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Community Health Centers serve the primary health care needs of more than 22 million patients in over 9,000 locations across America. They play a crucial role in the nation's health care system, providing affordable health services for millions of uninsured, the working poor and newly jobless Americans. Health centers are good for the country. They lower overall health care costs, improve the health of their patients and generate economic opportunities in the communities they serve by providing jobs and training for local people. Community Health Centers create savings in health care every time a patient opts for an exam and treatment at the first sign of a health issue instead of waiting until a costly emergency room visit or hospitalization is the only option. Each health center takes a tailored approach to meet the unique needs of the people in its surrounding community. That local approach to health care, combined with an emphasis on comprehensive preventative care, generates $24 billion in annual savings to the health care system - for the American taxpayer, local, state and federal governments and public and private payers alike.

I am a doctor and I work as an innovation consultant with a specific focus on the rapidly evolving information and technology landscape in health care. I'm also the Founder of the Creating Health Collaborative. Market 1.jpg At its heart, health care is an information business but gone are the days when a few medical journals passively influenced the delivery of care. Driven by technology and fuelled by greater societal expectations, health care is embracing information as an active player in improving care while reducing costs. 

Atlas of Care connects personal and professional scientific inquiry with community-based development theories and practices. We design experiences and practical tools that help people see, connect, and collectively inquire about their care (giving and receiving) activities in everyday life. Though care is central to our ability to thrive in our lives, it is often not seen or recognized. By learning how to see the invisible - visualizing care ecosystems and other aspects of living - people can be more intentional about how to build, strengthen, and expand the capacity of the various lived communities.

Across the country, and throughout the world, many large and small groups of individuals and families, in partnership with businesses and governments, are in the process of making a new system - where people know what they are entitled to and can allocate the money that is assigned for their benefit.. This system is called Self-Directed Support, or Consumer-Directed Care. Variations of these terms are used in Education and Health Care. Internationally, this trend towards personalisation of funding is well-advanced. In Australia it is beginning in disability, accident compensation, aged care and soon in technical and vocational education. But Australian governments and institutions have been very slow to pick it up. We aim to pull them into the 21st century.

"Modeling to Learn is a national quality improvement initiative in the Veterans Health Administration (VA). Funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and VA Health Services Research and Development (HSRD), scientific study of Modeling to Learn is underway to determine its effectiveness increasing delivery of evidence-based addiction and mental health care (NIDA R01DA046651 and R21DA042198 ; HSRD I01HX002521; PI: Zimmerman ). Modeling to Learn supports multidisciplinary teams of frontline psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers, nurses and certified peer support specialists in VA. This demonstration website supports the research effort by providing a simulation demonstration to implementation science and quality improvement researchers, and to patient, provider and policy-maker stakeholders across VA, or other integrated addiction and mental health care systems."

Matt Powers is an author, educator, seed saver, gardener, and entrepreneur focused on radically transforming the entire K-12 education system through the collegiate system as well as the economy such that it aligns with regenerative science, natural principles, and permaculture ethics: Earth Care, People Care, & Future Care. Matt, a former public high school teacher with a Masters degree in Education, is the author of the first government accredited permaculture curriculum in North America (fully cited, peer-reviewed, & aligned to national standards), and his work continues to spread in schools, colleges, and universities globally with over a dozen books in 6 languages and 9 online courses.

The Creating Health Collaborative is a group of innovators working individually to understand and create health 'beyond the lens of health care'. The Collaborative is run by a nine-person Executive that believes our struggle to meet the growing demand for care is underpinned by an inability to see health as more than just 'the absence of disease'.

Information technology is revolutionizing the classroom and driving down the costs of producing first-rate educational materials. Many universities are putting their classes online for free, so that anyone in the world can learn physics, math, or economics from world-class faculty. At Stanford University this fall, two computer-science professors put their courses online for students anywhere in the world; now they have an enrollment of 58,000.

The same breakthroughs now possible in education can occur in health care. The US health-care system is notoriously expensive, partly because many of the key costs are controlled by the American Medical Association and private-sector health-insurance companies, which act like monopolists, driving up costs. Such monopoly pricing should be ended.

HOW IT WORKS MUNICIPALITIES SUBMIT PROJECTS TO CITIZINVESTOR.COM. These are projects that have already been scored, department-approved and only lack one thing - funding. Projects range from building a new park to installing speed bumps or adding a few parking spaces to your neighborhood library. The list of these projects for any city is nearly endless. Currently, these projects sit on a long-list behind other budget priorities, especially now when local government budgets are tighter than ever before. CITIZENS INVEST IN THE PROJECTS THEY CARE ABOUT MOST. For the first time ever, we are giving citizens the opportunity to tell government exactly where they want their dollars spent. Citizens can find projects that their local government has posted on Citizinvestor.com and pledge to invest any amount they wish towards the project. Not only can citizens invest in projects from their local governments, but Citizinvestor also gives citizens the opportunity to petition for new projects that local government either hasn't thought of or hasn't approved. ONCE A PROJECT IS 100% FUNDED, THE PROJECT IS BUILT!

We're innovators. We're curious. And we're dissatisfied with the status quo. We're dedicated to strengthening the field of practice that bridges health and communities. Bridging Health & Community aims to transform how we approach health so that it goes beyond health care and public health to include fostering community agency. Based in Seattle, WA, with an office in London, UK, we do our field-building work through convening and coaching. We share the fruits of our work with a view to further describing and strengthening the field of practice that bridges the health sector and those that foster community agency. We met through the Creating Health Collaborative, an international group of innovators exploring health from the perspective of communities. By sharing our work through the Collaborative, we learned of the critical link between a community's ability to make purposeful choices and its health.

The PBNYC example reminds us that pilot programs are useful testing grounds, but promising experiments are unlikely to translate into large-scale successes without careful effort. Such a transformation requires shifts in strategy and tactics, matched with steadfastness in mission and values. Those interested in government innovation can learn a lot from watching PBNYC as it charts this course for participatory budgeting processes around the world.

It is often assumed that the public have to rely on professionals to deliver public services because in the economic jargon there is an information asymmetry: the doctor or teacher knows more than the patient or pupil. Yet the families of these children have fine grained knowledge about what they really need: when they need two carers to support them and when only one will do; what risks to take on a trip out to the zoo and so on. The In Control initiative draws out this latent, tacit knowledge of users that is largely kept dormant and suppressed by the traditional delivery approach to services in which professionals are largely in control, assumed to have all the knowledge and so consumers are largely passive because they are assumed to lack the capability of taking charge of their own care, health, learning or tax.

Series of articles in support of the Self-Directed Services and Personal Budgets project in Australia

ince 1994, VERTICES, LLC. has provided the health care and local government sectors with advanced GIS (Geographic Information System) solutions. VERTICES delivers customized solutions to you in the form of digital maps. Traditional methods of displaying information in columns and rows in a table have evolved into their visualization as digital maps with layers of specific information. With the increasing popularity of the Internet and numerous advancements in information technology, VERTICES has developed new technologies to deliver geographic information to your organization and clients in an easy and affordable way.

About Public Citizen has been standing up to corporate power and holding government accountable since 1971. Visit our website at http://www.citizen.org/ Mission We represent you in the halls of power. Your support funds multiple public interest research and advocacy efforts: safe and effective health care, auto safety, good government, safe and sustainable energy, consumer safety, and fair, equitable trade and globalization. Why focus on a single issue? We do it all! Company Overview Since 1971, Public Citizen has been a national, nonprofit public interest organization representing consumer interests in Congress, the executive branch and the courts. Website: www.Citizen.org Blog: www.CitizenVox.org Twitter: @Public_Citizen

Three basic principles Empowerment. SeeClickFix allows anyone to report and track non-emergency issues anywhere in the world via the internet. This empowers citizens, community groups, media organizations and governments to take care of and improve their neighborhoods. Efficiency. Two heads are better than one and 300 heads are better than two. In computer terminology, distributed sensing is particularly powerful at recognizing patterns, such as those that gradually take shape on a street. Besides, the government can't be in all places at all times. We make it easy and fun for everyone to see, click and fix. Engagement. Citizens who take the time to report even minor issues and see them fixed are likely to get more engaged in their local communities. It's called a self-reinforcing loop. This also makes people happy and everyone benefits from that.

In a world where things too often don't work, GOOD seeks a path that does. Left, right. In, out. Greed, altruism. Us, them. These are the defaults and they are broken. We are the alternative model. We are the reasonable people who give a damn. No dogma. No party lines. No borders. We care about what works--what is sustainable, prosperous, productive, creative, and just--for all of us and each of us. This isn't easy, but we are not afraid to fail. We'll figure it out as we go. Call it a new party, call it a 21st century collaboration, call it an army, call it your new home. Or just call it GOOD.

The California Endowment was established in 1996 as a result of Blue Cross of California's creation of its for-profit subsidiary, WellPoint Health Networks. Since then, we've invested in health broadly, from strengthening the safety net for families struggling with poverty to diversifying the health care workforce. The lessons learned from early investments were the genesis for Health Happens Here and the 10-year, $1 billion Building Healthy Communities plan, in which residents in 14 places are working to transform their neighborhoods

There may be something inevitable about the structural changes that have made American manufacturing less central to our economy, but there is nothing inevitable about the waste, pain and human despair in cities that have accompanied that change. There are policy alternatives that can soften such transitions in ways that preserve wealth and promote equality. Just four hours from Detroit, Pittsburgh, too, grappled with white flight. But it more rapidly shifted its economy from one dependent on steel and coal to one that emphasizes education, health care and legal and financial services.

Government transparency is an important issue to many in today's political environment. The recent controversy in the US over health care reform is just one example of how hard it can be to see the realities behind the rhetoric. As researchers, we believe we can help by giving people the right tools to understand, explore, and communicate about government data.