Virginia Business Coalition on Health Working with Public Health
Summary
Virginia Business Coalition on Health (VBCH) has worked with community health initiatives involving the public health sector with a broad range of initiatives and with other stakeholders engaged in the programs. VBCH collaboration has included activities from dissemination of public health information to the business community, to running a program that provides training for professionals in prevention and early intervention of children's health, to being a partner through a sub grant with the Department of Health on a project focusing on the prevention of stroke and cardiovascular disease, and serving for two terms on a State Planning Grant (SPG) commission for "Covering the Working Uninsured". This work and leadership by VBCH support its mission to represent the business sector in solutions to improve health care access and quality and reduce cost.
About Virginia Business Coalition on Health
The Virginia Business Coalition on Health (VBCH) is a non-profit, founded in 1983 under the name of the Hampton Roads Health Coalition. Since 2006 it has since expanded Virginia-wide and has a membership of more than 70 purchasers — small, medium and large alike, in both the private and public sectors of communities throughout Virginia — representing more than 200,000 employees and their dependents. VBCH, a mixed-model coalition, is represented by at least 70% the 'employer' community, and with no more than 30% representing the provider community of hospitals, health plans, benefits professionals and the pharmaceutical industry ... believing that all parties working together provides the best solutions in health care quality and cost.
The Virginia Business Coalition is committed to improving the quality of health care. VBCH is a Virginia Roll-out Leader for The Leapfrog Group which publicly reports hospital quality and patient safety data, since 2003. VBCH also collects and compares data on nine health plans in Virginia through the eValue8 RFI Tool since 2006. Just recently, VBCH engaged two of its member businesses, City of Chesapeake Public Schools and Chesapeake Regional Medical Center in the implementation of Health Map RX, a diabetes care management program, for its' employees. VBCH engages in community quality improvement, education and communication, and workplace wellness and health promotion.
VBCH, through membership with the Stanford Heart Network at Stanford University, provides HeartBiz a cardiovascular risk identification, risk reduction and lifestyle intervention and modification program. Tools include a Cardiovascular Risk Assessment (CRA) for a heart attack or stroke in the next 5 to 10 years along with "personalized" tips and education for improving health with the ability to track risk reduction over time. In the VBCH pilot CVD study, member employer City of Virginia Beach City Public Schools and the consolidated City of Virginia Beach with their combined 16,000 employees participated in a primary prevention 3-month longitudinal study using the HeartBiz risk assessment tool, face-to-face clinical sessions and a nurse case-management model. Participants had to have two or more risk factors of the six CVD risk factors—smoking, high cholesterol, high blood pressure/stress, physical inactivity, overweight/obesity, and diabetes. Virginia Health Quality Center provided data analysis for the project which demonstrated the potential—based upon the three month trial—to significantly impact the health and quality of life if offered to all employees. More at http://www.myvbch.org/
Virginia Business Coalition on Health and Public Health
The Coalition is involved through its public service project (Square One Children's Health and School Readiness) to provide training for professionals in prevention and early intervention and children's health. This initiative started 10 years ago with support from local and federal agencies as a regional collaborative. It is thriving today with support from local municipalities, community foundations and higher education.
These efforts plus the HeartBiz project have helped pave the way for a sub grant for VBCH with the Virginia Department of Health. The Department has a 5 year cooperative agreement for chronic disease management with the CDC. VBCH works with the Program Manager for Cardiovascular and Stroke Prevention, VDH Division of Chronic Disease Prevention and Control, and is a member of the Virginia Healthy Pathways Coalition established by the Virginia Department of Health. The Healthy Pathways Coalition is initially focusing on Prevention of CVD, assuring alignment with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's (CDC) Heart Disease and Stroke Prevention Program Priorities. VBCH is a strong partner representing the business sector. VBCH's CEO represents the National Business Coalition on Health and Virginia Business Coalition on Health on the National Diabetes Education Program (NDEP) Business Health Work Group which promotes diabetes information and education for all sectors via a website sponsored by NIH and CDC.
Lessons Learned and Observations
The following are lessons learned and observations from the expanding relationship between VBCH and public health.
o Relationship building takes time to build trust and to establish an understanding of what each party can bring to the relationship
o Staff changes impact the relationship as new stakeholders—from either business or public health—need to learn about the other
o Engagement in planning benefits the relationship by increasing the understanding of what the initiative means in terms of implementation tasks and developing roles and responsibilities appropriate for the stakeholders
o Public health funding helps to support the resources needed by the coalition for the initiative(s)
o Public health brings clinical expertise and information to the initiative that can be used to benefit both the coalition and the community
o Prevalence data provided by the Health Department can help business to tailor projects. This data is generally set up by health district so requires some manipulation to correspond to cities and counties.
o Complexities of government structure must be addressed for successful community partnerships. Virginia is one of 8 states that actively operates under the Dillon Rule * which adds another challenge to the collaborative efforts among large metropolitan regions. Under this rule, cities are not part of counties but stand alone and cities, along with some counties, have charters that set out their specific governmental powers.
