2015 AAMC Accelerating Health Equity, Advancing through Discovery (AHEAD) Award Request for Proposal and Application About AAMC AHEAD The AAMC Accelerating Health Equity Advancing through Discovery (AHEAD) initiative seeks to identify, evaluate, and disseminate effective and replicable AAMC-member institution practices that improve community health and reduce health inequities. Medical schools and teaching hospitals routinely engage in practices that focus on improving community health and therefore could have significant, long-term impacts on local health inequities. Because prospective, community-based health impact evaluations are time consuming and underfunded, solid evidence of these efforts effectiveness at minimizing or eliminating health and healthcare inequities is lacking. Background: Medical-Legal Partnerships The social determinants of health, conditions in which people are born, grow, live, work, and age, play a significant role in an individual s health status and well-being 1. The impact of these social determinants are often exacerbated due to laws that are unfairly applied or under-enforced, which can result in legal issues that potentially harm individuals health. For example, while a healthcare team member could provide assistance to patients in poor housing conditions, these healthcare professionals may be inadequately trained to understand the complex connections between patients legal necessities, health concerns, and their needs as they relate to navigating various policy systems. A medical-legal partnership is an approach to healthcare delivery that combines the expertise of health and legal professionals to identify, address, and prevent health-harming legal needs for patients, clinics, and populations. Coordinating the efforts of legal and healthcare systems through MLPs provides opportunities to address the health and legal needs of vulnerable populations at the policy, system and population-level. Currently there are over 250 hospitals and health centers with active MLPs 2, yet there is a gap in the evidence about their effectiveness in addressing patient needs, service quality, system and policy-level changes, and improving population health. AAMC AHEAD 2015 RFP: Medical-Legal Partnerships The goal of this RFP is to assist established medical-legal partnerships at AAMC-member institutions with developing and disseminating a body of evidence that measures the impact of their MLP on health inequities at the local level. These AAMC-member institutions will comprise a learning cohort that will collectively create a body of evidence concerning the effectiveness of MLP practices. The AAMC will facilitate the dissemination and 1 World Health Organization. Social determinants of health. Available at: http://www.who.int/social_determinants/sdh_definition/en/. 2 http://medical-legalpartnership.org/partnerships/
spread of this body of evidence to other member institutions via webinars and various AAMC communication vehicles to highlight effective practices. Importantly, each participating institution will be required to measure the effectiveness of their MLPs using common metrics to be developed collaboratively by the funded institutions and the AAMC, in consultation with the National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership (NCMLP) across three domains, which include: 1) Patient and community health; health inequities 2) Cost savings, institutional benefits, and efficiencies 3) Student, resident, and/or fellow educational outcomes Proposed Process The funded institutions will participate in the implementation of several activities over the course of the threeyear funding period as outlined in the table below. Funding Year Project Activities Year 1 Develop a logic model to identify indicators that determine or influence outcome measures of performance for the established MLPs. As a member of the Learning Cohort, work collectively to develop a common set of metrics to evaluate your existing MLPs across the three identified domains. Identify any current systems or models that are in place to collect data. As a member of the Learning Cohort, actively engage in an online community of practice to share best practices and refine evaluation methodologies. Year 2 Adopt the common set of metrics identified in Year 1 within your individual MLP. Continuously engage in the online community of practice to support data collection activities. Report interim evaluation metrics to the AAMC and the collaborative. Year 3 Continue gathering and reporting evaluation data to the AAMC and the MLP AHEAD collaborative. Produce summary reports of local MLP evaluations for inclusion in an overall impact assessment. Disseminate findings broadly via reports, conferences, etc. with assistance from the AAMC. Ongoing Participate in regular monthly meetings. Participate in one in-person meeting in Washington D.C. per year. Travel funds will be provided for the first year only.
Award The Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) has provided funding to support these competitive awards, which evaluate and measure the impact of MLPs. This project is also funded in part by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention s (CDC) Academic Partnerships to Improve Health (Award #3 U36 OE00004-03). Funding is available to support three awards, each with a maximum budget of $7,500 per year for three years ($22,500 total) with a required institutional match of $7,500 per year (total costs of $45,000 per award). No indirect support is available for this award. Requirements for Applicants All applicants are required to have or adhere to the following criteria in order to be considered for funding: A current member in good-standing with the NCMLP (preferably a facility that demonstrates foundational elements of the MLP Toolkit); AAMC member institution; Demonstration of institutional support via matching funds from the institution; Capacity and commitment to evaluate the MLP across all three domains; Demonstration of interprofessional or multidisciplinary approaches in the education and training of students; Willingness to engage in peer-to-peer learning experiences through active participation in an online community of practice; and Ability to participate in monthly meetings and travel to one meeting in Washington, D.C. per year (AAMC will cover costs for the first year only). o Grantees must be able to attend an in-person, all-day meeting in Washington, DC on May 21 st, 2015. Submission Deadline The deadline for receipt of the application is 8:00 p.m. EST on March 20, 2015. Criteria for Selection Reviewers will consider the feasibility of completing the proposed evaluation within the timeframes outlined, as well as the skill, experience, and qualifications of the investigators who are conducting the evaluation. The applications will be competitively reviewed by a panel of experts using the following criteria: Qualifications of the leadership and investigative team; Rigor of approach for the analytic plan; Capacity of data infrastructure and availability of baseline data; Collaborative experience with required partners (local public health agencies and hospital community benefit office); and Willingness to engage in peer-to-peer learning. Questions All inquiries and communications should be e-mailed to ahead@aamc.org.
2015 AAMC Accelerating Health Equity, Advancing through Discovery Award icollaborative Application Form Applicants & Contributors *denotes required field Primary Applicant: *Full Name & Credentials (e.g., Jane Doe, M.D.) Please list your full name and all graduate degrees *Title (e.g., Associate Professor of Biostatistics) Please list your complete title *Your AAMC Member Institution Please list your institutional affiliation. *Email (e.g., jdoe@aamc.org) *Co-applicant(s)/Contributors: Full Name & Credentials (e.g., Jane Doe, M.D.); Title (e.g., Director of Data Health Systems); and Institution (e.g., Association of American Medical Colleges) Please list all co-applicants and contributors.
Medical-Legal Partnership Description 1. Name of the Medical-Legal Partnership 2. Please provide the name and location of your healthcare partner. Describe the role of the healthcare partner and the ways in which the healthcare partner has contributed to the development and sustainability of the MLP. 3. Please provide the name and location of your legal partner. Describe the role of the legal partner and the ways in which the legal partner has contributed to the development and sustainability of the MLP. 4. Please indicate the number of years your MLP has been in operation. 5. Please provide the targeted health-harming legal needs your MLP currently addresses. 6. Please describe the role of the learner(s) (e.g. medical students, law students, resident trainees, etc.) within the MLP. 7. Please describe any current plans or processes utilized to evaluate your MLP, including any measures that have been developed and tracked to date. 8. Please describe any impacts and outcomes your MLP has had on: health and healthcare within your local community; cost-savings to the health system; educational outcomes for learners. Medical-Legal Partnership Team Please provide a biographical sketch for the following team members: a. Healthcare lead(s) b. Legal lead(s) c. Evaluator(s)
Institutional Support Please attach a letter of support from your institution s CEO or other institutional executive leader which clearly describes an institutional commitment to provide matching funds ($7,500 per year) to support this evaluation project should you receive the award. A letter of support is also required from your legal partner highlighting their commitment to the implementation of this project.