The New Jersey Primary Care Association (NJPCA) and its network of Federally Funded Health Care (FQHCs) centers are committed to improving health care for the underserved populations in New Jersey. We support the Bureau of Primary Health Care’s national goal to eliminate health care disparities for the underserved.

The vision of the New Jersey Health Disparities Collaborative is to create and sustain a culture of continuous learning, improvement and collaboration in every health center in the state. To this end we are working to align resources and policies and leverage technology to optimize patient outcomes and to enhance satisfaction for every member of the health center organization.

In recent years, NJ Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) participated in statewide Diabetes, Asthma and Obesity Collaboratives and Initiatives. The NJ CHCs worked together to reduce disparities and to promote quality health care for New Jersey residents. The Collaborative process included the sharing of best practices, tracking patient results, using measurable benchmarks to determine success, and encouraging patients to participate actively in their disease management.

Through the implementation of Care Improvement models and change management, NJ FQHCs continue to work hard to improve and transform our statewide systems of care for the underserved populations in the state.

Back in December, 2008 the US Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) began a search for Health Center Grantees that had demonstrated excellent performance in quality improvement activities. The HRSA Center for Quality and the US National Institute of Health (NIH) launched a joint initiative to study lessons from high performing health centers that participated in the Health Disparities Collaborative. Among 25 of the brightest high performing health center grantees from across the nation, HRSA and NIH selected three New Jersey community health centers, CAMCare Health Corporation in Camden, Eric B. Chandler Health Center in New Brunswick and the Henry J. Austin Health Center in Trenton , to participate and present their stories of achievements and quality outcomes at a Health Disparities Collaborative Conference - “A Harvest of Driver Insights,” in June 2009. A major goal of this “harvesting” analysis is to disseminate and deploy best practices for national implementation.

Sarah Gregg from Henry J. Austin, Sharon Buttress from CAMcare, Beverly Kaminski from Eric B. Chandler (“The Jersey Girls”) with Denise Geolot, Director, Center for Quality

The Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) Patient Safety and Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaborative (PSPC) is a breakthrough effort to improve the quality of health care across America by integrating evidence- based clinical pharmacy services into the care and management of patients with chronic diseases. PSPC teams learn leading practices from expert national faculty and from each other by participating in an intensive series of Learning Sessions and Action Periods. On September 17, 2009 PSPC teams met in Dallas, TX for Learning Session 4. A special Awards Luncheon was held to recognize successful teams. Zufall Health Center in Dover, NJ received four out of the four available awards. Zufall Health Center continues to provide quality health serves to the patients they serve, as they participate in the second round of the HRSA Patient Safety and Clinical Pharmacy Services Collaborative (PSPC2.0). NJPCA is also happy to announce that Ocean Health Initiative, Inc. also joined PSPC2.0 as a new team in the fall of 2009.

Back row L to R: Denise Geolot, Director, HRSA Center for Quality; Robert Pergola, Owner, Goodale Pharmacy; Linda Whitfield-Spinner, Quality Program Director, NJPCA; Jimmy Mitchell, Collaborative Co-Director; Front row: Pat Weinstein, Director of Nursing and Rina Ramirez, MD, Medical Director from Zufall Health Center.