Moving Health Care Upstream

How Do You Build a Resilience Movement? Know when to lead, when to follow and when to partner

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Written by Wendy R. Ellis DrPH (c), MPH; Co-Principal Investigator & Project Director, Building Community Resilience Collaborative; Sumner Redstone Global Center for Prevention & Wellness; George Washington University

Disclaimer: Moving Health Care Upstream is a collaborative effort co-led by Nemours Children’s Health System (Nemours) and the Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities at the University of California- Los Angeles (UCLA). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nemours, UCLA or the Moving Health Care Upstream initiative.

We are now three years into the work of building a resilience movement, community by community across the country, and I am thrilled to announce a key addition to our Building Community Resilience family, Alive and Well Communities (AWC) based in the country’s heartland. AWC is a new partner who we will learn from and also support, and they mark an important point of growth in our work and the broader resilience movement. Together, we plan to broaden their resilience work regionally, beyond the individual cities where they currently operate: St. Louis, MO, Kansas City, MO and Kansas City, KS, which we are collectively calling “BCR MO-Kan.” [Read more…]

Sustaining Progress: The Building Community Resilience Policy and Advocacy Guide

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Written by Jeff Hild, Building Community Resilience

Disclaimer: Moving Health Care Upstream is a collaborative effort co-led by Nemours Children’s Health System (Nemours) and the Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities at the University of California- Los Angeles (UCLA). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nemours, UCLA or the Moving Health Care Upstream initiative.

At the Building Community Resilience (BCR) collaborative and network — based at the Redstone Center for Prevention and Wellness, George Washington University School of Public Health — we are working to improve the health and wellbeing of children, families and communities across the country. We do this by working to align systems to address the “Pair of ACEs” — adverse childhood experiences in the context of adverse community environments. Essential to our work is making targeted shifts in program, practice and policy arenas. Among our five BCR teams across the country, they are working, for example, to co-locate supportive social service programs where children and families are, they are shifting practice by implementing trauma-informed approaches in classrooms and pediatric offices, and they are beginning to engage elected officials and advocating for policy changes. [Read more…]

A community prevention approach to mental health can improve physical health outcomes as well

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Written by Larissa Estes, Program Manager, Prevention Institute.

Disclaimer: Moving Health Care Upstream is a collaborative effort co-led by Nemours Children’s Health System (Nemours) and the Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities at the University of California- Los Angeles (UCLA). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nemours, UCLA or the Moving Health Care Upstream initiative.

Over the last two decades, health leaders have increasingly come to recognize that the places we live, work, learn, play, and pray affect our physical health, such as our risk for diabetes or heart disease, or our ability to recover from illness. They have been less engaged, however, in applying this community prevention knowledge to influence mental health outcomes. [Read more…]

Defining an Accountable Community for Health (ACH) for Children and Families

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Written by Daniella Gratale and Debbie Chang, Nemours Children’s Health System

Disclaimer: Moving Health Care Upstream is a collaborative effort co-led by Nemours Children’s Health System (Nemours) and the Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities at the University of California- Los Angeles (UCLA). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nemours, UCLA or the Moving Health Care Upstream initiative.

Nemours is excited by the opportunity and potential that Accountable Communities for Health can bring to pediatrics. Following a meeting we co-convened with the Health, Medicine and Society Program of the Aspen Institute in 2016, Nemours authored a perspective that the National Academy of Sciences released today entitled Defining an Accountable Community for Health (ACH) for Children and Families. The perspective makes the case for optimizing health for children and families, beginning in the early years, presents a vision for the future, identifies core elements for an ACH for Children and Families model, and outlines unique considerations for policymakers and funders who could play a critical role in testing the model. [Read more…]

Why Community Resilience?

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Written by Wendy R. Ellis DrPH (c), MPH; Co-Principal Investigator & Project Director, Building Community Resilience Collaborative; Sumner Redstone Global Center for Prevention & Wellness; George Washington University

Disclaimer: Moving Health Care Upstream is a collaborative effort co-led by Nemours Children’s Health System (Nemours) and the Center for Healthier Children, Families & Communities at the University of California- Los Angeles (UCLA). The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Nemours, UCLA or the Moving Health Care Upstream initiative.

First in a series: The Dallas Story of Resilience Building

When we first introduced Building Community Resilience (BCR) a few years ago, skeptics wondered if our reach was too large. Others found our language over-simplified for the complexity of adverse childhood experience (ACEs) and toxic stress. Nonetheless, we were convinced that the public health issues that contribute to ACEs could not be met by one sector alone. It was and remains our steadfast belief that many of the factors contributing to health disparities and the lack of resilience can be mapped back to the lack of supportive buffers that promote health and wellbeing. Supportive buffers, such as well-performing schools, reliable public transportation, diverse neighborhood retail (i.e. grocery stores, banking, pharmacies, etc.), access to economic mobility, affordable housing, and health care, help a community bounce back from adversity, and provide the foundation for individuals to ‘bounce forward’. [Read more…]

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