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Galvanizing Efforts for Children with Health Complexity

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Funded by The Ford Family Foundation, Galvanizing Action for Children with Health Complexity is a collaborative project aiming to support local communities to engage partners, galvanize action, and support improvement efforts focused on children with health complexity. Initiated in 2019 in response to a growing understanding of the chronic and long-term impacts of health complexity, this project is meant to support community-level engagement to obtain commitment to improvement efforts focused on children with health complexity, and then to support improvement efforts identified and prioritized.

The current region engaged in these efforts is Douglas County, and surrounding counties.

Douglas County Community-Level Engagement:

Community-level engagement began in November 2019, has involved numerous community level meetings and the formation of a local Steering Committee and resulted in a community-informed Call to Action:


Douglas County Priority Population Health Strategies:

Douglas County’s community members determined the priority population on which to focus improvement efforts would be children with health complexity:

  • At the March 2020 meeting of community-level stakeholders, criterion were reviewed and confirmed for how priority areas for action would be identified.
  • OPIP then summarized the input from the March 2020 meeting, follow-up survey completed, an individual stakeholders meetings.
  • Informed by this community-engagement and guided by the local Steering Committee, OPIP will now be supporting two improvement efforts that are targeted to the following:
    • Addressing capacity of, and child- and family-centered pathways to, behavioral health by: assessing resources and building capacity, elevating family voice, examining barriers to services, engaging providers, and strengthening referrals and care coordination.
    • Collaborating with Umpqua Health Alliance (UHA) to increase awareness and use of the health complexity data to identify gaps in care and inform improvement efforts.
    • On November 12th, 2021 a community-level meeting will be held to introduce the improvement effort activities.

Detailed Information about Population Health Strategies:

Through examination of the regional children’s health complexity data, the centering of the voices and identified needs of those with lived experiences in accessing systems for social and medical needs, and the exploration of current local and regional efforts, the Galvanizing Efforts for Health Complex Children steering committee identified two priority areas in Douglas County for OPIP’s improvement project experience. OPIP will provide technical assistance, facilitation, & tool provision aligned with the priority areas identified. For a detailed review of how priority areas were identified and the resulting activities determined, click here.

1. Address Capacity of and Child- and Family-Centered Pathways to Behavioral Health

This priority area will incorporates a number of targeted activities to initiate January 2022, including:

  • Community resource asset mapping, focused in particular on the assessment of capacity, availability of best matched services, and with an equity lens.
  • The informed assessment of gaps in behavioral health services and strategies for building capacity.

Addressing barriers to access of existing services within Behavioral Health by facilitating conversations with families and frontline providers.

Supporting existing methods for accessing services through transportation for in-person services and coverage, and access to telehealth services.

Working with community health care providers to improve best match referrals and closed-loop communication for behavioral health services for children.

Training providers on best practices in Behavioral Health Care for children with health complexity.

2. Increase Community-level Awareness about the Health Complexity Data & Leverage Data

This priority area was engaged in Douglas County during 2021, and will continue throughout the length of the project in a number of other regional communities. Targeted activities include:

  • Working with Umpqua Health Alliance to use the Douglas County Child-level Data to inform and enhance their efforts in behavioral health. Examples of ways that data can inform practice include:
    • Analyzing quality metrics by the health complexity to inform root cause drivers of gaps in care.
    • Analyzing the health complexity data by zip code and by school district to inform existing local efforts and identify areas where there is large need compared with limited resource.
    • Analyzing the data by PCPCH in order to consider trauma-informed trainings or follow-up steps to ACEs for practices that serve patients with high health complexity rates.
  • Working with the Children’s Institute to develop communication materials to:
    • Summarize the Call to Action.
    • Make the Call to Action accessible in Video format.
    • Make meaning of the Health Complexity Data and sharing project goals with community-level organizations support local investment.

Funding Disclosure
This work is supported by The Ford Family Foundation. The Ford Family Foundation was established in 1957 by Kenneth W. and Hallie E. Ford. Its mission is “successful citizens and vital rural communities” in Oregon and Siskiyou County, California. The Foundation is located in Roseburg, Oregon, with a Scholarship office in Eugene.