Author: Alison Wheeler

Connecting to Our Mission: Findhelp Fellows Impact Communities Across the U.S.

When we launched our Fellowship Program, we had a vision for what this program could look like, but we were unsure how it would actually unfold. We were hopeful, but weren’t even sure if people would apply. We decided to take a leap of faith because we’re dedicated to shining the spotlight on our community. 

Those who work at organizations within our network spend their days connecting people to services. For over 40 hours a week, they work tirelessly to help people seeking resources, yet their diligence often goes unnoticed. They joined the social care, health care, and/or nonprofit fields because they believe that every person is worthy of dignity and respect. 

We believe that those who are dedicated to helping others deserve recognition. That’s why we took the risk to launch our fellowship program: to celebrate the work of the passionate navigators within our network and to equip them to effect greater change within their communities.

Our program launched in early January with nine excited fellows, each aiming to solve a distinct need in their community ranging from literacy, to clothing, to job opportunities for teens in foster care. We awarded each fellow $1,000 to use toward their project, and provided marketing support for the events organized by each member of this semester’s cohort. 

We’re thrilled to share a glimpse into the impactful projects our fellows have jump-started this semester!

Findhelp Fellowship Updates 

Daylan Paige, Findhelp Fellow, Louisiana
Project: Single Parent Appreciation & Cultivating Healthy Childhood Development
Daylan is working hands-on to improve her community. She plans to show appreciation to single parents by hosting fun events every month. Daylan believes that parent and child relationships are very important, since healthy relationships are foundational to healthy childhood development. That’s why Daylan aims not only to provide single parents with a safe space to interact with other parents, but also to build a community bond so that their children will have a strong network of support in the future. The first event Daylan will host is called “Parents and Pastries.”

Emily Cook, Findhelp Fellow, Indiana
Project: Community Resource Fair
Emily is planning a community resource fair to coincide with the Greene County, IN 4-H Fair on July 15, 2022. Emily is partnering with the Greene County Alliance and Pace Community Action Agency to mobilize a wide range of nonprofits to participate. In addition to recruiting participating agencies, the team will also work to make sure participants’ organizations are accurately listed on findhelp.org and that their staff members know how to use the program to connect their clients to other services. She hopes to strengthen the safety net in her community through this resource fair and education project.

Erykah Tharpe, Findhelp Fellow, Florida
Project: Encouraging Dreams & Providing Resources for Local Teens
Erykah Tharpe, our Florida fellow, is partnering with local youth development programs in the Tallahassee Community. Her program will give youth the opportunity to identify their imagination, values, and talents in order to develop goals for the society in which they live. There is a special need to support teenagers in the Tallahassee community who are experiencing difficult circumstances. Due to preconceived stereotypes, teens often believe they won’t be able to overcome difficult systemic barriers. The goal of this program is to bring awareness to resources that already exist in the community; resources that will assist youth in overcoming outside influences they currently face and increase the well-being of their day-to-day lives.

Ja’net Young, Findhelp Fellow, California
Project: Fundraiser for the Alliance for Young Women and Girls
Fellow Ja’net Young is organizing a “Give Up Coffee for 30 Days” campaign fundraiser for the Alliance for Young Women and Girls’ Leadership & Employability Training for Women. Their mission is to prepare young women for entry-level careers that lead to upward mobility and financial security. This fundraiser aims to raise $10,000 to cover training expenses and provide free training for young women from marginalized communities. The fundraiser will be April 1 – April 30, 2022. Donate if you can!

Julie Hoggatt, Findhelp Fellow, Indiana
Project: Foster Care Resource Fair
Julie has been organizing and collaborating with Foster Success in Indianapolis to sponsor a Resource Fair at the nonprofit’s upcoming Indiana Youth Advisory Board Annual Youth Conference. The event will be held at Ivy Tech Community College in downtown Indianapolis on Thursday, June 16, 2022. The goal of this event is to provide awareness and connect older youth and young adults in Indiana who have experience in the foster care system with the services that are available to assist them in their day-to-day lives. Having worked with foster youth in the past, Julie is able to see the difficulties young people face when they leave the system. She hopes to ease the transition from foster care into adulthood for youth in Indianapolis.

Karla Cabrera Carrera, Findhelp Fellow, New York
Project: Early Childhood Literacy Event
Karla is organizing and collaborating with Friends of Tremont Park to bring an early literacy event to Walter Gladwin [Tremont] Park in The Bronx. The event will take place on Saturday, April 30th, from 11am to 1pm. The goal of the event is to raise awareness about the importance of reading to children from birth to three years old. Through the fellowship program, Karla is also giving access to books to 50 children in the East Tremont neighborhood of The Bronx. 

Olanike Oladunni Olaniyi, Findhelp Fellow, Indiana
Project: Nutrition Education for Immigrant Communities
As an immigrant herself, Olanike understands the challenges of navigating healthy food options when you move to a new country. Olanike is putting on two culturally-specific nutrition-education events for immigrants from Africa and South/Latin America. She is working alongside a nutritionist to provide a class that teaches the attendees how to find healthy foods at the grocery store or local farmers market, how to read nutrition labels, how to prepare those foods, and how to find alternatives to some of their beloved foods from home. Olanike’s goals are to help attendees learn how to cook a nutritious meal on a budget, and to help them feel more comfortable when navigating the U.S. food system. She will also provide materials and resources on finding local reduced-cost food programs, applying for SNAP, and finding food pantries nearby.

Paige Osika, Findhelp Fellow, Indiana
Project: Education on Eradicating Bias Toward the Disability Community
Strong communities are built through full participation of all people, and oftentimes people with disabilities are not brought to the table nor given equitable opportunities. Through a series of disability education presentations, Paige Osika, Project and Community Engagement Coordinator at accessABILITY Center for Independent Living, is working to dismantle societal bias and stigma to open opportunities for the disability community. From guides to making your physical and virtual space fully accessible, to understanding your relationship with ableism and disability allyship, to learning how to diversify your workforce, accessABILITY is working to address marginalization, empower individuals, and build an accessible community.

Richard Molina, Findhelp Fellow, Colorado
Project: Clothing for Unhoused People in the Local Community
Based in Colorado, Richard Molina is providing clothing for local unhoused populations. He has received sponsorship from the Asian Pacific Development Center to use their 501(c)(3) to obtain donations from big brands and local organizations in the community. Richard has already received generous clothing donations from many local organizations for his project and will be distributing these clothing items throughout Denver, Colorado. 

Join us for our end-of-cohort symposium!

We are so excited to be working with our incredible cohort of fellows across the country. Our fellows are an inspiration to us all, and we are humbled to be a part of the programs they’ve created.

Please join us for our Findhelp Fellowship Symposium on May 9th, from 4:30pm – 6pm, Central time. Our fellows will present on each of their projects in this exciting recap session.

If you’re located near any of our fellows, please consider stopping by or donating to their projects! And, if you’re interested in being a part of this exciting program, you can learn more here!

Ten Programs Supporting the Success of Children & Families

April is Child Abuse Prevention Month, and with that in mind, we’d like to highlight some of the wonderful partners who are supporting the needs of children and families day in and day out. We know that addressing the holistic needs of children and families is a community effort, and requires strong partnerships among many stakeholders. Our network of customers and nonprofits alike support the successful development of a prevention-focused ecosystem that ensures child and family needs are met. 

Below is a short list of a few programs you can find on findhelp.org that are providing critical resources that support a whole-person approach to child and family well-being.

Critical resources on findhelp.org supporting whole-person approaches to family well-being:

  1. A Home Within: Located in Oakland, CA, A Home Within offers education and training for adults who care for and work with foster youth. They also have a psychotherapy program that provides open-ended individual psychotherapy to current and former foster youth.

2. House of Hope of North Carolina: Located in Clayton, NC, House Of Hope’s Residential Services provides intensive care to teenage girls while living and attending school and counseling on campus. House of Hope is set apart from all other Residential Services in they want parents or guardians heavily involved. Parents and guardians are required to be on campus several times a week to spend time with their daughter in the healing process and in individual and family counseling.

3. Peace4Kids: Located in Los Angeles, CA, Transitional Youth Services was designed to provide intensive supports and services that enable youth to access the most basic and vital of community services during the years before and after aging out, and is uniquely positioned to steward these teens into adulthood. Their Saturday program is the main point-of-entry to Peace4Kids designed to provide a safe, nurturing environment where youth are given the guidance to learn cooperation, conflict resolution, and build self-esteem. In addition, this program connects youth in foster care with their peers, with siblings from whom they may have been separated, and with dedicated volunteers in a welcoming environment.

4. The Open Door House: Located in Cabarrus County, NC, The Open Door House provides a safe, stable and supportive residential environment, unleashing former foster youth and homeless young adults to succeed relationally, academically, vocationally and emotionally.

5. The United Methodist Church and Community Development For All People’s “Thrive to Five” program: Located in Columbus, OH, The United Methodist Church and Community Development For All People provides the Thrive to Five program to support families with babies living on the South Side of Columbus, OH. They support parents and families in their journey from pregnancy to becoming their child’s first teacher. This program provides: early childhood education, free diapers, pregnancy support, Incentive pantry rewards for participation, and linkage to additional resources such as developmental screenings, immunizations, preschool, cribs, dental/vision screening, diapers and more.

6. Goodwill Industries Nurse Family Partnership: Located in South Bend, IN, Nurse-Family Partnership pairs first-time moms with a registered nurse to support them throughout their pregnancy until their baby is two years old. Nurses provide moms with the advice and information they need to have a healthy baby and be a great mom. Families also receive case management support to help them with housing, education, employment, childcare, and more until their baby reaches five years old.

7. IMPOWER: Located in central Florida, IMPOWER is a leading non-profit mental health, substance misuse and child well-being organization dedicated to empowering the lives of those in need by offering personal attention, counseling, assistance and inspiration to help them reach their full potential and achieve individual success. No matter what barriers an individual may have encountered, IMPOWER provides the tools necessary to achieve goals and overcome obstacles.

8. Program for Torture Victims: Located in Los Angeles, CA, Program For Torture Victims assists the courageous survivors of state-sponsored torture and persecution who have stood up for freedom, equality, and human dignity. They also provide basic needs such as emergency cash assistance, food, clothing as well as linkages to permanent housing and employment. Peer support groups create a sense of community for clients, allow them to share experiences, and empower them to become spokespeople against the use of torture. Their Psychological Counseling program provides individual and family psychotherapy, psychological evaluation, psychiatric evaluation and follow-up care to immigrants who have been tortured or persecuted abroad.

9. John Boner Housing Stability for Success: Located in Indianapolis, IN, JBNC provides safe, stable housing options to families, older adults, mobility-impaired, and vulnerable families. JBNC owns, operates, and manages more than 220 units to offer stable housing to those who need it most. Quality, affordable housing is a critical component in providing stability for families and ensuring that children are successful in school. Through their Housing Stability for Success program, they use a five-pronged approach to support individuals and families to identify, secure, and retain safe, high-quality, affordable housing.

10. Healthy Families Travis County (HFTC): Located in Travis County, TX, Healthy Families Travis County is a home visiting program for over-burdened first-time parents who reside in Travis County. Services include parent-child relationship building, bonding and attachment skills, education in child development, learning about community resources, and parent education & family engagement.

Want to learn more?

Read about what we’re doing to support children and families.

By the way, who’s Aunt Bertha?

Aunt Bertha is the leading referral platform for social services in America, serving the biggest cities and smallest towns. We connect people seeking help and the verified social care providers that serve them, with dignity and ease. We make it easy for people to find social services in their communities, for nonprofits to coordinate their efforts, and for organizations to integrate social care into the work they already do. We serve millions of users and our platform is used in a wide range of industries including education, government, housing, and healthcare.

Distribute CARES Act Funding in Less Than an Hour

This year, we’ve seen a growing need for housing assistance across the country. With eviction moratoriums ending and more Americans falling into poverty, the second round of funding can’t come soon enough. Aunt Bertha’s functionality supports the tracking of housing assistance funds to those in need.

2020 Data Trends

Housing remains the top need across our network, spanning across all 50 states. The graph below shows the growth in interest in housing related programs. People in need are investigating housing related programs more than any other category right now, at a rate of more than 58,000 housing-related program investigations per week. These program investigations include electronic connections to programs, as well as closed-loop referrals. It’s really bad out there and the problem is not getting better over time. 

2020 Monthly Electronic Connections (across all of our customers)

We are working with coordinated entry systems across 200+ counties in Texas who are distributing new CARES Act funding. We’ve created online screeners to help facilitate this process, and they will soon be using them to support their homelessness prevention programs across the state.

Aunt Bertha Can Help Organize Funding Distribution

When faced with this seemingly unavoidable wave of housing insecurity, organizations across the nation can take a systematic approach to addressing needs within one system. The good news is that, for organizations who are trying to assess needs and distribute funds in their communities, our platform makes it easy to organize and track these requests for help. You can stand up a screener in minutes and track applicants to help decide on who gets the funding.

Anyone who is responsible for receiving and distributing CARES Act funding can sign up for our platform within minutes (for free). From there, it’s quick and easy to configure a screener, and be ready to track applications for funding using our tools. By tracking the dispersed funds through our platform, organizations gain useful insights about the gap between needs and available funding.

How it Works

1) Organizations can start by claiming their program on findhelp.org.

2) Once you’ve claimed your program, you can set up your online screener.

3) Once you are able to address a person’s need, you can close the loop by updating the status of the referral.

4) To collect additional information to report to your funder, you can set up a Data Collection Form and fill out the information for which you need to report on.

5) Data collection forms are automatically added to your Analytics where you can easily download each report.

For nonprofits, all of this is free. You can sign up, claim your program, and set up a screener in minutes, and start helping people right away. If you’re not sure about how this will help your organization, send us your info and we’d be happy to walk you through it in more detail.

If you’re a larger organization and would like to talk about how we can partner, request a demo below and we’ll get you in touch with the right person.

Interested in learning more about Aunt Bertha? Visit us here to request a demo.

Look for the Helpers

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, “Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.” -Mr. Rogers  

 

This advice is more powerful than ever, as we find ourselves entering the 2020 holiday season. The pandemic has pushed many people — especially our most vulnerable populations — to the brink. It’s put increased stress on families in BIPOC communities who already lack sufficient access to healthcare compared to their White peers, and in the case of Latinx households, 72 percent are now experiencing significant financial stress. 

Thanks to the Helpers who are stepping up for their neighbors, there’s a glimmer of hope in many American cities. This Thanksgiving, we want to give thanks to a few people who are going above and beyond for their communities.

Delivering Unto You & Mama Sana Vibrant Woman

Racial disparities regarding maternal health are worse than ever. The pandemic has forced women of color, in particular, into challenging maternal health dilemmas. Pandemic restrictions on delivery rooms in hospitals further complicate matters, and because midwifery care is often not covered by insurance or Medicaid, many women in these communities do not have access to alternative options. Yet nonprofits like Delivering Unto You and Mama Sana Vibrant Woman are stepping up to help bridge the racial gap in maternal healthcare by providing free and reduced cost maternal health services that are culturally relevant and inclusive. Their support for women of color is a literal matter of life and death — and will undoubtedly have a long lasting and positive impact on the communities they are serving. 

Homies Empowerment

Inspired by the Black Panther Party Free Breakfast for Children program, Homies Empowerment is trying to address economic disparities by providing their community with access to basic necessities. The community development organization launched the Free(dom) Store in 2019 — a weekly event in East Oakland that provides free food and home goods to all who come by. Since the pandemic hit in early 2020, the program has expanded to meet the growing needs of the community; starting from a small storefront, it is now a warehouse that takes up nearly half of the block. Their continued support for the families in their community — most of whom are Latinx — is proving critical at a time when the need for immediate relief is rising. 

Cape Fear Food Council

While public life comes to a standstill as a result of the pandemic, Mother Nature does not. For those impacted by increasingly severe hurricane seasons, the pandemic is making recovery more challenging than in years past. This has been particularly hard on communities throughout the Carolinas, many of which are still recovering from the damage caused by Hurricane Florence two years ago. Organizations like the Cape Fear Food Council are stepping up to facilitate safe and efficient food distribution in the wake of these storms. They’ve set up new networks and aid protocols along the Atlantic coast of North Carolina to better coordinate supplies, so that no one is left behind. And while many supporting these efforts are humble about their expertise in addressing food insecurity, the initiative they’re taking is making an impact and inspiring community engagement. 

We launched findhelp.org in March of this year in anticipation of the increased needs from millions of people affected by the pandemic. This Thanksgiving, we’d like to extend a thank you to those who are ensuring the well-being of our communities. Their efforts are an inspiration to our team, and we’re committed to supporting them. 

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The photos and stories in this post were written and photographed by Resolve Magazine, an Aunt Bertha-funded initiative that spotlights critical social issues and profiles people and organizations working for positive change in their communities.

Aunt Bertha & L.A. Care — Providing Care to LA’s Most Vulnerable Communities When They Needed It Most

L.A. Care Health Plan is the largest publicly operated health plan in the United States, providing access to quality, affordable healthcare for more than two million residents in Los Angeles County.

When L.A. Care hired Dr. Richard Seidman as its newest Chief Medical Officer in June 2017, he entered the organization with a mission to better prioritize interventions and care that focus on social determinants of health (SDoH) given their influence on community health outcomes. Dr. Seidman established an interdepartmental SdoH committee, which after much research outlined five key SDoH for L.A. Care to focus on: food security, transportation, housing security, early education and development, and income security. The new focus on SDoH interventions came at an opportune time, just as Medi-Cal was rolling out its new Health Homes Program (HHP). The new HHP put an emphasis on coordinating and providing care services across the “full range of physical health, behavioral, and community-based long-term services and supports (LTSS)” needed by Medi-Cal beneficiaries.

As part of the new HHP, L.A. Care needed to develop a community resource directory (CRD) that could effectively serve its patients in Los Angeles County for the years ahead. L.A. Care had previously been in touch with Aunt Bertha regarding a potential partnership prior to the launch of the HHP, and formally solicited a bid from the company in January 2019. After an extensive review process, L.A. Care selected Aunt Bertha as its new partner for the development of its CRD in April 2019.

The only caveat? The California Department of Health Care Services stipulated the CRD needed to be live by July 1st, 2019.

Building Community Link

L.A. Care Medical Director of Behavioral Health and Social Services Dr. Michael Brodsky, who was one of the key actors from L.A. Care working with Aunt Bertha on the new CRD, understood the urgency of the situation. Based on his prior experience with other medical technology partnerships, the fast-approaching deadline for getting the CRD up and running was a tall order.

However, the Aunt Bertha customer success team went to work on the CRD and in collaboration with L.A. Care was able to get the new platform up-and-running in just months. And despite the compressed timeline, the L.A. Care Community Link platform launched without issue — providing users with an intuitive search experience for social services and resources in their ZIP Code.

Following the launch of the L.A. Care Community Link platform, L.A. Care launched a campaign to raise awareness of the new platform, including those clinics throughout Los Angeles County that are a part of the HHP.

The COVID-19 Pandemic

Understanding the potential catastrophic effects that the COVID-19 pandemic could have on the Los Angeles community as the outbreak was worsening, L.A. Care developed an ambitious outreach campaign for more than 200,000 of the health plan’s members in March 2020. The outreach initiative focused on members who are most vulnerable to the pandemic — including those with chronic conditions, individuals from the Black, Latinx, Asian, and Pacific Islander communities, and older individuals in Los Angeles County. The outreach proved to be critical to the well-being of L.A. Care’s most vulnerable members, ensuring that preventive care and medication priorities were being taken care of for a population that could least afford any gaps in coverage.

L.A. Care staff also incorporated personal and household needs inquiries into the outreach — identifying the concerns that were impacting L.A. Care members beyond their immediate medical concerns. Early on in the pandemic, L.A. Care uncovered data indicators on the L.A. Care Community Link platform indicating significant food and housing insecurity concerns among its members, with many struggling with the dilemma between affording food or their medications due to the economic impact of the pandemic. Based upon these findings, L.A. Care CEO John Baackes worked with L.A. Care leadership to authorize new emergency grants for organizations addressing SDoH in Los Angeles County. This included more than $550,000 to Project Angel Food, which provides free meals to those who are unable to shop or cook for themselves due to chronic medical conditions.

Additionally, L.A. Care added the L.A. Care Community Link platform to its main COVID-19 response page — helping increase awareness and expanding access to the free and reduced cost resources available via the platform. Since then, the platform has averaged nearly 1,000 users per month — a 400% increase compared to the months prior to the pandemic, with the majority of users seeking food assistance.

Continuing Support Amidst the Pandemic

Now, with future government support uncertain and existing federal subsidies for many relief programs running out, L.A. Care has curated COVID-specific resource folders on the L.A. Care Community Link site for the HHP clinic partners and other community health centers. These folders have become invaluable to healthcare providers in the L.A. area, providing timely information on resources that personnel can use to better coordinate care for individuals in need during these unprecedented times.

Aunt Bertha’s support has been critical to these efforts, with its full-time data team helping ensure that the community resource database is being updated in real-time with new programs and changes to existing programs throughout the pandemic. When L.A. Care flags a program question to the team, Aunt Bertha is able to respond and confirm all the relevant information in no more than two days — a turnaround time that L.A. Care couldn’t have dreamed of prior to the launch of the L.A. Care Community Link platform.

Developing the Los Angeles Resource Collaborative

Beyond its direct support of L.A. Care and the L.A. Care Community Link platform, Aunt Bertha has worked with the organization to develop the broader Los Angeles Resource Collaborative. The Collaborative is focused on building a community of social service agencies, community benefit organizations, and healthcare organizations in Los Angeles County so that healthcare and social services can be better coordinated and provisioned to those in need throughout the county.

The pandemic has illustrated the need for the Collaborative more than ever, but L.A. Care and Aunt Bertha have been working together on it since before the worst of the pandemic’s impact was felt. In February 2020, L.A. Care partnered with Aunt Bertha to convene the first meeting of the Collaborative with the expanded partner network of health plans, hospitals, and dental plans in Los Angeles, using the venue as a forum for discussing how the organizations could better work together to coordinate care for their communities. This also included an emphasis on streamlining work for community benefit organizations so that they could serve overlapping needs to several different healthcare partners at once. Rather than having the same conversations with different partners, this helps the community organizations more efficiently utilize time and resources while achieving the same outcomes.

The economic impact of COVID-19 is going to be felt by Americans — particularly its most vulnerable communities — for potentially years to come. Our mission continues to be focused on ensuring all Americans can find the help they need, when they need it. And it’s why Aunt Bertha is proud to work with partners like L.A. Care who are leading the way in rethinking how we address community health and social care needs.

To learn more about Aunt Bertha, please visit our website.

Supporting The Veteran Community In These Times

For more than a century America has dedicated November 11th to the appreciation of those who serve in the country’s armed forces. This Veterans Day, we want to share some of the great work our partners are doing to address the needs of veterans around the country. 

BeneLynk 

BeneLynk is a major supporter of the veteran community, providing important career opportunities and helping veterans access the benefits they’ve earned. 

James Tongate

Benelynk’s work with us began nearly 18 months ago, as they searched for a partner that could provide them with both a comprehensive community program database and the ability to connect automatically through BeneLynk’s proprietary case management system. Since then, BeneLynk has assisted more than 66,000 Medicare Advantage members with community programs that have made significant improvements in their lives — including critical services like food delivery, COVID-19 protective gear, and household utilities financial assistance. 

James Tongate, Vice President of Government Relations at BeneLynk, first joined the organization to help his fellow veterans obtain the health benefits and employment opportunities that are available to them after leaving the service. This support is crucial amidst the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on the veteran community. “Our nation and the private sector had made strides with veteran and military spouse employment opportunities through the years, but the pandemic has reversed a lot of that progress — setting veterans back to March 2013 employment numbers,” Tongate notes. He’s also seen how other issues like food insecurity and mental health issues caused by isolation are being worsened by the pandemic, with many elderly veterans impacted but unaware of the programs available to them in their communities. BeneLynk has worked hard to help those that risked their lives for their country to secure access to the services they need in these difficult times.

Veterans Health and Wellness Foundation

Dr. Evelyn Lewis

The Veterans Health and Wellness Foundation was created to help care for the men and women who have borne the battle — providing solutions for individuals, businesses, and others to ensure America’s promise to its servicemembers is honored well after their tour of duty is finished. The key programs the Veterans Health and Wellness Foundation provides include:

Dr. Evelyn Lewis, President of the Veterans Health and Wellness Foundation, has been on the front lines of providing care to the veteran community for several decades. “I served 25 years in the Navy as a family physician before and during the Global War On Terror era. During the years I provided direct patient care, my patients were always active duty service members, veterans, and their families. From my early years of training at Naval Hospital Jacksonville, to my retirement, I knew that caring for Veterans and their families was why I was here and what I wanted to do,” says Lewis. “To continue and expand on this work, I started the Warrior Centric Healthcare Foundation. However, we recently changed the name to the Veterans Health and Wellness Foundation because we believe our new name best describes our purpose and mission to deliver on America’s promise to its servicemembers.”

Dr. Lewis first heard about Aunt Bertha several years ago when evaluating it and others as potential social care network partners, concluding that it was the best partner to help the foundation serve its community and its needs. “We needed a partner that could help us connect veterans, their families, and their caregivers to free and reduced cost services in an easily accessible way. Aunt Bertha’s been a tremendous partner in making this possible for our foundation, and the commitment to the veteran community is evident in their work,” notes Lewis. “We’re working with Aunt Bertha to create a system that takes away the complexity and barriers to care that veterans and their families currently face.”

The work is far from over for Dr. Lewis and her team, especially with COVID-19 impacting the veteran community so severely. “We’ve got more than 100 years of military and post-military experience within our leadership team at the Veterans Health and Wellness Foundation, giving us unique insight into the struggles and experiences of the veteran community at large,” Lewis continues. “However, resource challenges — including proper funding — will continue to be a barrier to a more equitable social care system for our nation’s patriots. When you’re in the field on a mission, unit leaders will often note that ‘chow is continuous;’ material support for our efforts back home needs to be continuous as well given the challenges the veteran community faces every day.” 

“We hope everyone can appreciate what our veteran community has sacrificed for the well-being of all Americans, and encourage anyone with a connection to the community to visit our website, become a neighbor, and donate!”

The American Red Cross

The American Red Cross is known for its disaster relief work around the country, but its mission was born on the battlefield through Clara Barton’s support of Civil War soldiers. In the 140 years since its founding, The American Red Cross has become a trusted emblem for the U.S. military and the veteran community — committed to serving the community from the time service members take their oath through their post-service life as veterans. 

Aunt Bertha began working with The American Red Cross to support their information and referral services for the military community. “We were looking for a partner that would give us the ability to provide the best support and information and referral services to tens of thousands of active duty military, veterans, retirees, and their families,” says Emily Osment, who works as the Service to the Armed Forces (SAF) and International Services Communications Manager for The American Red Cross. Since beginning work with Aunt Bertha, The American Red Cross has been able to consolidate individual resource lists and literal binders scattered across dozens of regions into one platform. Now, any Red Cross caseworker, regardless of location, can access this platform and provide referrals to clients at any time. They’re also working closely with Aunt Bertha to integrate the platform into their case management system, which will further streamline the support process for caseworkers and the clients they serve. 

The work being done with The American Red Cross will be crucial to the organization’s support of the veteran community in the months ahead. “The most pressing issue the Red Cross faces, in regard to the veteran community, is the impact of COVID-19 on this community, their families and caregivers,” Osment notes. She emphasizes that, unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic is not only exacerbating social services issues for veterans but is creating significant challenges for American Red Cross clinical and non-clinical volunteers who are supporting veteran’s hospitals. The rise in mental health issues amongst the veteran community stemming from extended isolation due to prolonged separation and separation is cause for concern as well. It’s why they’re calling on the American public to help sew and donate face coverings to veteran’s hospitals experiencing supply shortages, as well as doubling the size of their Military and Veteran Caregiver Network to combat the health issues caused by the pandemic. 

“As COVID-19 continues to impact our veterans, the American Red Cross is committed to helping combat the issues that are strongly affecting this community. We are expanding our Resiliency Workshops to offer virtual courses to help combat feelings of isolation, provide anger management, encourage family communication and offer COVID-19 specific stress-coping methods,” says Osment. “We will continue to support veteran’s hospitals in need through our volunteer network, distribution of care packages and providing face coverings. And our Hero Care Network continues to offer 24/7 relief for veterans facing emergencies and needing financial assistance or information referrals.”

Appreciation of our Armed Forces Community

We are proud to continue working with our partners in the veteran community who continue to fight for the wellbeing of our country’s service members, long after they’ve finished their tour of duty. Thank you, and Happy Veterans Day!

An Interoperable Social Care Sector

The Road to an Interoperable Social Care Sector

The organizations that make up the social care sector in the United States – particularly community benefit organizations (CBOs) and government agencies – play a critical role in addressing social determinants of health (SDoH) by providing free and reduced cost services to individuals in need. These organizations use Systems of Record (SoR) to manage their day-to-day operations, using both analog and digital processes to perform tasks such as screening applicants for services, scheduling appointments, tracking history of interactions with clients/patients, and calculating benefits delivery. The complexity of these systems varies greatly between organizations, though most organizations need to use some SoR for reporting purposes. 

Despite our knowledge of how important addressing SDoH is to public health – and the ubiquity of SoRs – interoperability between different organizations is not the norm. This has a negative impact on our ability to coordinate and address SDoH for individuals in need, undermining progress towards public health goals and short-changing those who are most in-need of relevant services. We believe there’s a better way forward, and have developed a set of guiding principles for a more connected social care sector – improving the experience for service providers and creating better public health outcomes in the years ahead. 

The Core Principles

To enable a more interoperable social care sector, Aunt Bertha has laid out the following core principles:

These are not necessarily Earth-shattering or brand new ideals, but we don’t believe we need to reinvent the wheel to make interoperability the norm in the social care sector. Yet to-date, forced monopolies have been the dominant strategy for promoting greater interoperability. 

If 100% of the referral activity is within one system, there would be benefits. However, the innovation and financial cost tradeoffs — even if we assume universal adoption — can offset many of the benefits that come with this approach. Abiding by the core principles outlined above, we believe service providers can enjoy a better experience — particularly in the areas of referral history, outcomes tracking, and assessment histories — without abandoning their preferred SoR. 

The Path Forward

Much like how cell phone service providers have chosen to share the same towers between different carriers, we see the interoperable social care sector working in the same way. In this way, social care providers will be able to securely share and act upon information critical to improving public health in the long run.

We hosted a webinar on Thursday, October 29th — which you can watch here — to discuss how the social care sector can work toward common standards of reporting outcomes and the ways software providers can incorporate these standards into their applications. We’d like to extend a warm thank you to everyone who attended, and we’re excited to continue these conversations going forward. If you want to learn more about our technical plans as we push for greater interoperability of social care data, you can read our whitepaper next.

Introducing New Special Pricing for eClinicalWorks Customers

Aunt Bertha has been working for years with healthcare organizations across the country. We see first hand the innovative work they’re doing to go beyond their walls and get patients connected to social care services. In the interest of providing a more seamless workflow, we’ve worked with electronic health record (EHR) vendors to make it as efficient and effective as possible to make these connections possible.

Last week, the Aunt Bertha Team had the exciting opportunity to speak at the NACHC eClinicalWorks User Group Conference. We introduced our new SMART on FHIR Launch integration available in eClinicalWorks, which makes it easier and more seamless for staff to make and track social care connections using our platform. This integration allows staff members – community health workers, nurses, physicians, care teams – to assess and connect patients right from within their eCW workflow.

eClinicalWorks has been in the Healthcare IT space for more than 20 years. Over 130,00 physicians and nurse practitioners, and more than 850,000 medical professionals use their record. They work with a large number of medical groups, from large healthcare systems to smaller community health centers, across the country. To continue partnering with these health centers who play a critical role in supporting our local communities, Aunt Bertha has developed new special pricing, making it easier to provide access to Aunt Bertha’s nationwide network of social care organizations seamlessly within their eCW workflow.

Bella Kirchner, our Director of Research, has previously worked for both a large FQHC and smaller Community Health Center and has seen the huge impact they make on the community. “These organizations are a vital part of any community. They work tirelessly to provide whole person care to improve the lives of their patients and to make real systemic change in the areas they serve. What they do is incredibly important.”