HIP-Cuyahoga Partnership and Funding Announcement

As co-chairs for HIP-Cuyahoga, we are pleased to announce that with recent funding from the United Way of Greater Cleveland and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), HIP-Cuyahoga will engage in efforts to bridge the gap between health care and social services, and will dedicate resources to supporting and sustaining its backbone infrastructure and operations.
See below for more details.
Heidi Gullett and Greg Brown

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
HIP-Cuyahoga will partner to support efforts to bridge the gap between health care and social services
HIP-Cuyahoga will partner with the United Way of Greater Cleveland and others, in their efforts to establish an Accountable Health Communities (AHC) model in Greater Cleveland. An AHC is a Center for Medicare and Medicaid model to address the health-related social needs of Medicare and Medicaid beneficiaries through assessment, referral and community navigation services, leading to improved care delivery, enhanced quality of care, reduction of the total cost of care and inpatient and outpatient health care utilization. More information on the AHC can be found here.
To support this partnership, United Way of Greater Cleveland awarded the Cuyahoga County Board of Health (CCBH) $12,500 per year for four years for a total of $50,000, on behalf of HIP-Cuyahoga. Through this AHC collaboration, HIP-Cuyahoga will inform the gap analysis and quality improvement plan, as well as share information and highlight AHC efforts and accomplishments through various communications channels and community engagement efforts.
Grant award from the RWJF will help support and sustain HIP-Cuyahoga’s backbone infrastructure and operations
The CCBH received a grant of $75,000 from the RWJF Special Contributions Fund of the Princeton Area Community Foundation in January, 2018, following a recent visit by RWJF to the Greater Cleveland area. CCBH and several HIP-Cuyahoga partners had the opportunity to describe our collective efforts, share highlights of key outcomes and success, and communicate some of our challenges. One key challenge HIP-Cuyahoga faces moving forward is maintaining and sustaining backbone infrastructure and operations. The Cuyahoga County Board of Health has served as a key backbone organization and fiscal agent for HIP-Cuyahoga since its inception.
According to FSG-Collective Impact Forum, the lack of strong backbone infrastructure and support, is the number one reason that collective impact initiatives fail. Backbone organizations make a substantial investment in guiding vision and strategy, supporting aligned activities, establishment shared measurement practices, maintaining and guiding an equity frame, building public will, establishing trusting and ongoing communications, meaningfully engaging the community, mobilizing funding, and the list goes on. Developing a plan for sustaining HIP-Cuyahoga’s backbone infrastructure and operations remains a top priority moving forward.