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History of the Center for Urban Health
Conception.
The Center for Urban Health was conceived by Dr. Scott Davies, when he became Chief of Medicine at Hennepin County Medical Center (HCMC) in 2002. HCMC is Minnesota’s largest public hospital, and its primary safety net, serving the largest number of patients on medical assistance and who are uninsured in the state.
That same year, the Hennepin County Board of Commissioners (then the governing board of HCMC) decided to invest in Epic, a state-of-the-art electronic health record system that was being adopted by many of Minnesota’s major health systems. Dr. Davies immediately grasped the potential of electronic data to identify populations at risk, develop real-time quality improvement interventions, monitor intervention effectiveness, and support research activities.
Gestation.
From 2002 to 2005, Dr. Davies enlisted support for the vision from leading local and national health services researchers, leadership at HCMC, and leaders in the Minnesota business and philanthropic community.
He also enlisted the support from the Chronic Disease Research Group, located at HCMC within the Minneapolis Medical Research Foundation. This group has superb data management and analytic expertise.
Birth and infancy.
In July 2005, Center for Urban Health work unofficially began by becoming involved in the design of the new electronic health record system, anticipating uses for the data it would eventually generate. This included revising the way patients would be queried about their race and ethnicity, leading to an experiment to determine a set of questions, their order, and response choices leading to the most complete answers and ease of use by interviewers. In September 2005, the first formal proposal seeking start-up funds was sent to the Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi Foundation. The Foundation generously awarded a start-up matching grant.
Toddler and early childhood.
In January 2006, the Center for Urban Health launched its first three projects:
- Determining the best way to query HCMC patients about their race and ethnicity,
- Assessing level of health literacy among Spanish speakers and the degree to which this is associated with their comprehension of medication instructions, and
- Obtaining baseline measures of patient-centeredness in communication at four HCMC clinics.
In May 2006, the Center for Urban Health opened its office doors, and began to establish relationships with others in the community working to redress disparities. By December, the Center for Urban Health had succeeded in raising enough funds to meet the Robins, Kaplan, Miller & Ciresi Foundation's challenge match.
Early adolescence.
Calendar year 2007 is expected to be the Center for Urban Health’s “early adolescence”, the period when it grows and develops into the young adult it will become.
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