Summary
To improve the health of individual patients and entire communities—while also reducing medical costs—we must take action at the community level to address and change the conditions that lead to poor health. At Prevention Institute, we call this work community prevention.
Three years ago, we developed a model we call Community-Centered Health Homes. It imagines a new paradigm in which healthcare providers collaborate closely with community members, advocates and organizations in an effort to change local conditions and improve health. Today, the best exemplars of this approach are community clinics and health centers around the country that are embedded in their communities.
To explore how the work of these clinics matched up with the principles of Community-Centered Health Homes, Prevention Institute visited or interviewed more than a dozen clinics across California. We’ve compiled the results of our research into this new report.