Much of BACH’s work is about connecting a range of organizations and residents, all of whom are committed to improving the health of Bostonians. We encourage people to try new approaches to health improvement and to widen their view about how addressing the social determinants of health is key to population health improvement. Some examples include:

• Working with hospitals on how to most effectively use the funds from the Determination of Needs’ Community Health Initiatives (CHI):
  • Last year, we supported Boston Children’s Hospital in developing their priorities for the use of $53 million starting next year. They include: 1) behavioral health, 2) affordable and stable housing, 3) children, youth and families and 4) healthy communities. Click here for more information.
  • We helped Boston Medical Center to prioritize affordable, safe, and stable housing for the use of $6.5 million from their CHI starting later this year.
  • And we have been an active participant in a Youth Substance Use Disorder Prevention Planning process for Suffolk County that will help inform future strategic and effective uses of prevention funds.
• Partnering with numerous other organizations, as part of the Alliance for Community Health Integration (ACHI) we engaged a wide range of community and social justice advocates to develop a set of goals that will help health systems address social determinants of health including:
  • Ensure that MassHealth actively supports Accountable Care Organizations to address social determinants of health and provides meaningful data on activities and impacts;
  • Ensure that health care investments in communities are aligned and purposefully address social determinants; and
  • Partner with healthcare institutions to collectively advocate for housing policy changes that meaningfully address social determinants of health.
• Connecting with Boston Public Health Commission, Boston’s hospitals, and community health centers to develop a “community-centered” collaborative for designing and implementing a collaborative health needs assessment and Community Health Improvement Plan (CHIP) for Boston in 2018-19.
• Convening a Community Advisory Board in the Bowdoin-Geneva neighborhood of Dorchester to fund innovative, community health improvement projects.

This fall marks the end of the three-year Let’s Get Healthy, Boston! initiative to address preventable causes of chronic disease. We trained 120 residents as Healthy Community Champions. Working with the Boston Public Health Commission and health centers, community development corporations and community-based organizations, among other groups, we worked to convert thousands of apartments all over the city to being smoke-free; expanding the bike share program, Hubway, to new neighborhoods including North Dorchester, East Boston, and Allston-Brighton; and worked with 36 corner stores to promote healthy beverage consumption and reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. We are now working to sustain the initiative for the coming year.

This fall we will be recruiting new members for our Health Planning and Improvement Committee and our Community Engagement Committee, so please look for those notices. With only three staff people, we could not do any of this work without the active participation of volunteers, interns, AmeriCorps, our community and governmental partners, residents and funders. In this time of uncertainty about the future of health care, we are grateful for, and encouraged by the energy and enthusiasm there is to improve the health of Bostonians and the neighborhoods in which we live.

-David Aronstein, BACH Director