By Daniel Stein and Paul Wormeli There are countless ways to demonstrate the horror of our nation’s opioid crisis, from raw numbers (over 47,600 opioid-related deaths in 2017) to records set (fatal overdoses now exceed vehicular deaths) to OMG descriptions of the drugs’ toxicity. A couple of recent examples: During a routine traffic stop last […]
Category: Information-Sharing
Convenings, an Opioid Playbook and Well-Being: Still Learning after All These Years . . .
by Daniel Stein, President, SOC Institute and Co-P.I., NIC There are lots of reasons I’m grateful for what I get to do for a living, from the smart, passionate and compassionate people I’m honored to work with; to the promise (and reality) of advancing knowledge that can improve entire systems; and, most of all, to […]
The Cultural Challenge to Interoperability
By Paul Wormeli Even as there becomes greater acceptance of the need for interoperability across domains and disciplines in order to address serious social problems such as the opioid epidemic, cultural challenges remain as major obstacles to the practical implementation of this concept. One clear case study revealing the obstacles to interoperability can be found […]
Lessons from the Field: How to Successfully Share Data across Programs
Mary-Sara Jones, IBM Cross-program data-sharing has been one of the most popular topics at Health and Human Services conferences this year. Many states and counties are exploring different models of collaboration and integration, some focused on improving the client’s ability to engage with government, others on improving the agency’s ability to engage holistically with […]
SOCI Embarks on Major New Project in CA, Forms New Collaborations
By Daniel Stein, President, SOC Institute, and Co-P.I., National Interoperability Collaborative “Without continual growth and progress, such words as improvement, achievement and success have no meaning.” – Benjamin Franklin The founders of Stewards of Change (including yours truly) didn’t know about that Benjamin Franklin quote when we launched our startup in 2004; intuitively, however, […]
Taking a Deeper Dive: Getting to Yes on Privacy and Confidentiality
By Ivy Pool, Senior Consultant, Stewards of Change Institute In times of shrinking budgets and increasing need, it is imperative that health and human service providers deliver efficient and cost-effective public services. Through the creation of new service delivery models centered on data integration and systems interoperability, providers can to reduce service delivery costs and […]
When It Comes to Collaboration, Sectors Emphasize Technical Aspects Over Cultural Ones
In a review of technical documents and toolkits on interoperability, what we found was almost as interesting as what we didn’t. By Margo Edmunds, Ph.D., Vice President for Evidence Generation and Translation, AcademyHealth All across the country, health and human services programs are making connections to provide more coordinated approaches to improving health and well-being in […]
Connecting the Dots: NIC . . . the Kresge Foundation . . . and the Road to Better Health and Well-being
By Daniel Stein, President, Stewards of Change Institute One of the underpinnings of our work at the National Interoperability Collaborative (NIC) is the understanding that “people constantly navigate multiple, interconnected systems — from education, transportation and employment to health, housing and human services — that shape their opportunities.” There are quote marks around the truism […]
It’s Time to Bring All the Players to the Table to Better-Address the Opioid Crisis
Bill Hazel is Senior Advisor for Strategic Initiatives and Policy at George Mason University in Virginia. He is the state’s former Secretary of Health and Human Resources, and serves on the Board of Directors of the Stewards of Change Institute For as many decades as I’ve been a conscious adult – which is quite a […]