Dear Colleagues,
As another year begins, we want to pause and wish you all health and prosperity in 2017 and thank you for being a part of our success in 2016. We hope that in some small way we played a role in your success as well.
We continue our work with Ascension Health (AH) and have been amazed at the resilience and the capacity of their community-based ministries to seize and manage change. In collaboration with Sacred Heart Health System in Pensacola, Florida, they have successfully undertaken the monumental task of implementing consumer assistance programs for the Health Insurance Marketplaces serving the San Antonio and El Paso regions and received continued level funding while many other organizations across the U.S. were cut. Their teams are truly the experts in Texas, working hand-in-glove with Enroll America and other community-based coalitions to extend the insurance benefits of the ACA to the people of their communities.
Our friends and colleagues in rural Arkansas, The Daughters of Charity Services of Arkansas (an AH ministry), received a HRSA Office of Rural Health Policy Small Health Care Provider Quality Improvement grant and are embracing data-driven changes to redesign their primary care practice and improve the health of the people living in the southeast Arkansas Delta region. Their commitment to this process is inspiring!
As I write, two AH ministries each have a major Federal grant application pending and we are keeping our fingers crossed! We hope to have more good news to share in the coming months about the extraordinary work of these organizations.
At Nashua Community College in New Hampshire, the AMID program has transformed their advanced manufacturing program into a competency-based learning curriculum and is a model for other programs across the U.S. At the national TAACCCT conference in D.C. in 2016, NCC led three separate workshops featuring innovations in embedded technology, student navigation, and competency-based curriculum redesign. Congratulations – well done!
Close to our hearts is the work of the teams at the Mitchell Cancer Institute and the Family-Oriented Primary Health Care Center in the Mobile area. The leadership at both organizations are among our closest colleagues and we are grateful to them for the jobs they do every day to keep our community healthy.
And to our associates, Teresa Wilke, Roberta Schwartz, Charles Trainor, Carol Rainey, Noah Harp, Steve McIntosh, Jessi O’Neill, Crystal Madrilejos, Meredith Portman, Tasia Long, Damon Long, Andrew Herting and Wendy McEarchern, we are indebted to you for your expertise, dedication and plain old hard work – we are looking forward to our continued collaboration with each of you in 2017!
Sincerely,
Teresa