Community Partnerships
Successful community programs are more often than not the result of broad partnerships of like-minded organizations, dedicated to improving public health care at the community level. Commonwealth Medicine works with local organizations, private entities and public health agencies to build these collaborations and establish innovative community health care programs.We are particularly skilled at bringing together organizations from different sectors to either create new programs or streamline services, by leveraging the expertise and resources each individual group has to offer. Often these collaborations pool state and local public funds, federal initiatives, foundation grants and non-profit support to fill a community health care need.
In addition to financial cooperation, we examine each opportunity to determine what resources are most appropriate to successfully solve the issue at hand. These partnerships are comprised of stakeholders from all facets of community care, including physicians and other health professionals; students, faculty and researchers at the University of Massachusetts Medical School and other academic institutions; and community health workers and peers. Fostering collaborations between diverse public sector agencies, as well as with the private sector, is a particular area of our expertise.
The Center for Health Policy and Research's Office of Community Programs and Massachusetts Area Health Education Center Network have developed a number of community health and human service programs that illustrate the unique benefits of such partnerships. For example, we work with community health workers to design educational programs to assist them in serving their population, as well as local communities to develop medical and dental services for the uninsured and underinsured. Through these partnerships we address issues as varied as mental health awareness in the Latino community to teen pregnancy concerns in the Berkshire region.