Trenton Health Team Selected to Participate in Innovative New Effort to Transform Regional Health
— On Tuesday, Trenton Health Team was named one of six participants selected for the ReThink Health Ventures project, a two-year endeavor designed to help well-established multi-sector partnerships accelerate transformation in their regions. The project aims to generate more inclusive health value, demonstrated by the improved health of populations, better care, lower costs, greater equity, and increased workforce productivity.
by Ventures was launched by ReThink Health, the signature initiative of the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, to demonstrate to organization leaders and policy makers that an integrated, dynamic, and high-functioning health ecosystem is possible. While thousands of communities across the country are making great progress in addressing the many disparate health challenges they face, conventional thinking simply has not overcome the systemic barriers, structural limitations, and the interdependent nature of the problem.
Trenton Health Team (THT) was selected to join the Ventures cohort because of how far along the organization is in thinking about these tough issues and how well-positioned it is to accelerate change. THT is an innovative collaboration including the city of Trenton’s two hospitals, St. Francis Medical Center and Capital Health; its only Federally Qualified Health Center (FQHC), Henry J. Austin Health Center, and the City of Trenton Department of Health and Human Services. Since its founding, THT has been harnessing the collective power of leaders, more than 60 partner agencies and community residents to advance its mission to transform healthcare for the city by forming a committed partnership with the community to expand access to high quality, coordinated healthcare.
“ReThink Health is excited to be working with these innovative partnerships to help them break from business as usual, to redesign and transform their health systems,” said Laura Landy, President and CEO of the Rippel Foundation. “It is these exemplars in communities across the country that will help demonstrate the power and necessity of looking at health as an ecosystem rather than as a collection of independent and siloed activities.”
Besides the Trenton Health Team, the Ventures cohort includes Sonoma County, Calif.; the Finger Lakes Region, N.Y.; Central Oregon; King County, Wash.; and Bernalillo County, N.M. The project is generously funded by the Robert Wood Johnson and Fannie E. Rippel Foundations.
Those regions participating in Ventures are home to some of the most advanced transformation efforts in the country, but substantive and meaningful change can elude even those most poised for success. The Ventures project intends to engage in a deep and different way with groups positioned to accelerate change at a regional level, to learn together, and to explore key questions to determine what catalyzes action most effectively and what stalls progress. Ventures hopes to upend conventional thinking and to raise the ambitions and reduce the skepticism of communities and leaders, both locally and nationally, so that they aim for a higher standard.
Achieving these ambitious goals will require questioning norms that are ingrained in American culture: revisiting what health really means, how sectors and voices could contribute to it, and what kind of commitment it will take for a community and the people who live there to be healthy.
“We are proud to have been selected for the ReThink Health Ventures project, the goals of which align with our long-standing efforts to improve health and health care within the greater Trenton community,” said Gregory Paulson, Executive Director of the Trenton Health Team. “At this time of national focus on healthcare reform, we feel strongly that our participation will help to guide and strengthen our collaborative endeavors, building clarity and unity for the next stage of work for our region.”
About the Trenton Health Team
Trenton Health Team (THT) is an alliance of the city’s major providers of healthcare services including Capital Health, St. Francis Medical Center, Henry J. Austin Health Center and the city’s Health Department. In collaboration with residents and the city’s active social services network, THT is developing an integrated healthcare delivery system to transform the city’s fragmented primary care system and restore health to the city. THT receives generous support from government agencies and foundations, including as The Nicholson Foundation and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and corporate partners such as Novo Nordisk, Inc. and Janssen Pharmaceuticals. For more information, visit www.trentonhealthteam.org.
About ReThink Health and the Rippel Foundation
ReThink Health catalyzes changemakers to reimagine and transform health. We help leaders identify and overcome the barriers to reform at a regional level, and inspire change across the country. ReThink Health was initiated by the Fannie E. Rippel Foundation, which was founded in 1953 to pursue innovative solutions to the complex problems confronting health and health care. The Rippel Foundation makes smart investments in the future, seeding innovation today to ensure good health for generations to come.
For additional information about ReThink Health, visit www.rethinkhealth.org. For more information about the Rippel Foundation, visit www.rippelfoundation.org.
