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Global to Local Health Care: A Seattle-King County Initiative to Improve the Health of Its Neediest Citizens
By Nora Quiason
Swedish Medical Center, Seattle’s largest hospital chain is celebrating its 100th year. Today, they introduced an innovative template for improving health care delivery to the uninsured and underinsured. They call it Global to Local Health Care, a partnership with various health care and community leaders in the Seattle area designed to use proven effective techniques of health care delivery systems in developing countries to improve health care in local communities. To this end, the hospital has committed 1M dollars over a 4 year period to fund initial projects. It is a daring and exciting concept. Two years in the making, leaders of various agencies in the Seattle area met to brainstorm how to improve the health of citizens in the underserved areas of Seattle-King County area. Spearheaded by Swedish Medical Center CEO, Dr. Rod Hochman, committed participants of the initiative include Healthpoint, a community health center serving low income, uninsured minority, immigrant, refugee and homeless families, Washington Global Health Alliance whose members include the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, a center for global health innovations, and the Public Health Department of Seattle-King County, one of the largest public health departments in the nation serving some 1.9 million residents. They have found that some King County communities live in conditions as impoverished as neighborhoods in the poorest developing country. The Seattle area is home to the wealthiest and the poorest in the country. While Americans have one of the world’s best medical technologies and spend the most in health care in the world, sadly, its people are not the healthiest. While overall health care in the country is good, it does not speak to the wide range of best to poor health outcomes. Health care delivery does not necessarily have to be tied to health insurance. People with good health insurance are able to access the best medical technologies while the unemployed and uninsured postpone needed medical visits. David Fleming of the Public Health Department of Seattle-King County stresses that there are unacceptable disparities in health care right in the county’s backyard as is true elsewhere in the nation. It has been proven that global initiatives in the poorest countries are successful but that no one agency can do it alone, that the community itself must identify its needs and that grassroots efforts involving residents have the best outcome. Global health initiatives also found that the health of citizens is tied closely to its economic health and that in order to improve the health of a community, there must be a corresponding effort to elevate the economic status of its people. Thus Global to Local Health Care aims to take lessons learned from best practices all over the world into the poorest local community. For instance, it hopes to find collaborators who can help local grocers buy refrigeration systems so they can stock more produce, fund local one stop resource centers where citizens can access information, health care, legal, vocational and others, provide transportation, utilize existing agencies such as the local food banks and health care providers to a collaborative holistic provision of services. Global to Local Health Care is confident that this template can easily be reproduced in other communities as well. Global to Local Health Care is hope inspiring in a time of unemployment, lost health insurance, and drastic cuts in government subsidy. When one’s choice is between buying medicine or putting food on the table, it is a no brainer what the choice will be. Having lost access to their health care provider, many frequent high cost emergency rooms for non-emergent conditions. Health care delivery need not involve traditional physicians and nurses alone. Developing countries have successfully utilized health educators, tribal councils, and community workers to educate citizens on healthy living, identify and refer those who require medical intervention and facilitate improvement of living conditions. Like her project collaborators, Lisa Cohen of Washington Global Health Alliance wants to see “the rising tide lift all boats.”
Nora Quiason is a physician and an online book seller. She also writes articles on senior living, book reviews,health care and earth consciousness.
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Contributor's Note
Having worked in public psychiatry and painfully aware of the needs of what a former surgeon general calls the uninsured, uneducated and uninspired patient, I am always looking for initiatives that address this population.
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http://www.swedish.org/About/Swedish-News/New-Global-to-Local-Healthcare-Initiative-Launched
| http://www.pacifichealthsummit.org/downloads/global%20to%20local_Summit%20website.pdf
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Great stuff. Best of luck with it.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
I hope it works, too. Thanks.
Great intel Nora and I love the closing line, thank you!
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Thanks. I thought her words were just right, too.
It's great to see people helping people in these times of need, Nora. We seniors will have to go another year without an increase in our benefits, yet our medicare cost rose.
Some of us can still help ourselves, even in our Golden Years.
Thank you for sharing this story.
Keep up the good work.
Best wishes.
Frederick
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Thanks. It's really breaks your heart to go to the poorest communities in the richest country in the planet and see the living conditions people have live in.
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