Viola Davis to be special guest at groundbreaking for Neighborhood Health Station
Community health fair hosted by Blackstone Valley Community Health Care and the Vaseline Healing Project will follow the groundbreaking
Viola Davis, the star of the TV show, "How To Get Away with Murder," will be a special guest at the groundbreaking for the new Neighborhood Health Station in Central Falls on Saturday, Oct. 8.
The inclusion of the city’s emergency responders in those conversations have helped to focus discussions about the potential of reorganizing those services and connecting them to primary care for the first time, according to Dr. Michael Fine, the former director of the R.I. Department of Health.
“Emergency medical services are often not functionally connected to the health care system,” Fine said. “They operate as a vacuum, sucking people up from the community and dumping them at hospitals.”
CENTRAL FALLS – The groundbreaking ceremony for the new building that will house the Neighborhood Health Station in Central Falls, to be held on Saturday morning, Oct. 8, at 10 a.m. will feature Viola Davis as a special guest.
Davis, who grew up in Central Falls, currently stars in the TV show, “How To Get Away with Murder.”
The Neighborhood Health Station, one of two such facilities now being developed in Rhode Island, with the other in Scituate, seeks to organize the delivery of care around the needs of the community residents, in a one-stop shopping approach. [See links to stories below.]
Neighborhood Health Stations put the emphasis on meeting community needs, as defined by community members, through the concept of building community-based facilities with a wide array of services in one location.
A new way of thinking
As Ray Lavoie, the executive director of Blackstone Valley Community Health Care, the community health center serving Pawtucket and Central Falls, told ConvergenceRI, the concept requires a new way of thinking about health care delivery.
“The approach being taken by the Neighborhood Health Station in Central Falls, our attempt to deliver 90 percent of the health services needed by 90 percent of the population of a geographic region, cannot be simply a rearrangement of medical office locations, nor can it be achieved simply with various co-location schemes,” Lavoie said.
To achieve the health outcomes sought, Lavoie continued, the new approach required breaking down existing silos and, at the same time, building up a health IT platform that connects providers and patients as well as providers to providers, without intermediaries.
“To be successful at improving population health in the community, and to accomplish this at a lower cost to the health care system, clinical information must be readily available to all treating clinicians in the community,” Lavoie said.
To accomplish this, Blackstone Valley is building out its health IT infrastructure to support a community health platform for clinicians, owned and operated by clinicians, for the benefit of all members of the community, financed by a grant from the Rhode Island Foundation.
Health fair
The health fair, which will run until 2:30 p.m., will featured special exhibits, live entertainment and food. At the fair, doctors will be available to answer questions, provide skin screenings and check blood pressure and glucose levels.
