The Jewish Healthcare Foundation has been steadily advancing its agenda in 2023 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:
- Establishing the National Patient Safety Board at the federal level with a focus on the public-private research-and-development team to identify injury and harm, study the pre-cursors and causes, and adopt solutions.
- Completing a feature-length documentary to highlight patient safety innovation and Challenge winners.
- Planting a flag in Pittsburgh to become a global tech hub for autonomous patient safety solutions through its Regional Autonomous Patient Safety (RAPS) initiative by:
- Holding a launch event February 24 at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU).
- Funding the Initiative for Patient Safety Research at CMU and the development of technologies at the Pitt Department of Biomedical Informatics to reduce medication errors.
- Forming a Regional Advisory and Patient Safety R&D Salons.
- Catalyzing early stages of patient safety R&D with seed grants.
Workforce Development:
- Helping to launch the first three cohorts of the BH Fellows program, a new Allegheny County Department of Human Services program supporting frontline behavioral health workers in critical service areas.
- Launching a statewide healthcare workforce initiative to advance policy priorities to create and retain healthcare jobs.
- Holding two Death & Dying Fellowships: one in the winter for graduate students and one in the fall for professionals in the field.
- Establishing a Patient Safety Fellowship built on a competition from the Patient Safety Technology Challenge.
Women's Health:
- Supporting midwifery modernization policies and reimbursement for doulas.
- Serving as fiscal agent for the dissemination of over $9 million from the PA Department of Human Services for Maternal and Child Health.
- Serving as statewide convener of funders and advocates for Women's Reproductive Health.
- Reconstituting the WHAMglobal board with new experts from around the world focused on "Women's Health Inequity for Older Women."
- Sustaining support for and collaboration across community-based organizations in the Pittsburgh Safer Childbirth City through the Community Fund Shared Resource Hub.
- Expanding the scope of the PA PQC across the continuum of care and (e.g., increasing the percent of hospitals with a protocol to close the loop on the referral status with the post-discharge services and supports from 30% to 50%).
- Bringing best practices to 600 nursing facilities in Pennsylvania through the PA LTC Quality Improvement Learning Network.
- Piloting Dementia-Ready strategies to attend to the growing number of persons in Pennsylvania living with dementia and their caregivers.
- Taking the lead in new statewide policy efforts for Moving Forward (NASEM Report on Nursing Facility Quality), the first in the nation as a pilot.
- Increasing market rates to provide sustainable housing for eligible HIV positive clients.
- Working to increase access to HIV testing in the primary care settings to reduce new infections by 95%.
- Convening youth-led advocacy meetings with state and local policymakers focused on teen mental health awareness day, excused mental health days, and improved access to school-based resources.
- Developing a model for community-initiated care for teen mental health with community organizations participating in the collaborative and with health system partners.
- Celebrating and supporting the launch of The Beacon, a teen mental health space by The Friendship Circle with funding from JHF.
- Facilitating a 2023 PA Youth Advocacy Series which convened 20 participants throughout the state and engaged youth leaders in every aspect of planning and facilitation.