AcademyHealth
Calling All Communities: A CHP Program Info Session
Welcome, and thank you for joining us today for this web event, Calling All Communities, A CHP Program
Info Session.
My name is Alison Rein , and I’m a Senior Director for Evidence Generation and Translation here at
Academy Health. I’m also the Program Director for the Community Healthcare Learning Program. I am joined by my colleague Beth Johnson, who is the CHP Program Project Manager, and Beth and I will be tag teaming this event today and hope to address your questions about this exciting opportunity.
AcademyHealth represents a broad community of people and organizations with an interest in and commitment to generating and using evidence to improve health and health care. We facilitate interactions across the health research and policy arenas by engaging diverse perspectives, fostering shared learning, and providing opportunity for collaboration. We are dedicated to improving the knowledge base of healthcare decision making by supporting those who conduct and use health services research, advocating for the tools and funding necessary to do this important work, and helping to translate findings into policy and practice.
Before we begin, I’m going to take a moment to go through some of the technical instructions for today’s webinar. The audio will be delivered through your computer speakers. Speakers or headphones are required to hear the audio portion of the webinar. If you need an alternate method of accessing audio, please submit a question through the Q&A pod located on the left side of your screen.
If you have technical difficulties at any point during the meeting, you can access live technical assistance by calling the number listed in the Technical Assistance box in the bottom left corner of your screen.
Also, please turn off your popup blocker s o we may distribute the survey for today’s webinar in about 20 minutes. We would greatly appreciate your comments before you sign off today.
To submit a question, click in the Dialogue box below the Q&A window on the left side of your screen, type your question, and click the Send button. We will try and respond to as many questions as possible during the time allotted. This is intended to be a helpful session, so we encourage you to submit your questions throughout the presentation so we can be sure to respond. During the last several minutes of the webinar, we will try to address questions posed. Version 1.0 of the CHP Program FAQ is posted on the Program website. Roughly a week following this event we will post an updated version to reflect any additional questions and answers from this event.
Now I’d like to take a moment to talk about the objectives of this session. Participants in the session will learn about the origins of the CHP Program as well as the Program vision and aims; community eligibility and expected activities under the CHP Program; the review process and selection criteria; and the application and submission expectations and processes.
And for any of you out there on the Twittersphere, I would encourage you to note the hashtag for the CHP
Program, which is #CHPhealthIT. F eel free to use that if you’re tweeting about the event today or in the future.
Now it is my pleasure to introduce my colleague and co-presenter, Beth Johnson, who serves as a CHP
Program Manager.
W e’re going to begin the presentation with the CHP Program origin, vision and aims, and then Beth will lead us through the activities and eligibility for the Program.
CHP builds on prior ONC community investments, and there were 17 communities geographically dispersed across the country and they represented the Beacon Community Collaborative Programs.
Each of these communities received $12 to $16 million each to build new or enhance existing health IT infrastructure, and collectively they touch nearly 9,000 providers and over eight million patient lives. This is really the origin of the CHP Program from the ONC perspective.
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Calling All Communities: A CHP Program Info Session
The Beacon Community Program has several goals: to build and strengthen health IT infrastructure and exchange capabilities; to translate investments in health IT to measurable improvements in costs, quality and population health; and to develop innovative approaches, performance measures, technology and care delivery to accelerate evidence generation.
The CHP Program vision builds off of that. The vision is to help stimulate and advance community progress toward achieving population health objectives through the expanded collection, sharing and use of electronic health data.
A little more about some definitions that we’ve included in the Call for Applications, the first one is how we define communities. We view this as a geographically-defined area that shares common characteristics, values and experiences. A note here is that it doesn’t have to be contiguous geographically.
There also needs to be a commitment to advancing progress toward a specific population health management challenge.
W hile this exhibit doesn’t provide a comprehensive view, we hope that the graphic portrays the many types of communities to which we’re referring. Again, non-exhaustive, but certainly many potential partners could be involved in this type of initiative to help construct the community profile.
Another definition: this one is for how we define health data, which is data from a range of sources and sectors, both within and outside of healthcare, and that can be captured in many formats through different systems but must be generated and shared electronically.
We are a national peer-alerting collaborative of 15 communities, and our charge is to address population health challenges by identifying community-based data solutions, accelerating local progress, and spreading lessons learned and emerging best practices. W e’re not only hoping to share that within the
CHP Program and all of those participants, but also to extend that learning to those outside of those directly participating in this initiative.
We are the national program office for this initiative. AcademyHealth serves as the lead. We are joined by our partners, the National Partnership for Women and Families and also NORC. We will award a total of ten participant communities at $100,000.00 each and five SME communities for $50,000.00 each.
Our primary CHP Program goals are differentiated between those of the Program office and those of the community. In terms of the Program office goals, which have a duration of 24 months, our objectives are to build a collaborative peer network in support of the communities who are participating and those outside, and also produce publicly-available resources to facilitate data sharing and use.
[Community awards have] a duration of roughly 17 months; here we differentiate between participant communities and the SME communities. For Participant communities, our goal is to develop, vet and initiative implementation of the community action plans to advance their stated population health goals.
For SME communities, we hope that they will contribute to the development of learning guides. So these, again, are the CHP Program goals.
Great. Thanks, Alison.
Sure. Thanks.
I’d now like to provide an overview of community activities and eligibility for the Community Health Peer
Learning Program.
As Alison stated, ten participant communities will be selected to engage in the CHP Program. These participant communities may range in scale, composition, and scope. Regardless of possible distinctions among these ten communities, each will work to address one specific population health challenge through
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Calling All Communities: A CHP Program Info Session a community-based collaborative approach. Given this focused attention on one specific population health challenge, we encourage prospective participant communities to explicitly convey in their application how they will establish accountability for achievement of their stated population health management goal. And in terms of participant community role, the communities will identify a population health management challenge, create high-impact measurable and actionable plans to address that challenge, engage partners in early implementation efforts, and support documentation and sharing of lessons learned.
Participant communities must, in terms of eligibility, designate as lead organization a sustainable entity with an ongoing and operational commitment to improve community health and wellbeing. They must also be either public or nonprofit with tax exempt status, and be based in the United States or its territories. I’ll also note that there may be only one lead organization, and only the lead organization should submit the application to the Program.
In addition, participant communities must engage as formal partners or collaborators community organizations representing at least two distinct sectors; demonstrate current or past experience collecting, exchanging or using health data; and commit to actively participating in collaborative peer learning and other CHP activities that are described within the full Call for Applications. I’ll refer you to page four of the
Call for Applications under Project Deliverables and Reporting Requirements. There will be also webenabled meetings and also in-person meetings that we will ask communities to participate in.
There will also be five subject matter expert communities, or SMEs, that will be selected to engage in the
CHP Program. These SME Communities should bring substantive expertise and recent experience relative to the task of collecting, sharing and using data to address population health management challenges. Organizations with experiences in related initiatives, for example the Beacon Community
Collaborative Agreement Program, are encouraged to apply.
Specifically SME communities will provide concise and substantive evidence about their successful experiences addressing population health management challenges; contribute content for population health and data webinars; and support development of learning guides and other program resources.
In terms of the eligibility criteria for SME communities, these communities must be either public or nonprofit with tax exempt status; be based in the United States or its territories; demonstrate current or past experience effectively collecting, exchanging and using health data to advance population health; and commit to actively participate in collaborative peer learning and other SME-related CHP activities described within the CFA. I’ll refer you to page four of the full Call for Applications under the section
Project Deliverables and Reporting Requirements.
We expect variation along several [domains] among applying organizations. We expect to see variation among the population health challenges, the data tech resources, the sector focus, within the sector setting, the population demographics and characteristics, as well as existing community health IT infrastructure capacity. The Program is not prioritizing or targeting a specific population health management challenge, but it must be clear and well-defined in proposals. Each community should address a specific population health management challenge that can be improved through the improved capture and sharing of electronic health data.
I’ll pause for a minute here, and we’re going to do a polling question. What part of the country are you from? Northeast. Midwest. South. West. Or Territories or Other.
Great. It looks like we have a lot of diversity among our participants today – it looks like the Midwest is in the lead currently. W e’re excited to see the diversity of applications that we may receive, and thank you for answering this poll. This will be great input for planning purposes on our end.
N ow I’m going to walk through the review process and selection criteria. The submissions for the Call for
Applications are due by no later than 11:59 P.M. Eastern Time on November 10, 2015. To ensure a
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Calling All Communities: A CHP Program Info Session successful review, please adhere to the guidelines provided in the full Call for Applications. And if there are any questions regarding the instructions provided, you can always contact us at chpinfo@academyhealth.org
.
Each submission will be reviewed by three individuals that are part of our Review Committee. The review criteria will be consistently applied to each application. Submissions that score above a certain threshold will be contacted to further discuss the proposals in December 2015. And then, based on that, we will announce the final awards in January 2016.
Now I want to give you a snapshot of the key dates and deadlines.
The Call for Applications opened on September 23 rd
, and the informational webinar today will be recorded and archived for all registrants and potential applicants looking to learn more about the Program. The
Notice of Intent to Apply is due on October 16 th
by 11:59 P.M. Eastern. Again, the Applications are due by November 10 th
by 11:59 P.M. Eastern. And we estimate award announcements on or around January
8, 2016.
Participant communities will be reviewed according to the following criteria: alignment with eligibility criteria; strong feasible collaborative vision coupled with capacity to effect desired change; organizational commitment and readiness to engage and implement; established structure and processes to ensure accountability; understanding of CHP opportunity and appreciation of or capacity for data sharing; and extent of anticipated benefit to the applicant.
We have a slightly separate criteria for the SME communities which include, again, alignment with the eligibility criteria; nature and depth of individual or organizational expertise in the application; understanding of CHP opportunity and role of SME communities in the Program; established structure and process to ensure accountability; and demonstrable ability to contribute to advancement and understanding of how data can be collected, exchanged and used to address population health challenges at the community level.
And we’ll pause again for two more polling questions.
Based on your understanding of the Call for Applications purpose, eligibility and selection criteria, how likely are you to participate in the community application? Very likely. Somewhat likely. Unlikely. Or Not
Sure.
So far we have a lot of Very Likelies and Somewhat Likelies, which we like to hear. And for those of you who are unsure, hopefully we can provide you with more information and answer your questions during today’s session to further inform your decision.
Based on your understanding of the CFA purpose, eligibility and selection criteria, are you more likely to submit as a participant or a SME community? Or are you unsure?
It looks like we have a lot of potential participant community applications, and still quite a bit of SME commun ity applications. And, again, for those of you who aren’t sure, hopefully we can provide more information during today’s session so that we can inform your decision.
F or the last part of the session we’re going to look at the application and submission processes. So first, here is just a quick rundown of the application materials that all applicants need to be considered for the
CHP Program. There’s an online submission form, and this can be found on the CHP Program’s web page at www.academyhealth.org/CHPhealthIT . And on that submission form you’ll be asked to input some information about your organization, and also upload some supporting materials including the project narrative, appendices, budget, and budget narrative. And more requirements around those materials are fully laid out in the PDF version of the Call for Applications, including the length requirement.
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Calling All Communities: A CHP Program Info Session
I f you could visit the Program page on the AcademyHealth website, you’ll find a Iink to the full Call for
Applications, and we have the Call overview on our site pages as well as the full PDF of the Call. And once you have read and reviewed all requirements, and you have all your materials, you can complete the online application at www.academyhealth.org/chpapplication . And there you’ll also upload the supporting documentation that I mentioned on the previous slide.
And once again, everything must be submitted by 11:59 P.M. Eastern on November 10, 2015.
We are going to turn now to any questions the audience has, but if you have any questions after this session or in the coming weeks, again please contact us at chpinfo@academyhealth.org
. We will address your questions within one to two business days and add those questions to our FAQ page, which is now published on our website.
I’ll now turn it back over to Alison to moderate the question-and-answer part of the session.
Great. Thank you so much, Beth.
W e’ve received a number of questions over the course of the last 20 minutes or so, and I’m going to run through them in no particular order, however, we’ve received many, many, many about the Notice of
Intent, and so I’ll start with that.
Just to clarify, the Notice of Intent is not mandatory. However, it would be hugely helpful, and therefore it is strongly encouraged. For our own planning purposes, it would be really helpful to receive these, but it is not a requirement. If yo u don’t submit a Notice of Intent and you do submit an application, we will review your application.
We’ve also had some related questions about what should be included in a Notice of Intent should you choose to submit one. We don’t have a specific format that we’re requiring, but we don’t want it to be longer than two pages, and it should specify or discuss the following aspects of your submission: the award type, are you planning to apply as a participant or an SME community; t he organization that’s serving as the lead; the population health challenge your team expects to address; a listing of assembled partners, at least as you know them at this point; a nd also the likely data sources. We won’t hold you accountable for what you include in the Notice of Intent, but it is really helpful for us to have a little bit of this information in advance.
The next question was, can you talk more about the requirement to have at least two distinct sectors as partners and perhaps provide some examples? Our rationale for asking for at least two sectors is because we realize that health and community health is driven by multiple factors, both within and outside the traditional bounds of healthcare. We require, and certainly encourage more than two sectors, but have two as the minimum. W hen we refer to the term “sectors,” we really mean other sectors that fall traditionally outside of healthcare bounds, things like nutrition, transportation, education, social services, environment, etc. Not necessarily an exhaustive list there, but just wanted to give you a flavor of what we mean by sector.
Is the maximum funding level inclusive of the institution’s indirect added to the maximum funding level?
Yes, indirect costs are included in the funding level of $100,000.00 for participant communities and
$50,000.00 for SME communities.
There’s a question also about counties, and it is posed, are counties discouraged or not allowed to submit proposals or should they just not be the lead? A ctually counties can apply, and there’s no prohibition against them serving as leads. The only reason we noted that states and counties might not make the best applicants is purely a function of size. We are looking for focused efforts, and therefore just had a concern that anything at the state level or a very large county level might be too big for this particular opportunity. But there’s no direct prohibition.
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Calling All Communities: A CHP Program Info Session
There’s another question here asking for examples of specific population health management challenges that we are looking to address. As Beth noted in her review, the CHP Program is not prioritizing a specific challenge or multiple specific challenges. Rather we encourage applicants to be clear about what they want to do and why. N o priority preferences or statements about what we’re looking for from a substantive or population perspective. We look to you all to tell us what it is that you want to do and why you think it’s important.
So there are some questions here about what constitutes a community: a population, or driven by a pa rticular condition, and particularly if it’s a larger population, does that have implications for the competitiveness of a submission? The CHP Program is really trying to drive a focused attention on a particular population health management challenge and to help participant communities to develop action plans that will allow them to make progress toward this objective. If you can submit a compelling application as to why you selected the population health management challenge you have, and why it’s criti cal for your community, and how you are effectively going to get there, then I think you’re welcome to submit. We are not really being prescriptive about what constitutes a community or what constitutes a particular area of focus. We’re really asking people to hold themselves up to an accountability standard of, given this opportunity and the timeframe at hand, do we think we could make a concerted effort to have a plan and begin to take measurable action against that plan. T hen we’ll see from those submissions which ones are the ones that are the most credible and feasible from the perspective of the reviewers.
There is also a question about what’s included in the definition of electronic health data. We are agnostic with respect to the type of data, w hether it’s claims, or something from an EHR, or something contributed directly from patients or from a public health department or other entities, our requirement is that those data have some impact on health and that they are shared electronically.
A couple more questions about the Notice of Intent. Will the Notice of Intent be considered in the full application review? the answer to this is no, it is not required therefore it will not be factored in to the ultimate score contributed by the reviewers. T his is so we have a sense of what’s coming in and so we can plan accordingly. As Beth noted, we plan on having each submission reviewed by three reviewers. It will really help us to get a handle on how many reviewers we should engage and also what types of expertise we want them to have. Having a better sense of what you all plan to contribute through that
Notice of Intent format will really help us.
And another comment or question related to the Notice of Intent. Will we receive comments or feedback on these? The answer to that is no. Again, these are really just for informational purposes for our team for planning purposes.
And there’s also a question, can the Notice of Intent be in email format? Our preference would be that it is actually in a Word format. Attached to an email is completely fine, but please put it in a letter format.
There is a series of questions related to partners and eligible partners for inclusion in these applications.
One of them reads, is the health sector considered one of the cross sector partners or do you require two distinct sector partners in addition to healthcare partners? It is inclusive, so healthcare plus one other.
And a sort of continuation of that question is, if we need to have a subcontract with an academic institution, is this allowed? We have no prohibition for the types of partner relationships that applicants decide to foster in order to be competitive. I think the ultimate determination should be made by the submitters and if that really is in the strongest or best interests of your specific application. W e’ll leave it to the leads and the applicants to make determinations for who is most appropriate to involve.
There is a related question. Can you explain more about formalized assembled partner collaborations?
Can you describe examples? I don’t want to provide specific examples simply because we don’t want to say something and then have everybody think that that’s exactly what we’re looking for. We’re trying to be very non-prescriptive about t his. But I will say when we are looking at submissions, and we’re
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Calling All Communities: A CHP Program Info Session considering the partners who come to the table, we’re looking at several factors. One is what are the contributions of all of the partners and how do they complement the full submission. How do they help to address or advance the stated aims of the particular applicant? There should be a compelling case for why specific partners are brought to the table, what their roles are, and how they’re essential to advancing the specific aims of that submission.
Moving on to the next set of questions, these are mostly related to the subject matter expert communities.
Do the SME communities have to have a specific population health management, too? The answer is no.
It’s fine if you demonstrate your expertise as an SME community, talking about a particular population health management challenge that you have worked to address historically. But you do not have to design a community action plan around a specific challenge.
The other question is do SMEs need to have partners with two or more types of community members?
The answer to this is no. That requirement is really specifically for the participant communities.
Another related SME question: is the SME opportunity open only for Beacon communities? If not, provide examples. The answer to that is no. We welcome any community that has some level of expertise in the collection, sharing and effective use of electronic health data to apply for this opportunity. We think that probably through that experience, whether you have demonstrated success, and also probably some demonstrated, shall we say failures, that have put you in a position to be able to share the lessons learned …we certainly welcome those submissions. Examples include the Aligning Forces for Quality communities, some of the folks from CMMI initiatives, and many others. We have no sort of set parameters around that except what’s spelled out in the Call for Applications.
There is a request here to please explain Participant versus SME communities. I will refer folks back to the CFA primarily to address that. There are ten participant communities that will be awarded through this opportunity. Their charge is to develop community action plans that help them to advance toward a specific population health management challenge by capturing, sharing and using electronic health data.
The SME communities, as Beth shared in her review, are invited to participate in this peer collaborative network to be able to provide some real, live, practical lessons learned and experiences drawn from their history in using electronic data to advance particular objectives. They will be helping us to develop resources that come from the Community Health Peer Learning Program, but their role in this network is very different. I would invite people to refer back to the Call for Applications.
There is a question here about SMEs needing to partner with two or more types of community members, and I think we may have mentioned already, that is not a requirement, although certainly an SME community is welcome to bring a partner or multiple partners into their submission.
T here’s a number of questions that I would sort of put under the heading of existing versus new. Is it appropriate to plan to build on existing efforts, e.g., using the statewide HIE to implement the grant? I would say this is not necessarily an implementation grant, although we do hope to see some traction on the community action plans that are developed. It is certainly okay to use existing infrastructure that has been built through prior efforts in support of this opportunity.
The next question is, d oes it have to be a new plan or can it be one that is in its infancy currently? I’m actually going to say it depends. We want people to go through a strategic planning process as part of the CHP. If you feel that the plan that is already developed, and even if it’s in the early stages, is sort of tied to another initiative where there are separate requirements or separate criteria that don’t necessarily map to this opportunity, then I would say probably it would give me pause. But if you think there’s a really good mapping and this is an opportunity to accelerate, then it could be a possibility. Hard to know the specifics or for certain without knowing a little bit more.
And another question under the existing versus new category. Does the electronic data have to be existing or can we propose to develop a data collection system as part of our application? This opportunity is to help communities to develop strategic community action plans that help them to achieve
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Calling All Communities: A CHP Program Info Session a population health objective. If you feel that this is the best way to achieve that population health objective is to generate new data, then that’s certainly something that’s possible. You would just need to demonstrate the rationale for doing that in your application.
There is a question about whether or not the 15 communities mentioned at the start of this presentation were the Beacon communities. No, there were 17 Beacon communities that we did reference at the outset, but the 15 communities refer to the 15 that will ultimately be awarded as part of the CHP Program.
Ten participant awards, and five SME awards.
C an an individual participate in those? I’m going to infer that the person submitting the question means can a single individual participate in an application that is both for a participant community and also for an
SME community. The answer is probably no, but it really depends on what their role is. If the individual who submitted the question feels like they need some additional guidance on this point, feel free to follow up with the CHPInfo Box and we’ll figure out a way to get you an answer that helps make that determination.
There’s a question here about the community action plans. Are there examples of high-impact community action plans on your website? The answer is no. T hat’s not to say that high-impact community action plans don’t already exist somewhere. We have not yet gone through the process of developing plans for this particular program, and so we didn’t want to insert any bias of priority by providing examples, particularly those from another initiative or program where it might just provide more confusion as opposed to being helpful.
There’s a question about funding restrictions. Are there specific restrictions on categories of spending for grant funds? The short answer is yes, and I would encourage folks to take another look at the Budget and Funding section of the Call for Applications.
This question relates to one that was posed earlier about counties. States are discouraged from applying. Would a statewide nonprofit be discouraged? The answer is, again, going back to the potential applicant’s determination of whether or not that entity is the best entity to lead an initiative that focuses on the particular population health management challenge that you’re proposing to address. No direct prohibition for a statewide nonprofit, certainly, and really would just suggest that a compelling case be made for why that organization is either leading or participating in that particular submission.
For those of you who are hanging in there listening to questions, this one is to let you know that we are nearing the end. We just have a few more. So if you have any last questions, this is a good time to type them in and submit.
If we already have a vision toward a particular health outcome and are already sharing data in a superficial way or report sharing way, what is the value added or goal of this grant program ? I’m going to turn that question around a little bit and suggest that that would be the exact question that a submitting team would need to think about, and then if the answer is none, then I would discourage an application for this particular opportunity. However, if the answer is that you do see an opportunity and a value add for participating, then it would be really helpful for the applicant to describe what is already being done and how this particular opportunity is going to help drive that forward and further advance your population health objective.
There is a question here about travel. So does the required travel have to come out of the budget? The answer is yes, and I know that we have not provided a lot of specifics about the location of the meetings, the planned meetings, nor the level of participation required. J ust as a guidance, what we’re saying is that for each of the in-person meetings, and there will be a total of two during the course of the CHP
Program, we encourage teams to send at least two participants from the team. Not a requirement. It could be one, it could be two, and it could be more than two if your budget permits.
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The other thing worth noting is that we have not yet specified the meeting locations. I think it’s not 100% certain, but safe to assume, that one of those in-person meetings likely will be in the Washington, D.C. area. The other is yet to be determined, and I think we are very open to having that somewhere outside of the Washington, D.C. area but we didn’t want to make that determination until we knew the location of our Participant and SME communities. W e apologize that we don’t have a more solid location venue for that second in-person meeting, but I just wanted to provide that additional context in case it ’s helpful for planning and budget purposes.
These next questions have to do with data.
Is the focus exclusively on medical records data or is it on claims data as well? Going back to the definition of electronic health data, we are completely agnostic as to the type and source of data that you plan to leverage for this particular activity. It can be medical records from EHRs. It can be claims. It can be patient-reported data. It can be data collected at the community level through public health agencies.
We welcome and in fact encourage a variety. There is no priority given nor are there any restrictions on the types and sources of data that can be included in this effort.
Another sort of sub-question within that next question is, are you only interested in individual health records or are you also interested in public health data? I would go back to the example that I just rattled off. It is not necessarily only individual data at multiple levels so long as the applicant can make the case as to why this data will be helpful to advance a specific population health management challenge.
How do you define sharing of data? We are not being prescriptive--so long as the data are electronic, and so long as they are shared electronically. I would say it’s not okay to put a bunch of data on a USB drive and then have somebody walk a mile and give it to another organization and plug in the USB drive.
T hat doesn’t qualify as data sharing for this particular initiative. But electronic sharing of data is what we mean. And there’s multiple ways that that can happen through multiple different standards, protocols, through an HIE, through more direct transactions, etc. We are not defining or specifying a priority data type. It will be up to the community to decide.
A nother question related to travel funds. How do you suggest we budget for travel? I’m not inclined to provide a specific dollar amount, but I can tell you that we’ve generally advised others in similar situations to have people budget roughly an average. I magine you’re having to book a flight somewhere in the country. Think about the likely most expensive flights and think about the likely least expensive flights, and then budget somewhere in the middle. Then it is up to the discretion of the Program to determine the number of people who would be traveling. It certainly has to at least be one, and our recommendation is two.
There is a question here about appendices. Is there anything specific that should be included in the appendices portion of the application? I would ask people to refer again to the Call for Applications.
There are some different requirements depending on whether you’re an SME or a Participant community.
G enerally speaking we’re looking for CVs and letters of commitment in the appendices. We do not encourage people to use the appendices as an extension of the narrative. W e will certainly review what’s in the appendices, but would prefer that it not just be a continuation of the narrative that you didn’t have room to include in the ten-page limit.
What is the proposed relationship between Participant communities and SMEs? Great question. All communities, whether they are Participant or SME, will be engaged in this collaborative peer learning network. We are going to invite everybody to contribute their insight and their experiences and their challenges. We are going to welcome any input that the SME communities may have in helping to shed light on the activities of the participant communities. It is a peer learning collaborative for that reason.
We understand that some of these challenges are challenges that are hard to tackle and that shouldn’t be tackled in silos necessarily and that there are many people who can learn from the experiences that people have when they go through these types of efforts. We want to maximize opportunities for that shared learning and that collaboration, and then we obviously hope that not only will the Participant
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Calling All Communities: A CHP Program Info Session community advance progress for their community action plan, but that we will develop a lot of useful resources to help those outside of this collaborative. We expect both the Participant and the SME communities to contribute to the generation of those reports.
Sharing community-level data gathered through trained volunteers with a coalition would qualify as opposed to scientifically collected data? I don’t know the specifics of the particular initiative, but I don’t see any reason why it wouldn’t. However, once again I would say it’s incumbent upon the submitting organization or the applicant team to demonstrate why a particular data type and source is going to be essential to advancing the community action plan toward that particular health challenge.
T here’s a question here about whether or not their target population will be competitive, and we are not specifying what particular populations or conditions we want to see. Nothing is necessarily off the table when it comes to a particular population or condition. If you suspect that the population you are targeting will be perceived as broad, then your submission should make a compelling case for how your particular effort is going to address it in a focused way so that you can develop the community action plan and make progress toward that specific challenge. If you feel that your community is well positioned to advance and make progress with respect to that challenge, then you just need to convey to us how that’s going to happen. Don’t think that because you perceive your population to be overly broad you’re not invited to make that pitch.
T here’s a question about how the awards differ from other recent community-level cooperative grants.
And there’s a couple named, and there’s actually several that we are aware of that aren’t named. Not having assembled all of the different Calls for Applications and reviewed them side-by-side, we are not in a position to determine how one is different from the other. I am encouraged, however, that there are so many thematically related opportunities because it signals to me that this is an area of tremendous importance, and that many different funders, both on the federal side as well as the private philanthropy side, recognize. I will leave it to the individual submitters to determine which opportunity or which opportunities are the best fit for them and their applicant team. But we are actually encouraged and excited by the level of attention to this area.
Can the initiative be to integrate data from different sources in order to prioritize health problems in our community or do we need to identify one health program up front? We ask that you have a specific population health management challenge that you hope to address. If further clarification is required, I would invite you to review the Call for Applications or feel free to send a message to the CHPInfo email box and we can certainly try to provide additional clarity there.
Thank you all for the excellent question portion. It looks like we will be able to let you go a little bit early.
But certainly we want to encourage people to keep your questions coming, and there is the email where you can send your questions.
We also want to thank you very much for your attention today. We would like for you to fill out a brief evaluation which will appear in your browser. It will help us with this and future sessions. And, again, we want to thank you for joining us. We hope you found the session to be informative and useful and we look forward to reviewing your submissions.
Again, just a not e that we’ll post the link to the archived recording and full transcript of this session within one week.
When you complete the brief evaluation, we really particularly appreciate your open-ended comments, so if you have any suggestions for improvements or modifications, please do use that Comment box.
So with that, we’ll call it a wrap. Thank you everyone for your participation, and we certainly look forward to hearing from you.
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