The Center for Community Solutions will work to improve the health status of the region's population through a major Community Health initiative.

Community Solutions will develop and implement a community health initiative to align public health prevention programs with the acute care healthcare system. Currently, there are a number of prevention programs in Northeast Ohio aimed at improving health status including childhood obesity, unhealthy lifestyles, diabetes prevention, HIV/AIDS, reproductive health, and a host of other health concerns. In addition, a number of the region's primary care providers are focused on medical home and quality improvement initiatives designed to improve the health status of their patients. There is a need to develop better links between public health programs and primary care systems to prevent disease, improve health status, reduce chronic illness, and increase access to care for the underserved and high-risk families. There is also the need to address the shortage of primary care physicians through changes to the graduate medical education system and to align the medical, advanced practice nursing, and public health systems. Community Solutions will partner with academic institutions, health care, public health, and other public and private organizations. The priority initiative will include consideration of the role of Community Solutions' Title X and AIDS Funding Collaborative programs in terms of their alignment with the health care system.

The initiative's goals include:

• Developing a detailed plan to guide the establishment of a system whereby:
  • public health prevention programs can be linked to primary care providers to increase the accessibility and effectiveness of prevention services in the region; and
  • health care and public health education programs are aligned to support prevention programs.
• Establishing agreement among health care provider and public health agencies to implement the plan.
• Improving health status indicators as a result of the implementation.