In this Issue:
Who Has the Most Compelling Claim on Our Consciences?
Compassionate Care for a Healthier Community
Not Your Typical After- School Program
Resources and Further Reading
Educational Program
News Briefs
Calendar Notes
Who Has the Most Compelling Claim on Our Consciences?
The recent political debate opposes raising revenue yet supports cutting back on services for those most in need. As the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops states,
“The moral measure of this budget debate is … how those who are jobless, hungry, homeless or poor are treated. Their voices are too often missing in these debates, but they have the most compelling moral claim on our consciences and our common resources.”
People do have a right to food, shelter, affordable housing, educational opportunities, and health care. Needs for these basic rights are growing and will continue to grow. It is our shared responsibility to ensure people receive the dignity and shared membership in society they deserve.
As organizations, we are impelled to provide services in ways that maximize human potential and help individuals build resources. Are we truly addressing a need if we can help someone access a job, but all of his or her paycheck is spent on emergency room visits because of lack of insurance and no access to healthcare?
We must ask ourselves if our programs are:
- comprehensive
- aligned
- providing a continuum of care
- holistic in approach
- Empowering individuals to build resources
Price Hill Will and the Good Samaritan Free Health Center of Price Hill exemplify these characteristics. Both are located in Cincinnati’s Price Hill neighborhood and together with other key organizations like Santa Maria Community Services, create opportunities and shared membership for people in Price Hill.
Price Hill Will
Price Hill is a community of 3 neighborhoods (Lower, East, and West Price Hill) that has faced difficult challenges over the last 20 years including an exodus of long-term residents, an increase in poverty, blight and crime, a foreclosure epidemic, and a declining business district.
Over the past seven years, Price Hill Will has become one of the most effective community development organizations in the city of Cincinnati by addressing all aspects that affect quality of life: physical revitalization through real estate development, economic revitalization, individual financial stability and community engagement through programs involving youth, the arts, ecology, safety, and education.
Music for Youth
While comprehensive community development is extremely hard to measure in the short term, Price Hill Will has made significant progress by achieving:
- decrease in crime by 20 percent
- rehabilitation of 50 blighted single family homes and a historic building for 37 units of low-income senior housing
- stabilization of foreclosures
- increased school ratings
- more engaged residents in civic organizations
- creation of a one-stop financial stability center for workforce development and financial literacy
Price Hill Will’s goals align with the broader goals of “place matters,” a regional initiative focused on the comprehensive community development of three focused regions, one of which is the neighborhood of Price Hill. Price Hill Will and Santa Maria Community Services are the lead agencies of place matters in Price Hill. All goals for place matters include: housing, health, income, education & youth, and community engagement.
Good Samaritan Free Center of Price Hill
At the beginning of 2011, a network of community agencies including Santa Maria Community Services and Good Samaritan Hospital piloted a medical home for uninsured and non-Medicaid/Medicare eligible adults called the Good Samaritan Free Health Center of Price Hill.
The Center addresses a critical shortage of physicians and clinics in Price Hill, where 43 percent of residents are uninsured. Due to the lack of medical providers in this area and long waiting lists at the health clinics, 68 percent of residents looked to the
emergency room for non-emergent care.
Since opening, there have been 213 patients using the Center as a medical home. Of the patients seen in the first six months, one in five is diabetic. In response, the Center has implemented the best practice of Group Medical Appointments (GMAs ) to increase efficiency and cost effectiveness.
Maureen Billings receiving her HbA1C levels.
Group Medical Appointments for diabetic patients have focused on diabetes self-management. Seventy-five percent of all patients who attend all GMAs are expected to improve HbA1c levels and demonstrate weight loss.
Maureen Billings has been attending all GMAs for diabetes patients. She has lost weight, walks daily for 20 to 30 minutes, and has counted about 7,000 steps on the pedometer she received at November’s GMA.
Maureen says that the most helpful thing about the GMAs so far is getting glucose test strips for free. “Because I have no insurance, my daughter was paying for my strips. This has helped both of us.” Also important to Maureen has been the dedication of Dr. Stefanie Stevenson, the volunteer physician who facilitates the diabetes GMAs.
Currently, appointments are fully booked and there is a waiting list. The Center recently received Free Health Clinic status, ensuring malpractice coverage to retired doctors who want to volunteer. This will allow the Center to expand hours in 2012.
Compassionate Care for a Healthier Community
Compassion, the magazine of Good Samaritan Hospital Foundation recently featured Sr. Sally Duffy, SC, president and executive director of SC Ministry Foundation, on the cover of its fall issue entitled “Ensuring Compassionate Care and a Healthier Community.” Sr. Sally talks about the Foundation’s support of the Good Samaritan Free Health Center of Price Hill. “Catholic social justice requires us to give people the dignity they deserve, and that includes comprehensive quality health care right here at home,” Sr. Sally says.
Not Your Typical After-School Program
Fall 2011 Construction Club
Concrete, electric, carpentry, pipefitting, and caulking. These are just some of the things students from Price Hill Catholic elementary schools learned in the Construction Club program offered by the Southwest Ohio Region Workforce Investment Board (SWORWIB) at St. Lawrence and Resurrection Schools in Price Hill this past fall.
Recognizing the need to provide students with hands-on learning and to address the future revitalization of the construction career pipeline, SWORWIB began Construction Clubs with the mission to engage and expose sixth, seventh and eighth graders to construction work.
Construction Advocate Anne Mitchell and volunteers from Associated Builders and Contractors member companies teach and supervise the students in this after-school program, giving students a positive, realistic look at construction careers and the path towards them.
While they are engaged in learning construction, students in the program build math, science and reading skills, and for some students, build upon good behavior and attendance habits.
The Construction Club initiative is part of the Greater Cincinnati Construction Career Pathway Collaborative, which was recognized nationally by the Construction Users Roundtable with the Workforce Development Award.
Resources and Further Reading
The National Opportunity and Community Renewal Act (NOCRA) was introduced to Congress during September 2010 by Catholic Charities USA as a starting point in the public forum about changing the safety-net system so that its goal becomes lifting people out of poverty by designing a holistic approach and becoming more results- oriented and market-based. More information can be found in the Catholic Charities USA magazine CharitiesUSA.
“Collective Impact” is an article written by Mark Kramer and John Kania in the winter 2011 issue of The Stanford Social Innovation Review. Kramer and Kania describe the need for broad cross-sector coordination among nonprofits, government, businesses, and the public focused on a common agenda to create collective impact.
Educational Program
SC Ministry Foundation will be hosting an affinity meeting this year on Building Systemic Bridges Out of Poverty. Based on the research of Bridges Out of Poverty, Jodi Pfarr will present practical strategies for integrating research about the mental models of poverty, middle class, and wealth into the way we serve our clients and customers in the nonprofit field. Jodi Pfarr is an energetic and entertaining facilitator who is serious about building societal, political, individual, and institutional systems out of poverty. For more information click here.
News Briefs
Welcome to our College of Mount St. Joseph co-op students Amanda Varnam and Sarah Schatzman who will be with us until the end of this school year. Amanda, a senior history major, hopes to learn how to write a successful grant, which will be essential to her future endeavors in museums and historical societies. Sarah, a junior social work major, looks forward to learning more about how diverse funding and strong infrastructures are essential to each nonprofit. Read Amanda and Sarah’s full bios.
Loretta (O’Donnell) Dees, Director of Communications and Program Officer, was recognized as one of the Greater Cincinnati YWCA’s 2011 Rising Stars. The Rising Star program is a vehicle used to recognize and support younger career women who demonstrate a potential to attain marked achievement in her chosen career.
The Assembly of Catholic Foundations and other Catholic foundations and donors have raised enough funds to begin production of a documentary about the experience of women religious in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina. Production and shooting of Hope and Resilience: the Catholic Sisters of New Orleans (working title) is set to be completed by late winter and broadcast on public television in late 2012.
Calendar Notes
View upcoming calendar dates for the July 2012 Funding Cycle by clicking here.