The Jewish Healthcare Foundation (JHF) has been steadily advancing its agenda in 2024 with priorities in each organizational focus area: patient safety, workforce development, women's health, senior and long-term care, HIV/AIDS, and teen mental health.
Its goals for the year include:
Patient Safety:
- Engage in follow-up activities in support of the National Patient Safety Board (NPSB) Act by securing co-sponsors from the House Energy and Commerce Committee and introducing a companion bill in the Senate with Democratic and Republican sponsors.
- Insert the NPSB bill into a larger healthcare package on price and transparency.
- Launch the Patient Safety Technology Challenge's Grand Challenge with the final showcase being held at a national venue.
- Secure national distribution for the documentary The Pitch: Patient Safety's Next Generation and support screenings in 24 innovation hubs.
- Establish the Pittsburgh region as the birthplace of the safety movement and national hub of safety technology. This message will be shared through related materials, videos and a documentary based on learning drawn from the Safety Innovation Summit.
- Organize the development of an application from Pittsburgh-based safety and technology assets in response to Pennsylvania's Department of Community and Economic Development (PA DCED) innovation funds and secure a commitment from Gov. Josh Shapiro's administration to increase the PA DCED innovation funds in the 2025-2026 state budget.
- Support the pilot testing of the University of Pittsburgh's Department of Biomedical Information clinical decision support technology, which aims to reduce preventable adverse drug events in skilled nursing facilities.
Workforce Development:
- Engage more than 100 fellows in the 2024 fellowships, including two Death and Dying Fellowships, a Patient Safety Fellowship, and a Salk Health Activist Fellowship.
- Recruit 65 new BH Fellows and kick off three new cohorts while continuing to develop the program curriculum.
- Host at least 35 training sessions for the year across five cohorts of BH Fellows participants.
Aging:
- Secure contracts with Community HealthChoices managed care organizations in partnership with the Department of Human Services for the PA Long-Term Care Quality Learning Network; and conduct 40 weekly best practice webinars to 600+ long-term care facilities across the state.
- Continue to lead the second phase of the Teaching Nursing Home Collaborative, a three-year goal of reaching and engaging all nursing schools and all nursing homes in the state and five additional states.
- Continue to develop new standards for clinical nurse placement in nursing homes, matching and screening tools for academic practice partnerships, and develop and distribute six modules on leadership in nursing homes.
- Serve as lead convener for the state Long Term Care Policy Group.
- Support the existing eight dementia-friendly communities and add two new communities, and reach 20,000 Dementia Friends statewide by adding 300 each month. The program will also seek to add a Dementia Friends Champion in every county in the state.
- Offer a statewide dementia-friendly webinar series, release the Dementia Friends PA "Five Key Messages" video; and continue to support BOLD (a Centers for Disease Control grant in partnership with the Allegheny County Health Department) with the development of an implementation plan for the healthcare sector and convene regional stakeholders.
- Explore and test new models of care for seniors at risk for or with early cognitive decline, including local tests of memory cafes for seniors and caregivers at the Jewish Community Center and Vintage Seniors Center, both in Pittsburgh.
Women's Health:
- Award remaining funds from the $9 million federal and state contract which includes funding for the: Healthy Food Access program, Maternal Innovation program, Pregnancy Test funds, doula training funds for the Doula Commission and doula programs for the incarcerated, and contingency funds for the Pennsylvania Perinatal Quality Collaborative Safe Sleep Initiative and Perinatal Behavioral Health Consultation and Access program.
- Engage at least sixty hospitals in the PA PQC's Initiatives to improve care for opioid use disorder, neonatal abstinence syndrome, sepsis, and safe sleep practices.
- Secure state funding to sustain the Perinatal Behavioral Health Consultation and Access Program beyond June 2025.
- Launch the PA Public-Private Perinatal Action Committee to adopt solutions to reduce maternal mortality, with funding from the HRSA State Mental Health Innovation Program.
- Support the PA Doula Commission, the PA Community Health Worker Collaborative, and the PA Department of Human Services in adding certified doulas and CHWs as billable providers.
- Following the JHF/ Salzburg Global Seminar, Women's Health Inequity as We Age: The Next Frontier, create subcommittees to focus on the many possibilities revealed by the seminar including developing a campaign to reframe caregiving; redesign medical and nursing curricula to focus on issues unique to women as they age; and to further inform medical research.
- Advance a focus on adequate long-term care insurance and financing, as well as inequity in systems and policy with research conducted by Brandeis University's Heller School.
HIV/AIDS:
- Renew contracts for all agencies providing services through the Ryan White Part B funding and release a new Regional Needs Assessment for the next three-year period.
- Create a new guideline for client food services designed by an on-staff dietitian.
- Restructure the grant monitoring process and launch a new request for proposals for regional and Minority Aids Initiative (MAI) services.
- Redesign MAI's provider collaborative and revamp the peer networking structure.
- Increase community engagement efforts by supporting a new Black HIV Awareness event, host Too Hot for July at a new location and the World AIDS Day celebration in December, support multiple Pride events throughout June, introduce an Allegheny County-wide PrEP education survey, and launch Ending the Pandemic Pennsylvania.
Teen Mental Health:
- Work to create a financing strategy to reimburse community organizations' mental health services.
- Support community organizations' workforce development to strengthen access to preventative mental health supports by leveraging the Teen Mental Health Collaborative and PA Youth Advocacy Network.
- Establish the PA Youth Advocacy Network as an advisory group for the Governor's Office, PA Department of Education, and legislators.
- Engage 34 teens from across the state in an eight-week, virtual series on developing advocacy skills.
- Facilitate Teen Mental Health Day proclamations across the state through county partnerships.
Jewish Community:
- Conduct research and planning with the Jewish Community Advisory Committee focused on the needs of older adults and teen mental health, evaluating comparative models and developing recommendations for the JHF Board regarding the allocation for aging and human services in the Jewish community.