Cooper Foundation & Bristol Myers Squibb Foundation
Cooper Foundation (Urban Health Institute)
Cooper Foundation (Urban Health Institute) received $984,653 for a three year project to pilot a Metabolic and Cardiovascular Disease Control Program focused on vulnerable, complex and high utilizer patients with cardiovascular disease in Camden City and includes integrated care teams that allow for supervised task-shifting of aspects of specialty services to primary care providers, shared medical appointments, and train health coaches to improve coordination of care and link social support for patients.
Need
Camden City, New Jersey, is a medically underserved, resource poor community. The people of Camden City are on average less educated, poorer, less able to access health care, more likely to use the ED, and live in neighborhoods with more crime compared to other cities in Camden County. The population of Camden City is 48% African American and 47% Hispanic with nearly 40% living below the poverty level. The high rates of cardiovascular disease and cardiovascular disease risk factors are compounded by racial disparities and poverty. Rates of heart disease and strokes deaths are profound in New Jersey, with black males having the highest risk of death compared to other racial/ethnic groups and females.
Project
Cooper University Hospital’s Urban Health Institute was established in 2012 as a dedicated unit focused on improving care of the underserved and is the primary source of Medicaid specialty care across the Camden area. Cooper Health System is responsible for 95% of the outpatient specialty care services in Camden with over 4,528 patients seen for CVD issues in the past 2 years. UHI aim to develop and evaluate a Metabolic and Cardiovascular Disease Control Program with the goal of decreasing CVD risk through behavioral change support, attention to social determinants of health, connections to community resources, enhanced adherence support, and reengineering of specialty care access and quality with an interdisciplinary clinical care, group medical appointments, and task shifting of medication management and patient education to LPNs.
Project Leader
Steve Kaufman, Kaufman-Steven@CooperHealth.edu