Access Community Health

Recently I've been discussing how mentoring at-risk youth and leading them into college and careers rather than jails and the ER should be seen as a major public health issue and thus afforded adequate resources to expand programs in high poverty areas where kids are most at risk. The Tutor/Mentor Hospital Connection (T/MHC) lays out a plan to get community health organizations such as hospitals and clinics to understand how they benefit from the creation and support of mentoring-to-career programs and get them to contribute to the growth and success of these programs. For instance, by hosting 1-1 mentoring programs in community health care facilities, at-risk youth can be exposed to potential careers in the health care field such as physician's assistants, nurses and health care technicians that will be more and more in-demand in the future. Thus, supporting mentoring initiatives will provide these health care providers with a young and talented pool of potential employees in addition to the enhanced external publicity and community recognition for their efforts in helping to keep kids off the street and on the right track.

However, to make maximum impact, in creating these mentoring initiatives we should look to community health organizations that are already respected and making a positive impact in high-poverty communities that otherwise lack ample tutoring/mentoring programs. One such organization is Access Community Health Network.

Access Community Health Network operates over 50 community health centers in underserved, low-income neighborhoods around Chicago, providing over 600,000 primary care visits each year. The stated mission of Access is "to provide high quality, cost effective primary and preventative care without regard to health status or ability to pay." As I mentioned in my previous article about the T/MHC, research shows that education is one of the strongest predictors of health. As a recent report by the Centers for Disease control states: "More formal education is consistently associated with lower death rates (1) while less education predicts earlier death. The less schooling people have, the higher their levels of risky health behaviors such as smoking, being overweight, or having a low level of physical activity (2). High school graduation is a useful measure of educational attainment because its influence on health is well studied, and it is widely recognized as the minimum entry requirement for higher education and well-paid employment."

Therefore, why doesn't Access Health Care, which offers services such as childhood literacy promotion, host or otherwise support volunteer based mentoring programs that keep kids in school and away from risky health behaviors, as well as provide health care providers an opportunity to share preventative health curricula with the kids who could most benefit from it? In the coming months, I will be reaching out to health care providers such as Access, to try to get them to see the relevance of youth mentoring initiatives to their public health mission and get them to invest in the success of such programs around the city.

Have a very happy new year everyone!

(1)Molla M, Madans J, Wagener D. Differentials in adult mortality and activity limiation by years of education in the United States at the end of the 1990s. Popul Dev Rev 2004;30:625-46

(2)Lantz PM, House JS, Lepkowski JM, Williams DR, Mero RP, Chen J. Socioeconomic factors, health behaviors and mortality: results from a nationally representative prospective study of US adults. JAMA 1998; 279(21):1703-8

Tutoring/Mentoring at-risk youth IS a public health issue!!!!

The Tutor/Mentor Hospital Connection ( T/MHC)

So, fresh off the heels of Novartis Pharmaceutical rep John Knight's volunteer spotlight article I thought it would be a good time to discuss the expanded role that health care providers such as hospitals and community clinics can play in supporting youth tutoring/mentoring. When discussing this issue my boss Dan Bassill loves to quote an article published last year by the Centers for Disease Control that opens:

"If medical researchers were to discover an elixir that could increase life expectancy, reduce the burden of illness, delay the consequences of aging, decrease risky health behavior, and shrink disparities in health, we would celebrate such a remarkable discovery. Robust epidemiological evidence suggests that education is such an elixir. Yet, health professionals rarely identified improving school graduation rates as a major public health objective, nor have they systematically examined their role in achieving this objective." The full text can be found here.

When seen from this perspective, it is remarkable that hospitals and other health care providers are not doing more to help support youth tutoring/mentoring programs , particularly because there are countless health care facilities located in and around high poverty neighborhoods that could be making a big difference in the lives of local youth. Not only that, but since we all know about the high demand for health care workers, even in today's economy, it's a wonder that more health care facilities haven't gotten involved in supporting youth tutoring/mentoring programs from a workforce development perspective. That is, by supporting youth development through tutoring/mentoring programming, hospitals can nurture an up and coming workforce to fill the diverse and critical staff positions in todays health care providers, while at the same time, making a positive impact in their local community.

A recent research study by the Lewin Group concluded that: "It is clear that sponsoring youth mentoring is beneficial to hospitals". So, if supporting youth mentoring helps hospitals achieve necessary goals, such as: workforce development, positive publicity in the community and chances to expose impressionable youth to the benefits of preventative medicine and healthy living habits which lowers costly emergency room visits down the road, why aren't more hospitals involved in supporting these types of programs? We here at the Tutor/Mentor Connection are trying to change that through our Tutor/Mentor Hospital Connection initiative.

We see hospitals as potential partners with a vested interest in the health and well-being of their communities. They can play a fundamental role in creating spaces for youth mentoring programs as well as drawing resources to these and other pre-existing programs in their neighborhoods. For example, hospitals can use their large educated staffs to lead mobilizations that recruit workplace volunteers, provide healthcare support, and raise operating dollars for dozens of tutor/mentor programs near the hospital! Teaching hospitals can engage alumni and students as volunteers or as researchers to determine what strategies work best. They can also encourage leaders in public health to get behind efforts to get at-risk youth into college and their hospitals as nurses and doctors rather than as gang-related gunshot victims.

To get this initiative off the ground all we need are a few people who are passionate for change and willing to use their networks and talents to improve the futures of countless Chicago-area youth growing up in poverty. Please email me at chris.warrens.mail (at) gmail.com or call me at 312-492-9614 if you or someone you know would be interested in helping us out with this...and please see the aforementioned Tutor/Mentor Hospital Connection powerpoint for more info.