Webinars:
Academic Partnerships to Foster Multidirectional Learning and Reinforce our Health Center Workforce
Partnerships focusing on improving the health of individuals and communities through alliances among academic associations and health centers are essential to develop workforce innovation projects, serve as a conduit for public health workforce activities, and enhance population health education for medical, nursing, and public health students. This webinar explored the academic partnerships developed by a health center in San Diego, CA, and how these practices helped to recruit, train, and retain its workforce.
Building Resilience in the Midst of a Pandemic: What Health Care Workers and Leaders Can Do During the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 crisis has required health centers to focus on the challenges of achieving effective healthcare delivery during shortages of staff, equipment and funding. A lot of energy has been devoted to the urgent and critical need for personal protective equipment, the impending lack of respirators and tests, and the pressure on health centers to help “flatten the curve.” This crisis has left little time to address the impact of workplace and personal stressors on providers and other staff as they try to balance the fear of contracting the virus while carrying a heavy, complex workload. There is a real risk of a mental health crisis facing health care workers on the front lines of this pandemic. This webinar provided tips and recommendations for leadership, clinical and non-clinical staff working at health center clinical sites on how to create a healthy environment and cope with anxiety, depression and other behavioral disorders caused by COVID-19 (SARS-CoV2).
Building Value and Return On Investment in Housing and Health Partnerships
Building and maintaining effective community partnerships is a critical component of health center management and community involvement. Local partners help integrate important stakeholders into organizational processes and empower health centers to better understand and care for the communities they serve. But can health centers design and evaluate their partnerships? In this webinar, we reviewed tools and procedures for designing, evaluating, and strengthening community partnerships with a focus on pragmatic, practical and innovative solutions.
Community Health Worker (CHW) Workforce Development: Methodologies for CHW Use in Addressing the SDOH in Vulnerable Populations
Evidence increasingly emphasizes the importance of the role of Community Health Workers (CHWs) in supporting the Social Determinants of Health (SDOH) in vulnerable populations. This is particularly true for health and housing partnerships and their associated supports. In this webinar, Dr. Kevin Lombardi from NCHPH, Jason Amirhadji from HUD and our FQHC partners at Albion Community Health Centers discussed the frameworks, methodologies and promising practices that guide efficient, effective and person-centered care using CHWs.
Coping with Stress and Compassion Fatigue in Health Center Settings Webinar Series
Although the COVID-19 pandemic exacerbated stress symptoms in primary care settings, a healthcare professional may face stress on the job under usual conditions due to long shifts, competing responsibilities, and witnessing or hearing about difficult patient experiences. The National Center for Health in Public Housing hosted webinars that explained how compassion fatigue affects all health care workers, how to determine the signs and symptoms of compassion fatigue and provided management and self-help tools to help negate and avoid re-occurrence of severe fatigue.
In this webinar series, NCHPH also explored strategies and ideas to understand the importance of manifesting safety and self-compassion, learn how taking a resiliency and design thinking approach will allow us to navigate crisis and uncertainty, and practice the tools to develop wellness in ourselves and those we serve alongside throughout this challenging time.
Healthy Together: A Toolkit for Health Center Collaborations with HUD-Assisted Housing and Community-Based Organizations
This webinar by NCHPH and NNCC walked through an updated resource toolkit for partnerships with organizations, e.g., Public Housing Agencies, managing current HUD-Assisted housing programs, including Public Housing, Housing Choice Voucher, Multifamily, and resident services programs, including FSS, ROSS, Jobs Plus and Connect Home; as well as partnerships with other community-based organizations. It illustrated how health center staff can (a) identify housing partners, (b) create common language and goals to ensure partnership success, and (c) sustain partnerships over time.
Preparing the Health Center Workforce for the Post COVID-19 Era
The first priority during the COVID-19 pandemic was crisis response and emphasizing health, safety, and essential services. Now is the time for health centers to turn their attention toward concerns over staffing shortages in primary care, which is a public health crisis. This webinar was intended for health centers to discuss strategies to address the evolving staffing shortage challenges after COVID-19.
Secondary Traumatic Stress Identification, Mitigation and Improving Work Satisfaction for HC Staff During the COVID-19 Pandemic
This webinar educates staff on the concept of traumatic stress. It identifies terms, risk factors, and symptoms associated with compassion fatigue/secondary traumatic stress and burnout. The concept of self-care is introduced, and participants learn about building skills that can mitigate traumatic stress responses and improve work satisfaction and resilience.
Strategies to Improve Staff Retention in Health Center Settings
The rate of staff turnover at health center facilities is staggering and was exacerbated by the complexities and stressful circumstances created by the COVID-19 pandemic. Given the important implications of staff turnover, health centers have made significant attempts to understand its underlying reasons and devise solutions to decrease it. This webinar explored many strategies to improve staff retention in health center settings.
The COVID-19 Pandemic and the Health Center Workforce: Challenges and Solutions
More than 2 years after the first cases of COVID-19 were reported in the U.S., the pandemic continues to affect communities across the country and has pushed our health centers to the brink. Throughout the pandemic, health centers and their workforces have remained on the front lines mobilizing resources to ensure access to care for the patients and communities they serve. Despite increasing demand for health care services, health centers indicate a critical shortage of staff necessary to meet that demand. Burnout, stress, depression, etc. have eroded our healthy workforce. This Facebook Live session discussed workforce challenges and how to navigate these challenges.
The Impact of EHR Use on Health Center Staffing and Productivity
With the evolution of technology and the growth of Health Center Programs in the United States, the use of Electronic Health Record (EHR) technology to improve the provision of patient care in a Health Center setting has grown tremendously in recent years. However, At least 70% of physicians using EHRs continue to attribute their administrative burdens to their EHR use. A recent research Report from GWU Health Workforce Research Center shows how the introduction of new technology influences staffing models, staff roles and workflow, and how these changes in turn influence productivity, coordination between providers and quality of care. This webinar will present the recent study conducted by GWU and its findings, and will provide the perceptions of EHRs effects on staffing and productivity from a Public Housing Primary Care Program Perspective.
Using Technology to Improve Access to Health Care
Electronic communication, such as emails, patient portals or text messaging, can be a useful tool in the practice of medicine and can facilitate communication within a patient-physician relationship. Throughout healthcare, there has been a recent push for electronic communications to be used more frequently to improve quality of care. This webinar explored the different technologies and devices used by two Health Centers to improve their communications with patients, their access to care, provided examples and lessons learned.
Learning Collaboratives:
Addressing COVID-19’s Impact on Health Centers’ Finance and Operations and Response Planning for Future COVID-19 Outbreaks and Other Emergencies
This learning collaborative guides participants through the challenges and solutions for addressing the financial and operational impacts of COVID-19 on health centers serving residents of public housing and other underserved communities, with an emphasis on applied response planning for future emergencies.
Building Value and Return on Investment in Housing and Health Partnerships
This learning collaborative from NCHPH and National Nurse-Led Care Consortium (NNCC) will guide health center staff through practical steps to help build value and return on investment in their current health center and housing authority partnerships. The learning collaborative consists of four modules that discuss strategies, case studies, and promising practices to increase the impact of partnership activities, ultimately improving the health and social outcomes for residents of public housing. The modules will discuss how to optimize the health center workforce and resources, evaluate existing and developing partnerships, and measure and improve their impact.
COVID-19 Pandemic: Interventions and Challenges in Public Housing Primary Care
During this call, NCHPH and PHPC Health Centers discussed some of the most pressing needs for PHPCs in response to COVID-19. Health Centers shared their best practices to prevent COVID-19 infections among health center staff and their current patient management mechanisms. Other topics of discussion also included HUD guidance, community collaborations, challenges and training and technical assistance needs.
Culturally Competent Care Learning Collaborative
To assist Health Centers in the adoption of the CLAS Standards and to equip providers with the competencies that will enable them to better treat the increasingly diverse population, NCHPH will be offering a 4-part learning collaborative. The interactive sessions will cover the fundamentals of cultural competency, language access, and building community partnerships through a combination of case studies and didactic learning.
Health in Public Housing Advisory Group Call October 2019
In this call, NCHPH and the Advisory Group discussed HRSA priorities, increasing access to care and other important topics for Public Housing Primary Care.
Improving Cultural Competency for Behavioral Health Professionals Serving Residents of Public Housing
Behavioral health services form a crucial part in providing quality health care services, particularly to populations of diverse cultural backgrounds living in public housing. Behavioral health services that adhere to cultural competency have shown to engender more positive health outcomes such as better adherence to medications and treatments, building trust between healthcare providers and their patients, and has contributed to the creation of more sustainable ways of providing care to patients overall.
To assist Public Housing Primary Care (PHPC) Health Centers grantees in increasing their capacity to provide quality behavioral health services to patients from diverse cultural backgrounds, NCHPH will be conducting a 5-part learning collaborative. This learning collaborative will focus in helping behavioral health professionals increase cultural and linguistic competency.
Supporting Implementation of Smoking Cessation Programs in Public Housing Primary Care Settings 2020
This Learning Collaborative aimed to identify barriers to implementation of and strategies to establish smoking cessation programs in primary care settings through a series of four sessions: a didactic webinar, covering the behavioral aspects of cessation counseling, the FDA approved medications for cessation and some basic motivational interviewing techniques, and a subsequent three learning collaborative sessions, detailing how to conduct each counseling session whether they are individual or group. NCHPH provided a written protocol booklet to be used as a guide during actual sessions.
Supporting Implementation of Smoking Cessation Programs in Public Housing Primary Care Settings 2021
This NCHPH Learning Collaborative discussed ways to debunk the myth that smoking is an effective way to deal with stress, enumerated various proven stress management techniques, in depth, that can be used to maintain a quit, and discussed how to successfully teach these techniques to patients.
Publications:
Collection of Promising Practices on Health Center and Housing Partnerships
NCHPH has catalogued promising practices on health center and housing partnerships that were identified during T/TA activities. Some promising practices in this publication include collaboration strategies to address COVID-19, flu vaccination efforts, smoking cessation, access to health care, and more.
Impact of COVID-19 On Public Housing Primary Care (PHPC) Health Center Patients and Operations
This publication by NCHPH highlights findings from a survey distributed to public housing residents assessing the effects that COVID-19 has had on Public Housing Primary Care (PHPC) patients and health center operations.
Healthy Together: A Toolkit for Health Center Collaborations with HUD-Assisted Housing and Community-Based Organizations
This toolkit by NCHPH and NNCC provides information and resources for health center staff to partner and collaborate more effectively with their local housing authorities and with other providers serving residents of public housing and other low-income housing.