Despite relatively high spending on medical care, Americans experience worse health outcomes overall than their peers in other industrialized nations. The Neighborhood Nursing Program, a collaboration of the Johns Hopkins School of Nursing and the nursing schools of the University of Maryland, Morgan State University, and Coppin State University, aims to address this issue by shifting the health care system’s focus to prevention, and to accessible, quality primary care for all.
Neighborhood Nursing is a method of health care delivery based on successful international models of community-oriented primary health care and other tested interventions in the US. Its goal is to improve health, neighborhood by neighborhood, by connecting residents with nurses and community health workers trained to provide care on the spot—including in homes and local community centers, such as libraries and senior centers—and to collaborate with local social services and medical providers. The program is being designed with feedback from local residents, government agencies, and experts in health policy and clinical care. It will have robust monitoring and evaluation to ensure it is effective, as well as scalable and sustainable within currently established and nascent health care insurance and payment systems.
SNF, alongside other funders, is supporting the pilot phase of the Neighborhood Nursing program as it is implemented with a variety of partners across Maryland in urban, suburban, and rural areas. SNF support will bolster various aspects of the program’s roll-out, especially research and evaluation efforts aimed at capturing the model for replication beyond Maryland.
Over the course of its grantmaking in the health sector generally, and as part of its Global Health Initiative (GHI), SNF has contributed to improving health care delivery across many disciplines and countries, including via support to our longstanding partners at Johns Hopkins University with this project and many others.