The making of a Regional Center for Health Innovation:
a decade in review
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Community Health Works was organized in 1999 when Ethel A. Cullinan, Ph.D., CEO of the Medcen Community Health Foundation in Macon, Georgia, organized a coalition of more than one hundred regional leaders to discuss ways in which they might collaborate to better serve the needs of central Georgia's uninsured and medically underserved residents. After being selected as a recipient of a $700,000 Communities in Charge Grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, which was matched locally by the Medcen Community Health Foundation, CHW grew quickly and was incorporated as a 501 c(3) in 2001, with a mission of regional integration of whole person healthcare for the uninsured.
Over the past decade, Community Health Works has transformed from a small nonprofit 501 c(3) organization, to a broad-based alliance of leaders and regional partners representing the top minds in business, government, academia, information technology, healthcare services and health advocacy, all of whom share a common vision: better health for all people through communities working together. By virtue of our strengths, CHW has evolved into a Regional Center for Health Innovation. Those strengths include the breadth and depth of collaboration, the extent of insight and expertise represented in the collaborative, and the level of commitment to finding regional, integrated solutions to the lack of access to care and the resulting health disparities that confront the uninsured and economically disadvantaged residents of the region.
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Ethel Cullinan, PhD, President & CEO
MedCen Community Health Foundation
Photo Credit: Leah Yetter 2009
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| Our model of organization and delivery of services has proven successful and worthy of expansion as well as replication, having successfully attracted and applied more than $8 million to our regional mission and vision. Our organizational infrastructure has also enabled CHW to host as well as partner with other networks and healthcare providers throughout the region and state to incubate, test and pilot solutions to the health crisis facing our communities. As a result, the Community Health Works consortium has been honored for its achievements by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the National Association of Counties, the Georgia Rural Health Association, the Georgia Hospital Association and the Georgia Governor's Office. | |
