Mavis Asiedu-Frimpong on the Need for Cross-Sector Collaboration to Serve Targeted Populations

The National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs sits at the intersection between healthcare and behavioral health and social services, and it is critically important that the systems work together to be able to serve the populations that we need them to serve, said Mavis Asiedu-Frimpong, director for national initiatives at the Camden Coalition of Healthcare Providers.

Transcript

How is the National Center for Complex Health and Social Needs working to inform policy making?

So the real benefit and value add that the National Center provides is the nuts and bolts how-to of complex care. And one of the really important critical policy issues that the National Center is going to be focused on is the issue of cross-sector collaboration.

The National Center sits at the intersection between healthcare and behavioral health and social services and it is critically important that the systems work together to be able to serve the populations that we need them to serve. And this is a policy issue because it has operational implications.

So how do we set up systems to work better? How do we create policies and regulations that facilitate that? And then how do we pay for it? The systems that we work in are so siloed with regard to payment, and that is a real barrier.

And so the National Center is really thinking about that question. There are other organizations thinking about that question too, but it’s something that we feel is critical for the field to continue to innovate on, continue to learn more about. And so the National Center will be talking to organizations and systems and collaboratives that we think are getting it right and extracting that learning and disseminating it for the field in 2019.