Public health and health care delivery may seem to go hand in hand to the public they exist to serve. But partnerships for the public good often are complicated by a patchwork of elaborate administrative practices, ownership, funding models, and other systemic barriers resulting in less effective results despite a shared mission of serving healthy, thriving communities.
Knocking down the silos to collaborative health systems that drive improved outcomes is vital to addressing our most pressing public health issues. The Common Health Coalition and the National Press Club Journalism Institute produced a conversation highlighting research on high-impact public health and care delivery system partnerships while addressing the core components of their success.
The featured initiatives were published in a special themed issue of NEJM Catalyst, guest edited by Dr. Nicholas Stine. The edition includes articles, case studies, and research reports on coordination across public health and care delivery, COVID 19 response, tuberculosis screening, the 2022 mpox outbreak, pediatric asthma intervention, abortion and reproductive health care, and public health data.
Guest speakers included:
- Alice Abernathy, MD, MSHP, co-author of Strengthening the Provision of Abortion and Sexual and Reproductive Health Care Post-Dobbs: An Initiative of the Philadelphia Department of Public Health
- Abernathy is an assistant professor of obstetrics & gynecology at the Perelman School of Medicine and a senior fellow with the Leonard Davis Institute of Health Economics, University of Pennsylvania.
- Dave Chokshi, MD, MSc
- Chokshi is chair for the Common Health Coalition. He is currently a practicing physician at Bellevue Hospital and the inaugural Sternberg Family Professor of Leadership at the City College of New York. He previously served as the 43rd health commissioner of New York City.
- Susannah Graves, co-author of Think. Test. Treat TB” in Action: An Innovative Primary Care and Public Health Partnership to Improve Tuberculosis Prevention and Care
- Graves is director and tuberculosis controller for the Tuberculosis Prevention and Control Section of the San Francisco Department of Public Health
- Ingrid Johansen, MN, MPH, RN, TCRN, CEN, PHN, co-author of Knocking Down Public Health and Health Care Silos: An Innovative Covid-19 Health Equity Response
- Johansen is director of community clinical care with Community Advancement, Fairview Health Services.
- Mary P. Mercer, MD, MPH, co-author of The San Francisco Health Systems Collaborative: Public Health and Health Care Delivery Systems’ Response to the Covid-19 Pandemic
- Mercer is chief of medical staff at Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital; director of Emergency Medical Services and Disaster Medicine Section for the University of California San Francisco Department of Emergency Medicine; and a professor of emergency medicine for the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine. Mercer is also the former COVID-19 vaccine section chief and COVID-19 health systems deputy director for the San Francisco Department of Public Health
- Yolande Pengetnze, MD, MS, co-author of Pediatric Asthma Surveillance System (PASS): Community-Facing Disease Monitoring for Health Equity
- Pengetnze is vice president of clinical leadership for the Parkland Center for Clinical Innovation in Dallas, Texas.
- Ed Prewitt, editorial director, NEJM Catalyst
- Marcia Wong, co-author of New York City’s Rapid Response to the 2022 Mpox Outbreak
- Wong is a medical epidemiologist for the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in New York
- Moderator: Dr. Nicholas Stine, University of California, Berkeley
- Dr. Nicholas Stine is a primary care physician and population health leader with over a decade of experience leading value-based care strategy and operations at large health systems. He is currently an executive-in-Residence at the Center for Healthcare Marketplace Innovation at UC Berkeley, and a senior scholar at the Stanford Clinical Excellence Research Center.
About the Common Health Coalition
The Common Health Coalition brings together leading health care organizations in pursuit of a reimagined health system — one in which the nation’s health care and public health systems no longer operate in parallel but work hand in hand, with better health for all as the common goal. Health care and public health institutions responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by forging novel, impactful partnerships to support emergency response, data and information sharing, and infectious disease detection. The Common Health Coalition was formed to cement these types of crisis-driven strategies and others into existing infrastructure and strengthen the partnership between the health care and public health systems, particularly to advance health equity.
About the National Press Club Journalism Institute
The National Press Club Journalism Institute promotes an engaged global citizenry through an independent and free press, and equips journalists with skills and standards to inform the public in ways that inspire a more representative democracy. As the non-profit affiliate of the National Press Club, the Institute powers journalism in the public interest.