Report: Human Services & Healthcare Organizations Partner to Improve Health Outcomes

July 5, 2017

New York – July 5, 2017 – Addressing both the clinical and the social determinants of health is crucial to improving lives and reducing long-term costs. A new report, Working Together toward Better Health Outcomes, explores the many ways that healthcare organizations and community-based organizations (CBOs) that provide human services are partnering in shared pursuit of better health outcomes.

The Partnership for Healthy Outcomes — a project of Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), the Center for Health Care Strategies (CHCS), and the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities (Alliance), with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) — set out to capture and analyze the lessons emerging in this dynamic space. Information from more than 200 healthcare-related partnerships serving all 50 US states provide important lessons from, and for, partnerships that hope to improve access to care, address health inequities, and make progress on social issues like food, education, and housing.

Among the report’s insights:

  • There’s no one-size-fits-all formula: Respondents represented partnerships of many sizes, motivations, and contractual and funding arrangements. Many are among healthcare providers and CBOs – but partners also include public health and other government agencies, private insurers, foundations, schools, supermarkets, and others.
  • Most commonly, partnerships provide services to impact immediate-term clinical goals, such as reduced hospital admissions, length of stays, and/or emergency room usage.
  • 65% of partnerships report having realized cost savings.
  • Partnerships rely on an evolving variety of funding sources including, for example, private foundations, healthcare systems, and/or government entities.
  • Nearly all respondents said their partnerships are helping them expand their organizations’ skills and capacities in network-building, improving programs, and generating new funding.

Working Together toward Better Health Outcomes is available for download and will be augmented soon by in-depth profiles of four partnerships serving diverse populations in varied geographies. 

Click here to read a blog about report findings by Robert Wood Johnson Foundation's Quiana Lewis in Health Affairs GrantWatch.


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