health.
Diane Patterson, Director of the Children's Village in Yakima,
Washington, fondly recalls a young boy with special needs who once
was a client at the Village, and who now - as a young man - is an
opera singer, performing regularly on stage for fans who come to
hear his voice.
The Sterling community in Greenville, S.C., was once a thriving
neighborhood and a vigorous center of African-American life. Thanks
to the efforts of Bon Secours St. Francis Health System's Healthy
Community Initiative, which is working in partnership with
community residents, the neighborhood is making its way back after
years of deterioration.
The pastor at the Cape May, New Jersey church was stunned one
week, when "Helen" rose from the pew and, without her walker, made
her way to the serving table to receive Holy Communion.
The Community Wellness Program, a prevention-focused program
that works to provide community members with the knowledge,
understanding, support and follow-up they need to become proactive
in their health and to successfully manage or reduce their
chances of obtaining a preventable chronic condition.
When a parent support group served by an outreach program more
than 25 years ago still meets on a monthly basis, and when more
than half of the 350 volunteers who form the foundation of the
program are former program participants themselves, the program
must be doing something right.
It's not uncommon for a large, industrial community like Toledo
to have a significant population of uninsured. However, having a
hospital immediately leap to action following a community call from
the mayor, sets the stage for the kind of program Mercy St. Vincent
helped launch.
Low income patients with diabetes or heart failure who don't
meet the criteria for home health care can be at particularly high
risk of complications and poor outcomes, but those living in the
community served by Sentara Obici Community Hospital have a
distinct advantage: The Community Health Outreach Program.
Northeast Georgia Medical Center's primary mission is to improve
the health of the communities it serves, and through its support
of, and collaboration with, these two unique programs that aim to
improve healthcare access for indigent patients, the Medical Center
is fulfilling that mission.