The Jewish Healthcare Foundation’s Patient Safety Fellowship will offer a unique curriculum this summer to explore the challenges and opportunities facing senior residential living and senior care. After the disruption of COVID-19, options for elders must embrace creative solutions that help older adults age well and safely in a range of settings. Fellows, working across disciplines, will explore existing and conceptual models for transforming our community and healthcare systems that maximize quality of life for elders and families.

Within teams, fellows will identify core elements to design a new model that enhances current systems to maximize safety and quality, and then they will pitch how the adoption and implementation of their model would address challenges of our current systems.

The Patient Safety Fellowship is a dynamic educational program of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, Pittsburgh Regional Health Initiative, and Health Careers Futures.

The Fellowship aims to foster the healthcare leaders of tomorrow—leaders who respond to rapid change and discovery, apply an interdisciplinary approach, and strive to continually improve health care and patient safety.

This summer, the Fellowship is focusing on the overall response to COVID-19 in the U.S.. Over the course of the 9-week program, fellows will engage with a variety of expert speakers in the fields of public health, infectious disease, safety science, and emergency preparedness, as well as leaders of healthcare systems and local innovators adapting to the crisis. As the fellows engage with one another and gain insight from the different lens of the pandemic, they will synthesize their lessons and apply them in designing a response to a case study/scenario of a healthcare outbreak or disaster.

The home for the 2019 Salk Health Activist Fellowship.

We are going to use this platform to be able to communicate effectively, collaborate, and build each other up for this fellowship. Activism starts here. Let us learn and use each other's strengths to the best of our ability. 

Together, we can change the world. 

Pregnant women, no matter their socioeconomic status, should have equal rights and access to the best care. We hope to narrow down the potential causes of increased mortality rates and design unique solutions to address gaps in quality and access to care. 

The aim of this project is to establish a maternal care collaborative similar to and modeled after the California Maternal Quality Care Collaborative (CMQCC). This collaborative will differ in that it will be run for and by hospitals that primarily service neighborhoods with a large black population (there is evidence that points to the quality of care at hospitals where a disproportionate number of black women deliver as a contributing factor as to why black mothers are dying at a rate that is higher than white moms). 

Key elements of the collaborative:

- All hospitals in the collaborative will work to submit data to the MMRIA (Maternal Mortality Review Information Application) a free data system that allows users to develop quality improvement plans based on the reports generated by MMRIA (CMQCC has their maternal data center. This collaborative will utilize an existing free one to cut costs at least in the beginning). 

- Create and share development of evidence-based quality improvement toolkits that address the leading causes of preventable complications and deaths 

- Physician education: provide patient first continuing medical education for providers that address the common issues black women face in their pregnancies; physician and hospital administration education on new protocols for rare situations

- Use of predictive analytics to develop a risk score for pregnancy related complications and maternal mortality that will be available for all providers to see in the patient's EHR. (Major difference between this collaborative and CMQCC). 

- Development or outsourcing of a doula program similar to the use of case/disease managers for women who were identified as high risk through the risk score analysis mentioned above 

- Development and distribution of a patient satisfaction survey. Dedicated Committee to review all surveys and address issues 

The home for the 2018 Salk Health Activist Fellowship.

We are going to use this platform to be able to communicate effectively, collaborate, and build each other up for this fellowship. Activism starts here. Let us learn and use each other's strengths to the best of our ability. 

Together, we can change the world. 

According to the Healthy People 2020 Midcourse Review (2016), only 21.3% of American adults meet the minimum physical activity (PA) guideline recommendations of 150 minutes of moderate intensity aerobic physical activity per week.  The vision of this action group is to become an advocate for prevention and wellness in health care.  This would involve a cultural shift from a reactive intervention based system to a proactive prevention based system.  This shift would prioritize maintaining an individual's independence and quality of life across the lifespan through minimizing sedentary activities and optimizing physical activity.  

About Addiction is committed to challenging harmful stereotypes surrounding addiction and recovery. In today's world, "the addict" is often depicted as someone who is lazy, weak-willed, and even dangerous to our communities. Individuals battling substance use disorders are consistently portrayed in this inaccurate and unfair light, leaving many stranded in a world of overwhelming stigma and cyclic abuse. 

The reality of addiction is that it knows no boundaries. Addiction affects people from all walks of life, regardless of race, gender, or socioeconomic status. Addiction is not a lack of moral judgment, nor is it a lack of willpower. Addiction is a mental illness, a heavily-researched disruption of the body's normal physiological processes.

We, as a nation, are currently facing an epidemic of prescription drug misuse, abuse, and addiction. The number of Americans battling substance use disorders is growing exponentially, with over 100 lives lost to drug overdoses every single day. 

Thankfully, we are beginning to see increased recognition and concern for this problem. Across the nation, communities are mobilizing to create new resources for treatment and recovery. But all of these efforts can only do so much good if we continue to allow harsh and inaccurate stereotypes to propogate. It is paramount that while we continue to build these resources, we simultaneously shift public opinion about addiction away from judgment and discomfort and toward understanding, support, and acceptance. 

About Addiction believes that we must create a world where individuals with substance use disorders are first recognized for who they truly are: human beings, each unique and valuable, who have fallen on difficult times. We must make a conscious effort to learn and to understand the process of this disease and how we can help those affected. We must support our neighbors in their recovery, both short- and long-term, and empower them to re-build their lives and pursue healthy, successful futures. Re-shaping perspectives of addiction is truly the first step on the road to recovery.  

Health literacy is the degree to which individuals have the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic health information and services needed to make appropriate health decisions. Young adults are among the most affected by low rates of health literacy. Increased health literacy can lead to fewer chronic health condtions, better lifestyle choices, and a more complete understanding of one's medical rights. My vision is one where people understand their health insurance and how to navigate it. And based on this understanding of their health insurance, they maintain a healthier lifestyle. It's a vision of a world where people understand their doctor or nurse when speaking to them and do not leave the hospital or office completely confused.  

To educate the underserved populations in our communities about the various resources that are available to assist the survivors of sexual assault and trauma prior to the onset of harmful coping mechanisms, as well as, eliminate the chains of generational repetition that has a tendency to occur.

The flu is a common disease, affecting all ages, which can lead to serious illness and even death. Many people percieve the flu as something similar to a cold: It's not going to kill me. I'll be fine. I don't need my flu shot. Faces of the Flu allows people to tell their flu stories to show others how bad the disease can really be. Through this project, Faces of the Flu aims to increase the utilization of flu shots to prevent further morbidity and mortality from influenza.

Research has shown that African American women are one of the most sedentary groups of people. This is problematic because inadequate exercise along with a poor diet can contribute to medical issues, such as hypertension, diabetes, cancer, kidney disease, and others. Our organization seeks to promote activity, a healthy diet, and lifestyle changes among African American women. We hope to improve health outcomes and quality of life.

We are going to use this platform to be able to communicate effectively, collaborate, and build each other up for this fellowship. Activism satrts here, let us learn and use each other's strengths to the best of our ability. 

We are here to help, and are open to any and all questions that you may possess. If we don't know the answer, we will do our best to find someone who does. Together, we can change the world. 

When patients are selecting a surgeon to perform a procedure it would be helpful for the patient to know the surgeon's personal history of complications when performing similar surgeries so that the patient could select the "best" surgeon.