HealthVine Community Engagement
Community Engagement Connects Providers, Members and HealthVine
As a pediatric accountable care organization, HealthVine is in the unique role of assuming responsibility for the healthcare of thousands of children and young adults without being a direct provider of care. Developing and sustaining relationships with community providers and organizations who provide care to HealthVine members is critical to help identify members who may benefit from extra support from HealthVine Care Management and to identify opportunities for support, shared learnings, and interventions that can amplify the care members receive from providers.
HealthVine’s Community Engagement program is the front door to HealthVine and serves as the cultivator and sustainer of these relationships to help create a network of partners aligned to improve the health and well-being of children and youth in Southwest Ohio.
What We Do
The HealthVine Community Engagement team serves as ambassadors on behalf of HealthVine to community primary care providers, behavioral health entities, delegated members, contracted insurance partners, schools and community benefit organizations (CBOs) by:
- Cultivating and sustaining relationships with key stakeholders
- Connecting stakeholders to resources and each other as well as providing education on how to leverage support and tools
The team supports HealthVine’s goal to improve the health of youth and their caregivers, reduce disparities within the Greater Cincinnati region and expand HealthVine’s relationships with partners who regularly interact with kids and adolescents who may be HealthVine members.
How We Do It
Developing a Network of Partners
HealthVine aims to foster mutually beneficial relationships with community providers by providing and promoting innovative tools and resources with the goal of improving care and health outcomes for HealthVine members and the overall community. While the Community Engagement team looks to share information about HealthVine Care Management services and supports to all community practices, the team specifically promotes additional tools and resources to community providers who are interested in joining the HealthVine partner network more formally.
To support these collaborative partnerships, the Community Engagement team works with the Cincinnati Children’s Information Services department. Together, the teams work to provide access to a suite of Epic-based population health tools within Epic Link and Healthy Planet. To manage the care of their entire patient populations, HealthVine partner practice users can use these tools to view:
- Care team information
- Recent emergency department visits and admissions
- HealthVine care management specialty program information for members
The Community Engagement Team also supports productive partnerships by connecting and educating partners about:
- Access to quality improvement education and training opportunities, such as the opportunity to join a HealthVine-supported regional learning network and other quality improvement initiatives to support the closure of care gaps
- Availability of care management support through the coordinated efforts of nurse care managers, social workers, practice liaisons and community health workers
Reaching Members in the Community
Participation in community and public forums also presents prime opportunities for HealthVine to establish new partnerships. In fact, since Spring 2022, the Community Engagement team has increased its participation in public events with local community partners, such as the African Professionals Network, as well as partnering internally with multiple Cincinnati Children’s programs and departments, including the Imagination Library and the Ambulatory Care Management team. They have built a robust partnership with the Cincinnati Children’s Community Relations team to engage and participate in multiple events led by their team, including a new, longer-term partnership for community engagement within Adams County.
Fostering relationships with community benefit organizations and partners helps to increase awareness about HealthVine services and supports more broadly in the community and provides another channel for members to connect with the HealthVine team.
Our Impact
To date, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, much of the Community Engagement team’s work has been completed via phone, virtual meetings and webinars. Even with the complexities of the year, as of mid-2022 the team has already created an extensive partnership network that includes:
Community practice locations and growing
Primary care practice partners
Behavioral health organization partners
- 18 primary care practice groups, representing more than 60 practice locations and 500 providers
- 19 behavioral health organizations, encompassing nearly 40 locations across eight counties
- More than 25 community benefit organizations
The Community Engagement team has partnered to host or attend 10 community events to date—inclusive of health fairs, vaccine clinics and community festivals—reaching hundreds of HealthVine members in the community.
In addition to external partnerships, the Community Engagement team has also launched and sustained valuable internal partnerships throughout Cincinnati Children’s. Through these relationships, HealthVine is working on initiatives to further support shared goals that will positively impact member care and outcomes.
Where We are Going
In the coming months, HealthVine has plans for multiple community events, including health fairs and in-person visits with providers and community groups. They are looking forward to expanding their reach in rural locations in the Greater Cincinnati area and building on the early success of 2021.
“As the Community Engagement team, we’re ambassadors for HealthVine. We are liaisons with primary care providers and other community stakeholders. We must know a little bit about everything to bring people together with the right support resources. We’re the ones bringing information to practice organizations, and we’re the conduit of information back.”
Mona Mansour, MD, medical director, HealthVine Community Engagement
Success Story: Community Events
HealthVine supports members in the eight southwest counties of Ohio. As the Community Engagement team develops partnerships with community practices and organizations, finding ways to engage these stakeholders—and the HealthVine members they serve—equitably across the region is a core principle of HealthVine Community Engagement operations.
One of the counties HealthVine serves, Adams County, is considered a rural locale. While the relative volume of HealthVine members living in this area is not high compared to more densely populated areas, the availability of resources, transportation and challenges accessing services can greatly impact the health outcomes of members living in rural areas.
HealthVine, in lockstep with the Cincinnati Children’s Community Relations Team, other Children’s clinical departments and the Adams County Health Department, successfully planned and hosted a Back-to-School Health Fair event in Adams County on Aug. 13, 2022. Over one thousand attendees and volunteers were present at the event, which received glowing reviews from the community.
The HealthVine team looks forward to partnering with the Cincinnati Children’s Community Relations team for future community events and expanding relationships with community providers and organizations within the Adams County region.
