Our Focus

Why it matters:

Good health requires having both health care coverage and a primary care provider to turn to for regular care.

What’s the problem:

Too many people of color remain uninsured or lack a regular, trusted place they can go for care. Many people with coverage struggle to understand their coverage or how to navigate the complicated health care system.

What we’re doing:

• We fund policy analysis and advocacy efforts to ensure that people can get health insurance and use it to get care.
• We publish reports on the impact of Medicaid and how to improve it.
• We provide grants to improve care delivery at school-based health centers and community health centers, key access points for quality care.

Why it matters:

High-quality health care means patients get what they need to be as healthy as possible.
For a patient with diabetes, high-quality care means regularly monitoring his condition, coordinating the care he receives from various health care providers, and working with him to ensure that he can keep his diabetes under control – whether that means buying healthier foods or taking the right medication at the right time.

What’s the problem:

In the current health care system, care providers only get paid based on the number of services they deliver, not whether their care addressed patients’ needs or kept them out of the hospital. There’s no incentive to address underlying causes that contribute to disease or work with the patient’s other providers to better coordinate care.

What we’re doing:

• We fund work to ensure Connecticut has a statewide system for all providers to access all records related to their patients electronically, which can help improve care coordination and quality.
• Because identifying and addressing disparities in health care is critical, we support efforts to ensure that data on patients’ race, ethnicity and language are included in their medical records.
• We fund health care organizations to pilot new approaches to addressing health disparities and improving outcomes.

Why it matters:

Much of what influences people’s health happens outside the doctor’s office.
It makes a difference whether a person has stable housing, a safe neighborhood to live in, access to healthy food, and transportation. That means to improve health, there must be strong and meaningful links between the clinical care system and the communities where people live.

What’s the problem:

Data indicates there are big racial and ethnic gaps in access to these resources.

What we’re doing:

• We fund advocacy to promote the use of community health workers – trusted members of patients’ communities who help to identify and address health barriers – as integrated members of the health care system.
• Because research has shown that community health workers can improve health outcomes and save money in the health care system, we fund demonstration models to prove their efficacy in Connecticut.
• We support collaboratives of community-based organizations in Hartford and Waterbury to build their capacity to partner with the clinical care system.