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Community benefit

Community Health Network views making a difference in central Indiana as a primary part of our mission. As one of the state’s largest health care networks, Community provides over $60 million in community benefit services each year. To those who may have difficulty in accessing health care services, we have many outreach strategies. To those who may not be able to afford the cost of health care, we assist and provide resources. To those who may not be knowledgeable about their own health issues, we provide education.

Our programs, many of which have been nationally recognized, range from health education and free screenings to training emergency medical services personnel. Community partnerships vary from school initiatives like the At Your School after school program to sponsoring Healthy Kids Days at area YMCA locations or supporting the Domestic Violence Network. In addition, area high school seniors benefit from the “It’s Our Community” life sciences scholarship program. We’re proud of our community involvement through these service programs, scholarships and community partnerships that help us deliver on our mission.

Symphony in the Park featuring the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra
Tuesday, July 20
7:30 p.m.
Ellenberger Park

Bring your dinner, folding chairs and lawn blanket for an evening of beautiful music in the fresh summer air.

Free shuttle service and parking at Community Hospital East, 1500 N. Ritter Avenue. 

Alternate rain site: Thomas Carr Howe Community High School

The ribbon is cut—The Jane Pauley Community Health Center is ready to serve patients

“I tell people that the letter ‘I’ in Indianapolis stands for ‘innovation.’ This may look like a small idea, but it’s a big idea.”

The big idea to which Jane Pauley refers is the eastside Indianapolis health center that bears her name. Pauley, an eastside native best known as an anchor for NBC’s “Today” and “Dateline” programs, visited Indianapolis to help cut the ribbon and open The Jane Pauley Community Health Center, operated by Community Health Network in space donated by the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township.

“This is the story of a partnership of a group of people who recognized that there’s a need for health care,” Bryan Mills, Community’s president and CEO, told the crowd of more than 200 who gathered September 23 for the center’s ribbon-cutting ceremony. “This is an example of what we believe others can do; it’s something we hope people can replicate.”

The model to which Pauley and Mills refer is a clinic that provides holistic care—including wellness, medical, mental health, dental and social services—regardless of the patient’s ability to pay. Though it’s located within Warren Township’s Renaissance School, it serves not only students and their families but the entire eastside community. “This is the nexus of the two things most important to me: health care for underserved people, and public education,” Pauley told the gathering.

“The focus of this community health center is primary health care,” Robin Ledyard, M.D., president of Community Hospital East and one of the center’s creators, told ribbon-cutting attendees. “Primary health care meets about 80 percent of people’s needs. This is access for the public where they need it, not in the ER, where that care can become confusing and expensive.”

Also speaking was Jeff Bennett, Warren Township trustee. He hailed the center’s progressive integration of health services, and added that it also will provide access to a wide range of social services, including food stamps and heating assistance. “We want this to be a front door to getting these services.”

Peggy Hinckley, Ph.D., superintendent of the Metropolitan School District of Warren Township, is a strong believer in the importance of meeting the health care needs of students. “Warren Township is very focused on closing the achievement gap,” she says. “Children are better learners and can focus on their work when they feel well.”

Indeed, says Pauley, good health care services are essential just to keep kids in school learning, rather than at home sick. As an example, she points to asthma as one of the most common chronic ailments facing children. Citing Children’s Health Fund studies, Pauley says a child getting regular treatment for asthma misses an average of seven fewer days of school each year than a child whose asthma is not well controlled. Plus, “for every child who gets proper treatment for chronic asthma, $4,500 is saved annually.”

Health care costs are a major stressor for many families, observes Art Bouvier, who owns the Papa Roux restaurant two miles south of the center and serves on the center’s advisory board. As a small-business owner, he’s been unable to get adequate insurance for his family, so he plans to take them to the center for their primary health care needs. For those who are uninsured or underinsured, “you spend a lot of time wondering how bad is bad enough to get medical attention.”

At the ribbon cutting, Indianapolis Mayor Greg Ballard praised the spirit of partnership that is behind this kind of project. “We are all extremely fortunate to be in a city in which great generosity toward each other is the norm,” he says, calling the center “a place of hope.”

Mills said it offers an example of what people in the community can do when they decide to solve a problem rather than waiting for someone else to provide the solution. “This is us saying, ‘we can do this on our own.’”

Added Dr. Hinckley, “See what happens when well-intentioned people with caring hearts come together with an idea?”

For Pauley, joining in the partnership offers the chance to draw attention to the needs of the underserved, as well as cutting-edge ways to meet those needs. As for having her name attached to a project that tackles an issue so important to her—“there probably hasn’t been a bigger honor afforded me in my lifetime.”

Community Health Network helps plant medicinal herb garden

Community Health Network, in partnership with Community Heights, the neighborhood group around Community Hospital East, recently partnered with the Indiana Medical History Museum and IPS School 88 to build a “medicinal garden” on the school’s grounds. Volunteers from around the network came together to plant 10 herbs in a series of garden plots and to construct a shed that houses gardening tools and a local water supply. Wellspring Pharmacy, located within Community hospitals, also provided volunteers.

The herbs planted include: dill, basil, thyme, rosemary, oregano, purple sage, lavender, lemon balm, peppermint and spearmint. “Some of these have medicinal as well as culinary and aromatic properties,” according to Pam Conrad, R.N., complementary therapy nurse aromatherapist. “Whether to alleviate headache or to ease anxiety or insomnia, herbal remedies are the oldest form of medicine on our planet,” explained Conrad, “and even the benefit of gardening alone is known to lower blood pressure and elevate one’s mood.”

Garden labels with educational information about each plant have been added to each plot to help inform visiting schoolchildren. While some herbs are cultivated for their aromatherapy oils or used in dried form, others have immediate use for culinary consumption. The crops will be harvested and sold at local markets, with the proceeds funneled back into the upkeep of the garden itself.

“When we had this opportunity to connect with Wellspring and the Indiana Medical History Museum, we saw it as a way to add to our presence within the community,” explained Darrell Unsworth, director of community economic development for Community Health Network. In addition to providing inspiration, technical assistance and a few starter plants, master gardeners from the museum supplied a list of herbs and plants that had been used historically in the creation of medicine and treatment of different ailments.

Located behind School 88 on 16th street, approximately one block east of Community Hospital East, the garden is partially funded through a $5,000 grant that Community Heights received from the Greater Indianapolis Neighborhood Initiative (GINI) with support from the hospital. This grant provided the finances necessary to build a water tank and shed equipped with communal gardening tools for neighborhood residents to use on their plots. A pair of stone benches under a large, shady tree on the site was also donated by Wellspring for visitors and residents to enjoy.

Additional land is dedicated to separate neighborhood plots, which are available to rent for $5 per month through the Community Heights neighborhood association. “Residents are growing fresh produce for their families on this land,” said Unsworth. “Some are growing vegetables and some are growing flowers, while others are sponsoring plots and donating what they grow to homeless shelters in the city,” he added.

Community Health Network helps bring new transportation to the east side

A grand reveal of the Near Eastside Orbiter (NEO) shuttle took place on August 4, 2009. The celebration included a press conference with key speakers from partners IndyGo (Indianapolis Public Transportation Corporation), John H. Boner Community Center, Indianapolis Local Initiatives Support Corporation (LISC), and Community’s own, Dan Hodgkins, vice president, community benefit.

The NEO shuttle provides a convenient and affordable transportation option for eastside residents to home, work, shopping, schools and places of recreation. It has been a collaborative effort between the John H. Boner Community Center, IndyGo, East 10th Street Civic Association, LISC and Community Health Network.

A nominal $1 fee is now required for each ride and monthly passes can be purchased for $30.

The 15-mile circular route for the 24-passenger shuttle begins at the John H. Boner Community Center, located at 2236 East 10th Street. It heads north and loops toward Community Hospital East before going downtown along Washington Street, ending back at the Boner Center within one hour. One bus will cover the entire loop, making regular stops along the established IndyGo bus route, with each stop marked by a unique NEO logo. In addition to providing a direct service to patients along the route who need to get to the hospital or to regular appointments, the bus will offer improved access to places of employment, local services and the downtown loop.

Route Map - Download route map

Hours
Hours are scheduled from Monday through Saturday from 5 to 9 a.m. and 5 to 9 p.m. Once ridership is established, the intent is to increase frequency and potentially add another shuttle.

Common Goal gives at-risk students a glimpse of professional world

From The Indianapolis Star, July 28, 2009

It didn't take Cheyenne Conn long to discard her first misperception about life in an office: It's all about competition. After that, the lessons kept coming as the 14-year-old spent her summer working at the Greater Indianapolis Chamber of Commerce helping to track mentors in its internship program. She was one of 37 students paired with local businesses as part of the Common Goal Initiative, which aims to help students at risk of dropping out of high school to connect their lessons to the real world and stay in school. On Wednesday, the group will wrap up the summer with an event that features Indiana Pacers Vice President Quinn Buckner.

The internships are part of a strategy by business groups and Indianapolis school districts to raise graduation rates. Besides the four- to six-week internships, the coalition pays for programs at schools that include graduation coaches, reading initiatives and chances for students to make up classes they failed. Participating businesses include Community Hospitals, Clarian Health Partners, National Federation for High School Sports, AIT Laboratories, Ivy Tech Community College, Just Marketing International and the Indianapolis Zoo.

Community’s symphony concert draws biggest crowd ever
ISO attracts 4,000 neighbors to park near Community East

A crowd estimated to be as large as 4,000 people gathered in Ellenberger Park to enjoy the Indianapolis Symphony Orchestra’s only free summer concert in Indy this year, an event made possible by the support of Community Health Network. It was the fourth year in a row that Community has sponsored a symphony concert in the park, and organizers say it was the most successful event yet.

CEO Bill Corley (now CEO Emeritus) took the baton as the guest conductor for one of the works on the program, which was preceded by remarks by Steve Hultgren, interim president of Community East, and Dan Hodgkins, vice president, community benefit. The Community Health Network Foundation also collected nearly $1,000 in donations, earmarked to help bring the ISO back to the park next summer.

“It was wonderful to see Bill Corley directing the symphony, and Steve Hultgren and myself doing our best at a vaudeville act,” Hodgkins says. “We raised money and interest in our work on the eastside.”

The concert, held the evening of July 21, represents just one of the many ways Community connects with and supports the neighborhoods it serves. The program distributed at the concert spotlighted some of the other initiatives through which the network provides community benefit, including its school-based health clinics, Habitat for Humanity build, and the medicinal garden recently planted near Community East by volunteers representing Wellspring Pharmacy and the network’s community benefit team.

Many area residents expressed their appreciation for Community’s support of the free Symphony in the Park concert, Hodgkins says. He provides a few examples of the comments the network has received:

• “Thanks for your continued support of the symphony’s concert at Ellenberger Park, even in tough economic times. Your sponsorship shows your commitment to the neighborhood surrounding Community, and it’s appreciated!”
• “With the economy in poor shape, opportunities to enjoy the arts on a budget are harder to come by, but you are making that possible for hundreds of families. We in Irvington are lucky to have such a generous neighbor as Community Hospital East.”
• “I just moved to Irvington two months ago and was thrilled to see that the symphony would be playing a free concert just two blocks from my new home. I appreciate all you and Community did to make that possible.”
• “The large number of folks attending is an indication of how much it means to eastsiders.”
  

VHA honors network for community benefit efforts

VHA Inc., a national health care alliance, has recognized Community Health Network for its efforts to provide health care that matches the needs of its community with a 2009 VHA Leadership Award for Community Benefit Excellence. VHA serves more than 1,400 not-for-profit hospitals nationwide, and Community Health Network is one of five health systems nationwide to be recognized for its efforts to serve community health needs.

"Community benefit is inherent to Community Health Network’s culture,” says Bill Corley, president and CEO of Community Health Network. “Caring for the needs of the community has always extended beyond our hospitals. I’m very proud of the commitment and compassion of the network team.”

The award focuses on three areas:

• Demonstration of a comprehensive community benefit strategy
• Highlighting a “best of class” community benefit program
• Providing an effective communications plan to tell the community benefit story

“We are proud to celebrate all the hard work inside and outside the boundaries of our hospitals,” says Dan Hodgkins, vice president of community benefit and economic redevelopment for Community Health Network. “This is where community-owned, not-for-profit hospitals like ours can make a difference, and we have. Without the network’s leadership, staff and physicians, none of this would be possible.”

Hodgkins adds, “Thanks to the Community Health Network Foundation for its work in funding and supporting these unique award-winning programs, which contribute to our success in developing an organizational culture of philanthropy.”

“Providing for the unique health needs of their communities is the hallmark of not-for-profit hospitals,” says Michael Regier, senior vice president of VHA. “The VHA Leadership Award for Community Benefit recognizes organizations for their focus and commitment to community benefit and the effective strategies they use to tell their community benefit story.”

VHA hopes that recognizing these award-winning institutions will encourage other not-for-profit hospitals and health systems to increase their community impact by improving and expanding upon their existing community benefit programs.