The partnership between MSU and Henry Ford Health System aims to drive community health, health equity, and ultimately patient-centered care.
An enhanced collaboration between Michigan State University and Henry Ford Health System aims to improve patient access to care, healthcare affordability, and outcomes disparities. All of this comes as a part of both organizations’ mission to improve patient-centered care.
The collaboration, made tangible in a non-binding letter of intent, builds on previous partnership between the two organizations. This expansion will seek to drive better research, particularly looking to boost patient care.
More specifically, Henry Ford Health System and MSU aim to improve the health of the Detroit-area community. Both organizations will engage in shared research regarding health equity and health disparities, the social determinants of health, primary care, implementation sciences, and precision medicine and cancer care.
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“As a land-grant institution engaging in the highest level of research, we are defined by working with communities to address areas of greatest need and making a difference through partnerships,” said Norman J. Beauchamp Jr., MD, executive vice president of health sciences at MSU.
“This effort will uniquely prepare our students to lead the way in improving health and health care in the future,” added Beauchamp, who oversees the colleges of Human Medicine, Nursing and Osteopathic Medicine, as well as clinical practices. “Aligning the education, clinical and research strengths of Henry Ford, with MSU strengths campus-wide, we will drive discovery, enhance existing partnerships and ultimately bring more to bear in serving the communities of Michigan.”
These goals to drive community health, address health disparities, and strive toward equity are timely, said Wright Lassiter, III, the president and CEO at Henry Ford Health System. Ethnic minority patients, particularly black patients, are contracting and succumbing to COVID-19 at higher rates than their white peers.
At the same time, the public health community is crying out about race as a social determinant of health in the wake of recent protests about racial equity across the country.
“Partnerships with the potential for greater impact are more important than ever before,” Lassiter asserted. “The COVID-19 pandemic and the ongoing injustices and recent protests in cities across our nation have amplified the importance of and urgency for innovation and discovery that radically improves the health of all of the communities we serve.”
MSU President Samuel L. Stanley Jr., MD, echoed those sentiments, underscoring the need for widespread community health. Community health strengthens the health of a population by breaking down barriers that have previously barred many from healthcare access.
“Health care is one of the most important building blocks of a strong community, and for that we believe every individual deserves accessible, affordable, compassionate, quality care,” Stanely explained. “We must seek solutions to address disparities across cultural, racial and socioeconomic lines. This pandemic has demonstrated the willingness of individuals from multiple disciplines and from different organizations to unite – the time to build upon that is now.”
Setting this partnership apart from other research partnerships is the emphasis on translational research. The idea that innovations about primary care delivery may be applied to community health principles is set to reform patient care across the continuum.
In turn, new discoveries should enhance medical education for individuals working both within MSU and Henry Ford Health System. Furthermore, the partnership between either institution will prioritize educational opportunities for clinicians that focuses on diversity, recruitment, and retainment.
“The current brace of generational disruptions in our social, economic and health systems have highlighted disparities, inequities and inefficiencies that can and must be addressed,” said Norm Hubbard, MBA, chief business officer for MSU’s Office of Health Sciences.
“Meeting that challenge and rising to that opportunity will require transformational thinking about how our care providers are educated, how we improve and sustain the health of our communities, and how we conduct the research and promote the innovation that will inform and drive not only incremental, but quantum improvements.”
This is the first partnership of its kind between an integrated academic medical system and a major state university, the organizations said. Moving through the summer and into the fall, MSU and Henry Ford Health System plan to formalize these partnerships.
Source: Patient Engagementhit