February 4, 2008
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT:
Lisa Huddleston, Communications Manager
Health Improvement Collaborative of Greater Cincinnati
2100 Sherman Ave., Suite 100
Cincinnati, OH 45212
(513) 878-2869
Beth Reiter, Vice President for Communications & Marketing
The Greater Cincinnati Foundation
200 West Fourth Street
Cincinnati OH 45202
(513) 241-2880
Greater Cincinnati Foundation Awards $75,000 Grant to
Health Improvement Collaborative
Funding Will Support Effort to Improve
Chronic Illness Care, Engage Consumers
The Greater Cincinnati Foundation (GCF) has awarded the Health Improvement Collaborative of Greater Cincinnati $75,000 to support the Collaborative’s Cincinnati Aligning Forces for Quality (CAF4Q) initiative. CAF4Q is a broad-based effort that aims to improve the quality of care that those with chronic illnesses, such as diabetes, asthma, depression and heart disease receive in the Cincinnati area.
The GCF funding will benefit the project’s Consumer Engagement component, which will help to educate patients about what it means to receive best practices care for their chronic conditions and provide tools to assist them. The effort will also provide support for patients to better self-manage their own care. Research shows that those seeking care for many common chronic conditions receive best-practices care only about half the time. The project’s first area of focus is diabetes care.
The project’s consumer engagement component is currently conducting a study – led by consumer research experts at Procter & Gamble – to better understand how diabetes patients perceive their own quality of care. From that research the project’s Consumer Engagement Task Force will roll out messaging targeted to individuals with diabetes. The goal of the messaging is to drive behavior change – not only by patients, but also by the providers to whom they entrust their care.
In February 2007 Cincinnati was selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation as one of 14 regional health care markets prepared to accelerate improvement of care for chronically ill patients. A Collaborative project, CAF4Q pulls together consumer groups, health plans, physicians, employers, federally qualified health centers, Cincinnati’s regional health information network (HealthBridge, which is a Collaborative subsidiary) and others in a coordinated effort that will provide tools, data and infrastructure that can be used by all to improve care.
For more information about CAF4Q and its consumer engagement component, call (513) 531-0267 or visit www.the-collaborative.org.
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