The Community Equity Alliance, a new effort by CVS Health, aims to remove obstacles to care in impoverished areas.
The Alliance is being created to increase the number of community health professionals, strengthen linkages between healthcare facilities and local communities, and address inequities in results in terms of heart health and mental health.
Meharry Medical College, Sinai Chicago, and Wayne State University are the first institutions to join the project. In addition to promising to bring Alliance members together to share best practises and strive to incorporate lessons learned into the company’s health equity agenda, CVS Health is financing each institution for regionally specific activities.
The joint efforts of CVS Health and Sinai Chicago will be directed toward fostering community involvement in Chicago’s North Lawndale. With a focus on heart health and mental health, the two organisations will work together to offer people specialised social and health resources to address health inequities.
Through its Block Leaders programme, Sinai Chicago will also seek out locals to work as community health workers. Community health workers can establish their own career pathways in healthcare while providing local citizens with vital health information and resources.
As community health professionals are being hired and trained, CVS and Meharry Medical College will collaborate to broaden the diversity of local practitioners and ostensibly reduce health disparities in heart health and mental health.
In order to deliver health education and link historically marginalised groups to health resources, community health workers will collaborate with faith-based or community-based organisations, according to CVS.
A continuing education session on the patient-centered medical home will also be offered by Meharry Medical College for healthcare workers. Additionally, the college will share tips on how to collaborate with groups serving medically underserved and rural areas.
Last but not least, a multi-sector community coalition will be formed through the partnership with the Wayne State University Center for Health Equity and Community Knowledge in Urban Populations (CHECK-UP) to ensure the integration of community voice and alignment of community assets and resources to reduce heart health and mental health disparities in Detroit.
The partnership will also increase possibilities for skill-building for the workforce of community health workers and train faculty, staff, and community members on best practises in community-engaged research, according to CVS.
CVS has had a busy few weeks with the debut last week of Virtual Primary Care, a virtual care solution primarily focusing on primary care and mental health services.
Additionally, CVS is enhancing its online mental health offerings through the launch. Participants who are 18 years of age and older will be able to obtain nationwide virtual mental health support from experts, including certified therapists and psychiatrists. However, not everything has gone smoothly for the insurer. This week, it was made public that Cigna is suing CVS over the latter’s planned employment of Amy Bricker, a former Cigna executive. The company claims that if Bricker’s hiring is permitted to continue, it will be “immediately and irrevocably injured,” in violation of the lawsuit’s allegations that this breaches Cigna’s noncompete agreement.
