The North Carolina Medical Society (NCMS) played host as the NC Alliance of YMCAs sought to educate and engage community health partners about the Y’s role in integrating community and population health. The workshop drew a crowd of about 70 participants to hear from both state and national YMCA representatives on how they successfully engage with health care partners within their communities to promote population health. They also made the business case for investing capital and human resources in chronic disease management and presented proven evidence-based programs.
NCMS Past President Dev Sangvai, MD, MBA from Duke Connected Care spoke on “Navigating Your Community Health Ecosystem.” The participants also had a chance to meet in small groups and begin to develop an action plan for their community.
“The goal of this workshop is to educate the YMCA leadership about their local health care ecosystem and to create evidence-based programs that can become part of the health care delivery system in their communities,” said Franklin Walker, NCMS Vice President for Rural Health Initiatives. “We’re happy to facilitate this meeting since it is an NCMS priority to bring people together from diverse organizations to improve and streamline our health care delivery system throughout the state.”