One Health InstituteVolume 3 | August 2018
OHI Welcomes
The One Health Institute welcomes Blake Frederick, a graduate research assistant from the Colorado School of Public Health, to their team. He is working on a community-engaged research project that aims to reduce housing instability and toxic stress among mobile home park residents. Blake is in his first year of his master’s degree in Public Health with a concentration in Global Health and Health Disparities. Blake originates from Lincoln, Nebraska and attended the University of South Dakota for his undergraduate degree, where he studied health sciences and psychology. Following his undergraduate career Blake spent time providing community health promotion and disease prevention efforts in Ghana and as a mentor for at risk youth in Nebraska. Moving forward Blake hopes to continue his work as an advocate and ally to undeserved communities to uproot health inequities and social injustices locally and abroad. Outside of school and work he enjoys spending time with friends and family, hiking, meditating, swimming, and making music.
A Critical First Step in Addressing Complex Issues
In the United States, human health is served by a fragmented system of medical providers and clinicians focused on mental and physical health, along with community based social service organizations focused on the social and economic determinants of health. The individual organizations in this complex web of services each collect data on the people whom they serve, yet this information remains siloed behind organizations’ physical and virtual walls to the detriment of the people seeking care and the communities seeking to understand how to best serve their residents. This systemic fragmentation compromises care, degrades health, reduces value and increases costs at every level.
Several factors contribute to this fragmentation, including the proliferation of health and social services provided to individuals, the distribution of services across multiple organizations, specialization and industrialization in both medical and social services, the development of isolated digital platforms by service providers, and concerns about privacy and security of digital information. The result is that those dedicated to serve the needs of individuals unintentionally create complex, ineffective, siloed and often expensive pathways of care.
In order to address these problems of fragmentation we seek a 21st century version of the deeply connected community residents and services that existed in prior generations which enabled individuals in need to be supported and cared for by those who best know those needs, i.e. their neighbors. This 21st century vision must allow not only the connections to be expressed and evident, but must embody and protect the needs for privacy and agency of individuals. We call this, ‘enabling caring conversations within caring communities’. This project is directed at the challenges communities face in providing for the health, care and well being of their residents.
The One health Institute, in partnership with University of Colorado, the City of Longmont, CO and more than 50 community based organizations have joined forces to address cross-organizational data sharing at the intersection of the social determinants of health (SDOH), health care systems, city government, social and other services. We have begun this work in the city of Longmont, Colorado, by the invitation of the City Manager and the CEO of the newly built Longs Peak Hospital. This project epitomizes what the One Health Institute is trying to accomplish by bringing together a community to address an issue that is important and relevant to all. It is this “partnership” that is required to truly address complex problems.
The broader impacts of our project are: 1) creation of a flexible, federated health and social care information infrastructure in two Colorado communities that supports “conversations of care” among stakeholders (e.g., between residents and care providers, among a team of care providers, etc.); 2) coordinated, cross-organizational health and social care for community residents resulting in improved service delivery and decreased duplication of services; 3) incorporation of community values through local governance with a foundation for more effective management and planning for community health and social care; and 4) dissemination of the socio-technical approach and flexible infrastructure to other communities
One Health + Students
Serving students is a vital part of the One Health Institute’s mission. Several exciting new developments are deepening our commitment to this mission.The One Health Club reaches a wider array of students, including undergraduate and graduate students, across all eight colleges.
The club regularly hosts events that help students be “More than their Major,” delivering content around facilitation, storytelling, outbreak investigation, and honeybee medicine, among many other topics.
How do I get involved?
Want to be a member? An officer? Got a great idea for the future of transdisciplinary education? Check out our web page or email [email protected].
Where in the World is One Health?
Melissa McHale, Program Leader for Urbanization and Health, co-directed a study abroad experience in South Africa, with her husband and CSU professor, David Bunn. The course, “Communities and Conservation” explores the complex challenges of balancing human, environmental, and animal health in one of the most biodiverse areas in the world: Kruger National Park and the surrounding UNESCO Kruger to Canyons Biosphere Reserve. The region is also home to 2 million people, many living in extreme poverty. Now understanding that conservation and people do not necessarily have to be at odds with one another, the 17 inspiring young students are starting a non-profit based at CSU. They aim to support communities in need so that biodiversity, both wild and tame, can also thrive in the future.
