2023 Health Impact Ohio Annual Report Highlight

By: Brittany Daniels, Director of Operations & Communications, Health Impact Ohio

Last month, Health Impact Ohio released our 2023 Annual Impact Report. By exploring this report, you will learn about our most recent project work, continued efforts in long-standing initiatives supported by HIO, project and community highlights, and our efforts to continue the momentum of our statewide impact from this year into 2024.

The excerpt below includes remarks from our President & CEO, Carrie Baker, on our 2023 highlights.

“It has been an inspiring and insightful 2023 at Health Impact Ohio! The theme “momentum” comes to mind as I reflect on the year, one that has shaped our organization in ways we couldn’t have imagined as it began. We’ve worked to continue fulfilling our mission of improving social drivers of health, health equity, access and quality through community engagement and partnership, multistakeholder training and coaching, data collection and integration, and strategy development and deployment. All with one goal in mind: eliminating health disparities and helping to achieve optimal health outcomes for all people in every community.

HIO continues to be a leader in statewide efforts to provide quality improvement coaching with medical practices across the state. As part of the statewide Heart Healthy Ohio project, our quality improvement team has provided successful coaching that has resulted improvement in controlling blood pressure in hypertensive minority patients from around 66% to 71% of patients in participating practices over a three-year period. As we head into 2024, HIO’s quality improvement work will expand into several new initiatives, including Ohio Department of Medicaid QI initiatives and a much-needed effort to address physician and care team burnout.

Our Central Ohio Pathways HUB program has continued to grow and thrive, gaining state and national recognition for the innovative approaches to community health worker (CHW) led care coordination. The HUB has engaged 15 care coordination agencies in nine Ohio counties with forty CHWs employed. CHWs in our HUB have, to date, served 5,756 individuals. These CHWs are not only educating, referring, and helping their clients navigate health, social and/or workforce systems but 93% of the time, an outcome of verified connections to care and services, is achieved. Not only does this mean that clients reach their goals of better overall health, but in most cases, these outcomes generate payment via Medicaid Managed Care Organizations or other payers, bringing financial sustainability to our community for addressing otherwise unmet needs. Within the HUB work, we are extremely proud to highlight that 98% of babies born to mothers working with HUB CHWs have babies born at a healthy birthweight and that to date, CHWs in the HUB have housed 161 individuals and families through their services.”

To continue reading Carrie’s Annual Report Message, please use this link to navigate to our full report: 2023 Impact Report — Health Impact Ohio.

We would like to extend a special thank you to our board, executive leadership, community partners, and community health workers for your continued guidance, support, and leadership in the work that make our impact possible. We look forward to our continued collaboration into 2024.

Please note that this report is best viewed on a desktop view for optimal user experience.