Alliance for Strong Families and Communities

This fact sheet outlines strategies to help Medicaid stakeholders encourage partnerships between community-based organizations and health care organizations. States can provide: (1) financial support to build and sustain program capacity; (2) assistance in identifying metrics for evaluation; (3) incentives to providers to address social determinants of health; and (4) use of policy levers, including value-based contracts, managed care organization regulations, and state plan amendments.

This tool was designed for community-based organizations and health care organizations in existing partnerships. It provides a template to understand progress toward benchmarks characteristic of effective partnerships, identify areas for further development, and guide strategic conversation. This tool is meant to help partnering organizations work together more effectively and maximize their impact.

The Eastern Virginia Care Transitions Partnership (EVCTP) is a largescale partnership including Bay Aging and four other Area Agencies on Aging (AAAs), four health systems, three managed care organizations (MCOs), and other health care and human service providers. This case study describes several topics including the service delivery model, information sharing and reporting, shared governance, success factors, and challenges.

The Partnership for Healthy Outcomes, a project of the Center for Health Care Strategies, Nonprofit Finance Fund, and the Alliance for Strong Families and Communities, has published a report that captures and analyzes lessons from health care organizations and community-based organizations (CBOs) that are partnering to address both the clinical and the social determinants of health. This report is based on a survey of more than 200 health care related partnerships.