The biggest threats to children’s health aren’t always clinical — they’re happening in communities every day. In this conversation, Mary Kate Daly, senior vice president and chief of community health of the Patrick M. Magoon Institute for Healthy Communities at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago, explains how long-term investments, powerful community partnerships, and a first-of-its-kind community health hub are leading to better outcomes for kids in Chicago and beyond.

Tom Haederle

Welcome to Advancing Health. Helping a child grow into a strong and healthy adult isn't always easy. Today, we hear from a large urban care provider that's taken on the challenge.

Tom Haederle

Hello friends! I'm Tom Haederle, senior communication specialist with the American Hospital Association. If you've ever come across this quote: "individually, we are one drop. Together, we are an ocean," then you'll understand what drives the Ann and Robert H. Lurie Children's Hospital of Chicago to forge some of the most amazing examples of strong community collaboration found anywhere. The breadth of Lurie Children's Hospital's work in supporting kids is just incredible.

Tom Haederle

Much of it falls under the umbrella of the hospital's Patrick M. Magoon Institute for Healthy Communities. So it's an honor today to welcome Mary Kate Daley, senior vice president and chief of community health for the McGoon Institute, to our podcast today. Mary Kate, thanks so much for coming on Advancing Health.

Mary Kate Daly

Thanks for having me, Tom.

Tom Haederle

Let me do a little scene setting here for our listeners. Working with community partners, the Magoon Institute supports dozens of initiatives that help kids - across nutrition, behavioral health, car seat safety, and many other things. So I'm just naming a few. So I guess Mary Kate, let's sort of start with...how would you, what ties all this together, the menu of things that that the MaGoon Institute supports?

Tom Haederle

And how would you describe the hospital's philosophy when it comes to working with outside partners to improve the lives of kids?

Mary Kate Daly

Well, Lurie Children's has been engaged in community health programs for many, many years. Like most hospitals our mission is to improve the health of people and in our case, specifically of children. And more and more, we are learning that health is more than health care. So we have to do the absolute best job we can when these young people show up at our doors and need care.

Mary Kate Daly

However, it's just as important to be working with community partners around for us, the city of Chicago, to be improving health of young people in their own communities where they live, where they go to school, where they play. So I think philosophically, that's a key part of who we are and what we value. It's a key part of our mission.

Mary Kate Daly

Our mission pillars include clinical care, research, education and advocacy. And community health is a key part of advocacy.

Tom Haederle

I don't think anybody would argue with the notion that there are many kinds of challenges facing kids today, especially in underserved communities. So how do you prioritize the needs and decide which ones should receive your attention and help with resources?

Mary Kate Daly

I think the framework that has really helped us a lot, and probably some of my other colleagues around the country working at hospitals would agree is the community health needs assessment. So when the Affordable Care Act passed 15 years ago, one of the requirements it included is for hospitals to conduct community health needs assessments every three years and then to use those assessments to develop corresponding implementation strategies.

Mary Kate Daly

So we have come to embrace this requirement. We actually love it. For us, this is a great opportunity to really take a step back and dig into tons of data, community health data, patient data and really listen, conducting surveys and listening sessions and focus groups and really trying to understand what are the most significant health challenges for young people in the city of Chicago, particularly those living in our disinvested communities?

Mary Kate Daly

So once we have that assessment and all that data, then we gather our internal clinical experts, our public health experts, as well as external partners, and we ask some key questions. You have to put these questions through sort of a filter like so we say 'okay, where when we look at all these needs. Where does Lurie Children's have unique expertise

Mary Kate Daly

to address these issues'? Who are the community partners and organizations that are already on the ground doing this great work? And what would be the best way for us to partner with them, learn from them, and then see if together we can impact some of these challenges. How can we develop or advance these programs and policies to make progress on these issues?

Mary Kate Daly

And a key thing is to recognize that a lot of these issues are very complex. They are entrenched. They're rooted in generations. But we have to think about how can we come together to try to address them. And then another key thing, we are an academic medical center and we need to make sure that there is solid evaluation for all of these kinds of programs, so that we're making the impact that we want to be making, and that the community expects of us.

Mary Kate Daly

So this is a process that happens every three years. That's kind of our step back big picture look. And then between those cycles, that's when we're constantly kind of shifting and making small tweaks here and there to different programs in order to respond to what we're seeing in evaluations and new challenges that come along. So that framework has been very helpful to us because it is a very challenging question.

Mary Kate Daly

There's a lot of needs.

Tom Haederle

And when you reach out, having identified a need to reach out to a potential partner, what, just the reception at the other end generally like, yes, we'd love to work with you guys. It's great to collaborate with a hospital. Or are there ever any, you know, turf or jurisdiction sorts of sensitivities around these things?

Mary Kate Daly

I think all of those things can happen sometimes. As soon as we call or someone introduces us to a new partner, they're instantly eager. And I think in those cases, I think a lot of it is when people involved in that organization have had positive clinical experiences at our hospital, and so they've come to trust us in a different way.

Mary Kate Daly

And then the idea of maybe working together in this new way, they may be more open to that. At the same time, there are certainly organizations that have not had positive experiences in these partnership kinds of opportunities. And so, understandably, they're a little bit more hesitant. And I think what we've found works best in that situation is to just start small and start slow.

Mary Kate Daly

And we understand that we need to kind of carefully do this. So let's start with just like a little small thing that we're going to do. And then let's over time build up that trust. And I think when that happens too, there's new opportunities that emerge that we might have not even realized we could have worked together on when we were first introduced to this partner.

Mary Kate Daly

The key thing there is we have certain expertise and they have certain expertise, and the magic's going to happen when we come together in a real and genuine way. But, you know, respecting the strengths that we both bring to a partnership is essential.

Tom Haederle

Great point. And actually to to pull the on that thread a little bit. What are some examples of the magic that has happened? Know when you think about, you know, great examples of partnerships that have made a difference and really measurably helped the lives of kids in Chicago? What are some examples that come to mind?

Mary Kate Daly

So the first one I want to share is a program called the Juvenile Justice Collaborative. This is a great example because I think it shows how a hospital can take a skill that we already have, and you can apply it to community health needs. It also shows the importance of community partnerships and like true partnership in the development and maintenance of these programs.

Mary Kate Daly

So the Juvenile Justice Collaborative, this is a program that provides care coordination and social support to youth involved in our justice system. So in Chicago, in Cook County, our courts and states' attorneys, they can refer young people to this program as an alternative to detention. So this was something where we took what we know about clinical care coordination, and then tried to apply it to a new population of young people.

Mary Kate Daly

After these young people get referred, they work. Then we do a very significant intake process to really understand what the challenges this young person is facing. And then we refer them to the appropriate service providers in our network. And then these providers, they provide the service directly to the young people, but they're also helping to shape the program as it evolves, as we see new challenges, as we may need new partners.

Mary Kate Daly

And then we also have an external evaluation of this program. And we recently, shared the results of an external evaluation that showed that this kind of approach really does help not only lower recidivism, which is an important goal, but it also improves the health and well-being of the young people themselves. So that's kind of a good example of how we take something we know as a hospital and apply it elsewhere.

Mary Kate Daly

Another totally different example. This one is a big project. It's been years in the making. But it's really on the cusp of becoming a reality and we're so excited about it. And this is called the Austin Hope center. So this one goes back, kind of building on what we were talking about before, about how do you start a relationship with a new partner.

Mary Kate Daly

So this one, during the pandemic, we met leaders at a church in one of our disinvested communities, its called Lively Stone Church in Missionary Baptist Church in Austin. And the pastor there and the staff, they were struggling with the mental health needs of young people. And so we kind of started with them working on some smaller projects where we could work together, get to know each other, build some trust.

Mary Kate Daly

Years later, where we are today is that we're actually getting ready to open up a new building with them in a few months. So they had formed a community development corporation. So they are going to be owning the building. Lurie Children's is a tenant. That's very important because we want the economic development in our disinvested communities to be owned from people within that community.

Mary Kate Daly

So we are the tenant. However, we're a very active tenant and, we've really been working alongside them from the very beginning to create this space. So in this new building, we will provide some outpatient clinical care and behavioral health services. And then this is going to be the hub for all of our community health work on the west side of Chicago.

Mary Kate Daly

So we'll have a community conference room, a teen lounge. We'll have an early childhood room. And our goal here is for everyone in the building to work together, our clinicians, our community health experts, the other tenants in the building. The goal here is that this building helps to address the health of young people in this community in a more holistic way.

Mary Kate Daly

So this is an example, and it's an extreme example, because I know not every partnership leads to a building, but, to kind of how we can start small to address a significant need that a partner is having and how that can kind of grow over time. And evolve into something really exciting.

Tom Haederle

Mary Kate, those are a couple of wonderful examples of collaborations that work. What qualities make for an outstanding collaboration partner as you consider partnering with, you know, with a private entity to to do something to help kids, what are you looking for in who you choose to collaborate with?

Mary Kate Daly

Well, we've talked a bit about the importance of trust. That's first and foremost, and that ability to be able to build that, whether that's right away or over time, that's critical. Another important quality we found is organizations who are innovative. So Chicago, as with others, we're blessed with many strong community organizations who are always looking at new ways to solve old problems.

Mary Kate Daly

And so that's really key for us when we have a partner that's excited about thinking differently and open to new thoughts and ways of doing things. And then the third thing, really, I think for me is we found with partners, they do have to understand our limitations. Because as hospitals we can be a little bit more conservative.

Mary Kate Daly

We can be a little bit slower. I think a lot of our community partners are so nimble and so flexible, and we found that it's best when we can find partners who understand we're going to do our best to meet them there. But sometimes our processes take a little bit longer and that can mean contracts or evaluations or things like that.

Mary Kate Daly

I think important to find those partners who are open to that and flexible, and understanding of that.

Tom Haederle

Thank you. That's a great answer. And I think those are also some important takeaways for your peers out in the field who may look at Lurie and think, oh boy, we'd like to do something like they're doing, but what do we need to know in advance? And you've really touched on some important things to keep in mind. Any final thoughts?

Tom Haederle

Anything we haven't talked about that you'd like to mention?

Mary Kate Daly

I think one other key element, really, just as you're thinking about what you know, what peers can learn. I think when it comes to these community health programs, the leadership support is critical. We're fortunate to have this in spades at Lurie Children's. Our previous CEO, for whom the McGoon Institute is named, actually, he was always supportive of this work.

Mary Kate Daly

And then our current CEO and the senior team, they've really embraced advocacy and community health as a key part of our mission and strategy. Our CEO speaks better than I do about the importance of going upstream and addressing health challenges in young people before they become adults. And, he and our other leaders ensure that this work remains priority.

Mary Kate Daly

Engaging our board, philanthropic partners and all the members of our team that are out there doing this work every day. So I think to keep it sustainable, that's a really key element.

Tom Haederle

Well, you speak pretty well yourself about the mission and really, really present it in a wonderful light. So, Mary Kate, thank you so much for your time today and appearing on, Advancing Health and more for your phenomenal work in changing so many lives for the better among the the young kids in Chicago. So, good luck and congratulations on all the great work you're doing.

Mary Kate Daly

Thank you very much. Thanks for everything you're doing.

Tom Haederle

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