OPEN SOURCE WELLNESS
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Mission Statement
Create “Community as Medicine” by partnering with communities and healthcare to deliver joyful, trauma-informed, and culturally relevant programs for health, wellbeing, and human connection.
About This Cause
Problem: The absence of an effective delivery system for basic health behavior change is a massive deficit in our community health strategy. We ask our most vulnerable individuals and families to make radical changes to their health behaviors while navigating food deserts, systemic stressors, and multiple jobs. Patients predictably fail to enact these changes in a sustained way, and their preventable, chronic, progressive conditions worsen. Health expenditures continue to rise, further entrenching our system of “Sick Care” while paying lip service to our understanding of the upstream, social determinants of health. In sum, a “behavioral prescription” without an accessible and effective “behavioral pharmacy” is simply not an effective or viable solution for our patients, providers, insurers, or communities. Due to ACA, integrated delivery systems and fee-for-service providers have 100% of the financial risk for health outcomes, but only have direct control of 20% of the variance (clinical care). This incentivizes provider/insurers to purchase health rather than deliver more care. Instead of hiring highly trained and expensive specialist providers to deal with the downstream consequences of chronic disease, health care organizations will dedicate their resources to the upstream determinants of health in the communities they serve. Contracting with a wide variety of local community organizations (the true producers of health), health care organizations will be increasingly engaged in shaping a rapidly clarifying market for health: This is the context into which OSW offers its timely and deeply needed service. Organization: The founders of OSW have provided integrated primary care behavioral health within medical systems dedicated to providing population-based care, including VA Medical Centers and safety net hospitals. They have experienced firsthand the profound tensions inherent in resource allocation, the necessity of comprehensive, integrated health care, and the qualitative difference between a referral and warm hand-off. Activities: OSW has run our Community as Medicine model in low income clinics and low income housing for 8 years, partnering with the Healthcare Services Agency to scale our work. We have demonstrated the striking efficacy of this model, including a 77% reduction in ER visits and hospitalizations, a 21-point reduction in systolic blood pressure, and a 44% reduction in depression. We launched an NBHWC-certified health coach training program, are currently training YMCAs nationwide to deliver our Community as Medicine model.