Stakeholder Health: Insights from New Systems of Health
FaithHealth NC’s Teresa Cutts joined a group at Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center’s Bio-Tech Place on Monday to release a new book. Cutts (pictured below) is the co-editor, along with James Cochrane, of Stakeholder Health: Insights from New Systems of Health. Developed with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the book is a rich and detailed review of some of the best practices in the areas of community health improvement, as well as clinical and community partnerships.
The 11 chapters range from a crisp review of the social determinants or drivers of health to leadership for new partnerships between health systems and communities, relational information technology, community health navigation, financial aspects of partnering with community in a new “social return on investment” model, leadership, implementing resiliency models integrated across hospitals and the broader community.
The book is the result of a large collaboration of 44 contributors from 33 different organizations. “We had one or two lead writers for each chapter, making a more distributed model of writing,” says Cutts. Most of the contributors are connected to Stakeholder Health, a learning collaboration of over 50 health systems and other partners.
Like a handbook
“The book turned out to be a textbook on how to engage in community health improvement. As I worked with the chapter authors (and as I was writing too) I caught myself thinking, ‘I wished I’d had this book five years ago as a reference for our work in Memphis.’” Cutts was a member of the team that developed the “Memphis Model” that connects hundreds of congregations with the health needs of their members and neighbors.
The book centers on the question: How do you build a model for improving community health in you own neighborhood, city, or state? “The depth of the information is like a handbook,” says Cutts. “People can take certain elements from the chapters and begin to practice them in their own setting.” But the practices aren’t plug-and-play. “Our focus is that one size does not fit all. You have to see how you would apply, for example, the mapping chapter to see your assets. Each place will have its unique assets.”
While national (even international) in scope, the book shares many programs from North Carolina. Besides Cutts, contributors in this state include Doug Easterling, Gary Gunderson, Bryan Hatcher, Laura McDuffee, Jeremy Moseley, and Allen Smart.
“By collaborating with other organizations that support or conduct community health assessments, hospitals can maximize their resources and efforts for greater impact on health and well-being,” says Denise Koo of the CDC about the book. “This is an important time for sharing in-depth learning from numerous stakeholders working within health systems, to add to emerging field of community health improvement.”
To Order a Book online Click HERE! or come by the FaithHealth office of Wake Forest Baptist Medical Center.
