Introduction to Whatcom’s History of Collaboration on Health
July 4, 2008 by marc
This community has a long history of working together for the good of the whole. There is a long history of providing care for the underinsured. Organizations have been born from those efforts including Interfaith Community Health Center and Whatcom Alliance for Healthcare Access (WAHA). Working togeter for health information sharing and quality improvement across all health care organizations lead to the creation of Whatcom Health Information Network (HInet) as well as Whatcom Community Health Improvement Consortium (CHIC). Many organizations across the community are working together for health and they have organized Whatcom Coalition for Healthy Communities as well as a wonderfully informative website CommunityCounts. Of course Whatcom County Public Health Department and St. Joseph Hospital have played significant roles in most community-wide health discussions and partnerships as have most organized physician groups and the Whatcom County Medical Society. The community participated in an internatioal multi-year project to “redesign healthcare”–Pursing Perfection. The Institute for Healthcare Improvement managed this Robert Wood Johnson Foundation initiative. Recently Western Washington University has joined actively into efforts to improve the county’s health through the Critical Junctures Institute.
