The Partnership to Align Social Care: A National Learning and Action Network brings together diverse stakeholders to advance health equity.
Trellis is honored to join the Partnership, the first initiative to bring together community-based organizations, health plans, health systems, national associations, and federal agencies to co-design a national framework to advance social care delivery and improve health equity.
The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Elevance Health, Kaiser Permanente, United HealthCare, the Archstone Foundation and others fund the effort.
Growing momentum
“The Partnership to Align Social Care is fueling already growing momentum toward addressing social determinants of health. Older adults are at particular risk as they face increasingly complex care needs as their support networks and resources become more limited. As one of the country’s leading Community Care Hubs, Trellis is proud to be a voice at the Partnership table,” said Dawn Simonson, president and CEO for Trellis.
Research shows that aligning healthcare with organizations that connect people to social supports such as housing, nutrition and transportation measurably improves the overall health of the population and can impact up to 80 percent of health outcomes (Robert Wood Johnson Foundation). The Partnership to Align Social Care was established to create efficient networks that share information, are owned by the community and are supported by all the agencies, institutions and businesses that are involved in improving health.
Recognizing the role of community-base organizations
“The Partnership is intentional about including community-based organization networks as co-designers of the framework it is creating. Community-based organizations have deep relationships and knowledge of the local environment that are critical to the successful delivery of social care,” said Mark Cullen, vice president for strategy and business development for Trellis. “But the culture, histories and core competencies of CBOs differ significantly from those of healthcare organizations. It’s not easy to bridge the gaps and bring all the stakeholders together. This Partnership holds tremendous promise for stronger delivery of social care and healthier communities.”
Founding organizations of the Partnership include health plans such as United Healthcare, Humana, Aetna CVS Health and Elevance Health; integrated delivery networks such as Kaiser Permanente; health systems including CommonSpirit and Rush University Medical Center; community-based organization networks including the Detroit Agency on Aging, Partners in Care Foundation, and the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers. Liaisons from several federal agencies including the Administration for Community Living (ACL), the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (CMMI), and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONC) advise this effort.
Priorities for the Partnership
The Partnership will focus on these priorities:
- Co-designing common standards for effective and sustainable partnerships of CBO networks, health plans and health systems
- Identifying core attributes and competencies for CBO network credentialing
- Identifying/encouraging widespread use of existing billing codes and essential elements for a streamlined contracting process between health systems, health plans, and CBOs
- Making recommendations for infrastructure capabilities and financing for more sustainable CBO networks
Advancing health equity
“Defining Social Care Core Principles is an important first step for the Partnership, and advancing health equity is a key pillar,” said Simonson. “For many Black and Brown older adults, people with long-term disabilities and those who identify as LGBTQ, a lifetime of inequities compounds their health-related social needs. Developing the systems needed to ensure an equitable ecosystem for health and social care is essential.”
Trellis will be an active participant in the billing and coding workgroup that is working to develop a set of universally accepted and adopted core billing codes for the most common social and community contracted services for key populations served.
Learn more about the Partnership at partnership2asc.org.
