Key community stakeholders met last week to kick-off Sinai Urban Health Institute’s new research initiative, “Community Health Worker Programs in Chicago’s Health Care Institutions: Research and Evaluation.”  Funded by a 2 year grant from The Lloyd A. Fry Foundation, the study aims to evaluate the work of Community Health Workers (CHWs) in health care settings on the Westside of Chicago.

“We’re thrilled about this new grant. While the literature is rich and there are multiple groups working on CHW issues, both locally and nationally, none have tried to establish a schema for evaluation of CHW models. Benchmarks and measures used to evaluate CHW models are not cross-cutting and tend to be specialized and program specific, due in part to the dramatically different CHW job functions, intervention approaches, and health issues. We aim to clearly delineate CHW effectiveness and best practices in terms of evidence-based science. To our knowledge, there is no study of the proposed kind that has been conducted, though its importance is undeniable,” said Melissa Gutierrez Kapheim, Epidemiologist and Project Director. Over the next two years, Melissa, along with the project’s research assistant Jamie Campbell, will seek to collaborate with health care centers, CHW stakeholders, and CHWs themselves.

Helping Her Live's new initiative, the "My Pink Agenda" kiosk, was featured in the Humboldt Park Portal.  Click here to view the story.

March 14, 2011

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

The United States Department of Housing and Urban Development last week announced that Sinai Health System was awarded over $500,000 as part of an $8 million initiative on asthma intervention and protecting children from health hazards in their homes.  The Sinai award reflects a primary partnership between Sinai Urban Health Institute (SUHI) and the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA).

For over a decade, SUHI has successfully worked on asthma intervention in Chicago, one of the US cities hardest hit by asthma.  The HUD-sponsored program, “Helping Children Breathe and Thrive” (HCBT), will work with residents living in CHA housing that is in close proximity to the medical center, collectively representing 541 predominantly African American households and 556 children ages 0 – 17.  Communities such as these on Chicago’s west side are disproportionately affected with one in four children having asthma. 

The two primary objectives of the HCBT are: 1) to decrease asthma-related morbidity and 2) to improve families’ quality of life. Additionally, there are sub-objectives to:

• Decrease the frequency of asthma symptoms.
• Decrease urgent health resource utilization – going to emergency room or urgent care centers.
• Decrease activity-limited days – missing school, not being able to carry out customary activities, guardian-caregiver missing work to care for child with asthma.
• Decrease the number of asthma triggers children are exposed to in the home (smoking reduction and relocation).
• Improve asthma-related knowledge of child’s primary caregiver.
• Improve caregivers’ confidence they can manage their children’s asthma.
• Work with CHA to improve community capacity, knowledge of healthy homes.

Community Health Workers

Asthma interventions will primarily be carried out by Community Health Workers who will visit the households of children with asthma on six occasions over the course of a year. Those Community Health Workers will be recruited from the two CHA program buildings.  SUHI has a strong record of successfully doing such recruitment, training and supervision for both diabetes and asthma, and has validated the lay health educator model - which contends that Community Health Workers from the neighborhoods where health interventions are being implemented are better accepted and trusted by area residents than health workers not from the community.

In addition to specific asthma intervention processes designed for each participating child, Community Health Workers will conduct comprehensive environmental assessments in participating households, teaching “green” cleaning as well as the importance of controlling pests and not smoking within the residence. The Community Health Workers will hold education sessions in both CHA buildings and all residents will have opportunities to learn about healthy homes, navigating the healthcare system, and integrated pest management.

Thorough epidemiological evaluations will be conducted on all intervention processes.

On balance, HCBT will improve the lives of enrolled children with asthma and their families plus provide health education for all CHA residents in participating buildings. 

About Sinai Health System

For over 90 years the hospitals and caregivers of Sinai Health System have provided medical care and social services to communities in west and south Chicago.  Situated in a five square block area on the  west side of the City of Chicago, the Sinai Hospitals, include Mount Sinai Hospital, Sinai Children’s Hospital, and Schwab Rehabilitation Hospital offering general acute, specialty, and rehabilitation care.  Sinai Community Institute provides social service outreach for the lifestyle issues that contribute to health while Sinai Urban Health Institute researches the prevalence of chronic disease in Chicago neighborhoods and how to reduce health disparities.  Collectively these organizations and the caregivers who staff them support the Sinai vision of being the national model for urban health care.

About the Chicago Housing Authority and the Plan for Transformation

The CHA was created by state legislation in 1937 to create and expand affordable housing opportunities for low-income families and seniors. In 1999, the City of Chicago began a multi-billion dollar, 15-year initiative called the Plan for Transformation to renovate or replace the CHA’s entire portfolio of 25,000 public housing units throughout the city. Currently, more than 80 percent of the units have been completed, including the comprehensive renovation of the entire senior developments and scattered-site stock. The Plan is collaboration among the CHA, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, the City of Chicago and its many agencies, area businesses and non-profit organizations.

Sinai Pediatric Asthma Program chosen as finalist for 19^th annual Monroe E. Trout Premier Cares Award

CHICAGO(February 2, 2011)– Sinai Pediatric Asthma Program of Chicago, has been recognized by the Premier healthcare alliance and its member hospitals for serving nearly 1,000 children with asthma and their families since inception.

Since 2000, the Sinai Pediatric Asthma Program has implemented four successful pediatric asthma interventions using community health educators and/or case managers and well-defined study designs. Through these efforts, they collected extensive process measures describing different aspects of the community health workers’ activities, such as number of home visits, time spent in visits, activities during the visit, time spent on medication instruction, and referrals made. They have also collected, analyzed, demonstrated improvements, and disseminated results in outcome measures such as emergency room visits, hospitalizations, quality of life indices, and cost-effectiveness.

Sinai Pediatric Asthma Program was one of six organizations nationally recognized as a finalist for the 19th annual Monroe E. Trout Premier Cares Award. The Cares Award, sponsored by Premier and its member hospitals, honors exemplary efforts by not-for-profit organizations to improve access to healthcare for the underserved.

"It is an honor to be recognized for a decade of work on eliminating asthma disparities in one of the county's most vulnerable communities. Sinai Urban Health Institute’s work in this area exemplifies our commitment, and that of our parent organization, Sinai Health System, to serving as a national model for the delivery of urban health care," said Helen Margellos-Anast, Senior Epidemiologist and Program Director.

Representatives from the Sinai Pediatric Asthma Program were presented with a cash award of $24,000 during Premier’s annual Governance Education Conference, which took place in Hollywood, Fla., January 31-February 2.

A panel of national healthcare leaders selects the winner and five finalists, which all receive cash awards for use in further improving their programs. The Cares Award program spotlights these community-based healthcare initiatives and helps other organizations learn to replicate these best practice programs by featuring information about them on the Cares Award website.

“These organizations represent the spirit of what social responsibility truly means,” said Susan DeVore, Premier’s president and CEO. “Each program truly makes a difference in their communities by helping medically underserved populations gain access to healthcare and knowledge that they may not otherwise receive. The Premier healthcare alliance is honored to recognize them for transforming the way healthcare is delivered.”

This year’s Cares Award recipient is MemoryCare™(www.memorycare.org) of Asheville, N.C., which helps families successfully care for loved ones with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia.

About the Premier Cares Award

Premier has presented the Cares Award annually since 1992, when it was created by Dr. Monroe E. Trout, former CEO of American Healthcare Systems, one of Premier’s heritage organizations. The program has provided more than $3 million to more than 100 organizations nationwide. The Cares Award winner receives a cash grant of $70,000, while five runners-up receive $24,000 each. The competition is open to not-for-profit organizations that have been in existence for more than two years, are providing creative solutions to health status improvement, can provide documentation of outcomes and impact on a specific population, and have programs that can be replicated in other communities.

About the Premier healthcare alliance, Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award recipient

Premier is a performance improvement alliance of more than 2,400 U.S. hospitals and 72,000-plus other healthcare sites using the power of collaboration to lead the transformation to high quality, cost-effective care. Owned by hospitals, health systems and other providers, Premier maintains the nation's most comprehensive repository of clinical, financial and outcomes information and operates a leading healthcare purchasing network. A world leader in helping deliver measurable improvements in care, Premier works with the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services and the United Kingdom's National Health Service North West to improve hospital performance. Headquartered in Charlotte, N.C., Premier also has an office in Washington. http://www.premierinc.com. Stay connected with Premier onFacebook, Twitter and YouTube.

Urban Health: Combating Disparities with Local Data, edited by Steven Whitman, Ami M. Shah and Maureen R. Benjamins, has been released and is available for purchase.  Click here to view the flyer.  Click here to view the Table of Contents.  Click here to read the NYT article discussing the book.  The book is available for order at Oxford website and Amazon.  The Sinai Urban Health Institute will also have copies available for sale.  Please contact Maria Natal at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it  or 773-257-5960 to place an order.

SUHI Researcher Featured in Story on NPR-Chicago Public Radio WBEZ

Click here for the story

LISC/Chicago recently featured Block by Block North Lawndale Diabetes Community Action Program. Block by Block builds on community strengths to increase the early detection of diabetes and involves an entire neighborhood in efforts to enhance self-management by those with the disease. Neighborhood residents work as Diabetes Block Captains to conduct household screenings for diabetes and engage their neighbors in activities that promote diabetes self-management. Block by Block wants friends and neighbors talking about diabetes and working to make the community safer, improve access to quality foods and increase social cohesion and collective efficacy. Employing well-trained community health workers, the intervention aims to improve diabetes self-management in North Lawndale one block at a time.

Click here to read the article in LISC/Chicago.

SUHI's Helping Her Live Project was featured in a recent BET channel documentary discussing the breast cancer disparities in Chicago and ways to address this disparity.  Click here to view the documentary, or copy this web address http://www.bet.com/news/betgoespink/default and paste it in your browser.

Helping Her Live Coordinator Featured in La Raza

Giselle Vasquez, one of the coordinators of the Helping Her Live Project, was featured in La Raza newspaper.  The article covered topics such as access to mammogram screenings and treatment options for uninsured and undocumented women. To read more, click here.

The Sinai Urban Health Institute has been selected to receive the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) 2010 National Environmental Leadership Award in Asthma Management for their exemplary efforts to deliver high-quality asthma care that includes environmental controls.

"It is an honor to be recognized for a decade of work on eliminating asthma disparities in one of the county's most vulnerable communities. Sinai Urban Health Institute’s work in this area exemplifies our commitment, and that of our parent organization, Sinai Health System, to serving as a national model for the delivery of urban health care," said Helen Margellos-Anast, Senior Epidemiologist and Program Director.

This award recognizes stellar asthma management programs that are using innovative approaches to improve patient health and quality of life. Sinai Urban Health Institute is one of only five programs to receive this prestigious award this year. Award winners are recognized for demonstrating that comprehensive asthma care with a strong environmental component can dramatically improve health outcomes for people with asthma.

Whereas 13% of children nationally might experience pediatric asthma, in the communities on the west side of Chicago, one in four children (25%) suffer from asthma as revealed by the Sinai Improving Community Health Survey (www.suhichicago.org).

“EPA is recognizing Sinai Urban Health Institutefor their outstanding efforts to reduce the burden of asthma for families in their communities,” said Mike Flynn, Director of EPA’s Office of Radiation and Indoor Air. “This program is achieving positive environmental and health outcomes, and EPA applauds their innovation and dedication to controlling asthma.” 

EPA will present the award to the Sinai Urban Health Instituteat the Communities in Action National Asthma Forum in Washington, D.C., on June 17, 2010.

Since 2000 the Sinai Urban Health Institute has been to try to reduce the burden of asthma on the communities which the Sinai Health System serves. In September 2008,with funding from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Sinai Urban Health Institute initiated its latest and most comprehensive initiative: Healthy Home, Healthy Child: The Westside Children’s Asthma Partnership (HHHC). HHHC focuses exclusively on children with poorly controlled asthma living on the Westside of Chicago. At the heart of the HHHC model is a Community Health Worker (CHW), who makes six home visits over the course of a year with the goal of teaching the child and his/her family how to better manage asthma.The home visits focus on improving asthma management by educating caregivers and children to better manage asthma medically, while also addressing the disproportionate presence of asthma triggers in the home environment. CHEs make referrals to Housing Advocates from the Metropolitan Tenants Organization, pro bono attorneys from Health & Disability Advocates, and social workers from the Sinai Community Institute for assistance in addressing issues beyond the CHW’s expertise. The program objective is to significantly impact asthma-related measures of morbidity, urgent health resource utilization and quality of life. We do not know how to prevent children from acquiring asthma, but we do know how to help them control their disease so that they can live full and productive lives. It is hoped the HHHC will help children control their asthma so that it does not control them, and so that all the possibilities of life will be within their reach.

For more information about EPA’s National Environmental Leadership Award in Asthma Management, visit http://www.epa.gov/asthma.