The Georgia Health Policy Center recently spoke to Bonnie Gibb, project director for the Northern Catskills Aging in Place Consortium and community health program manager for Bassett Healthcare Network, about the benefits of focusing on relationship building.
To date, what has been the biggest accomplishment or win in establishing your network?
Through this grant opportunity, we have been able to focus on solidifying relationships. When you meet for a project and then disperse and then come back together and then disperse again, you lose continuity in relationships. We used this opportunity to develop those relationships and take the time to build that solid foundation.
What is a tip or early learning that you would share with an organization launching a similar network? Usually when we get together, we want to rush into a project. We want to do something, which makes sense because stakeholders usually come together because of a need. Sometimes the inclination is to be a strong lead agency and say, ‘This is what we want to do. This is what we can do.’ We took an entirely different tack this time and from the beginning asked, ‘How do you see Bassett Medical Center as the lead agency. How do you see us moving in this space so that we can better support you?’ Now, we cannot necessarily do all the things that we heard, but we know what those things are, and we can do our best to do what we can do. Flipping that narrative was probably the best thing we could have done for engagement. Our partners felt they did not have to fight for what they wanted. They were being heard. Having the leadership presence from Bassett reinforced that, too.
How do you see participation in the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy’s Office’s Network Development Planning Program impacting your broader health improvement efforts?
We initially were focused on building sustainability by asking our members for membership fees — to make financial commitments. We ended up taking a step back from that because it was not working for the stakeholders. It was not the right time and funding was tight for everybody.
We had to think about how we could sustain the network without money or relying on grants. So, we created a shared resources library around three different categories —physical resources, personnel resources, and programmatic resources. The idea was to look at what we could share. What can each of our programs give rather than funds to this network. That way, we can each tap into the network and support each other, including through a workflow for referrals. It ended up being an easy fix and the beginning of creating a sustainable program that was tailored to what each organization could share and where there are gaps.
What’s next on the horizon for your grant-funded program?
We are going to look at the gaps in care and not just in health care, but where there are gaps in community care. For example, we were bringing fresh fruit and vegetables to seniors through Meals on Wheels and we learned we need to understand food insecurity better. For our population of 60-plus, we just ask, ‘Are you food insecure?’ And most say no. But if you go one step deeper into that conversation and ask them how often they eat per day, the answer is once and that is people who say they are food secure. So, we need to take a step back, and slow down to know if we are asking the right questions to determine where there are gaps in services. We are not really understanding the breadth of the problem. Our five-year project is to sort out the gaps in care and that will take some time to figure out what the right questions are to ask to get accurate information.