“Heart disease and stroke are leading causes of death in Minnesota, with racial and ethnic minorities experiencing the highest prevalence.”
-CDC, National Center for Health Statistics
Healthy Northland Partners with Healthcare Providers
Healthy Northland has assisted primary care clinics in Northeast Minnesota to improve the quality of preventive services for over 4 years. Healthy Northland offers practice facilitation to primary care clinics to improve the quality of care for patients with hypertension, obesity, prediabetes and tobacco cessation needs.
They focus on improving referral and communication to and between evidence based self-management programs, and promoting team-based care to strengthen links between clinic systems, and community-based programs and activities.
What Can Healthy Northland Do for Your Patients?
Partner clinics work with Sarah Nelson, MD, Healthy Northland Clinical Consultant; and Stratis Health, experts in collaboration and innovation in health care quality and safety.
To discuss preventative health strategies for your patients please contact:
Sarah Nelson, MD. Email her at: sarah@silvercliff.net or
Jennifer Collard, Public Health Nurse in St. Louis County.
Email her at: collardj@stlouiscountymn.gov
A financial stipend is available to help offset the costs related to clinic involvement.
Examples include:
- monitoring system-wide and provider focused measures of hypertension control, undiagnosed hypertension and BMI data, with analysis assistance from MDH epidemiologists
- using electronic health records and health information technology to improve
patient care - learning and implementing best practices to integrate team-based care, using
non-physician healthcare professionals in hypertension and prediabetes
management - participating in a learning collaborative with other cohort clin
ics - integrating home blood pressure monitoring into clinical practice
- helping develop two-way referral processes to link patients to evidence based self-management programs for diabetes prevention and chronic disease self-management
- Motivational Interviewing and other evidence-based training opportunities
How Do We Do This?
We’re able to do this with the grant funding support from: the Community Transformation Grant, the ASTHO Million Hearts Learning Collaborative, and currently the Community Wellness Grant.
Healthy Northland has also received Minnesota Department of Health and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) funding to support local communities to improve health. This grant builds on current work to prevent and better manage obesity, diabetes, heart disease and stroke, while also focusing on reducing health disparities.