The Health Care Council Of Chicago Forms Partnership To Address Community Violence As A Public Health Focus
The Health Care Council of Chicago (HC3), a member-led organization creating uncommon alignment to improve the health and vitality of Chicago, has formed a partnership with Acclivus, Forward Health Group, and NowPow to enhance services for secondary violence prevention provided by Acclivus, a Chicago-based organization dedicated to breaking the cycle of violence to enable pathways to safety, self-esteem, and systematic change.
“Acclivus has done incredible work engaging Chicago’s communities to improve rates of violence intervention and recovery for years. In 2018 alone, Acclivus helped over 2,000 injured patients and 3,000 of their friends and family members,” said David Smith, founder and CEO of Third Horizon Strategies and co-founder of HC3. “This partnership will equip Acclivus with next generation resources that will further extend its impact and ability to shift the tide of violence that continues to plague the city of Chicago.”
“Our main objective is to provide individuals the opportunity to reach their full human potential regardless of their past misdeeds, disappointments, or challenges influenced by internal and external causes,” said LeVon Stone, co-founder and CEO of Acclivus. “We are looking forward to partnering with the Health Care Council of Chicago, NowPow, and Forward Health Group to enhance the work we do every day.”
Acclivus uses a multi-disciplinary public health approach that draws upon the lived experience of its staff to provide health and well-being services to Chicago area communities at most risk for violence. The collaboration of these organizations will bolster Acclivus’s current hospital response program and expand their model’s capacity. By leveraging NowPow’s and Forward Health Group’s technologies, Acclivus’s clients will be efficiently connected to highly-personalized community referrals, burden will be lifted from Acclivus’s community partners, and Acclivus will have the analytics power to better understand outcomes, make strategic decisions, and demonstrate value to the community.
Augmenting Acclivus’s current platform through the aforementioned areas will essentially create a unique city-wide tool for understanding and managing the public health epidemic of community violence in Chicago. The information will house data that will highlight critical opportunities for advocacy geared towards healthy equity and economic development of marginalized communities in partnership with critical community stakeholders.
“Acclivus is making an important difference in mitigating violence and improving health outcomes in some of Chicago’s most disenfranchised communities,” said Michael Barbouche, CEO and founder of Forward Health Group. “This partnership will give Acclivus the ability to share their story with objective data.”
“We are confident that by collaborating with these technology solutions partners to enhance the Acclivus model, we will not only improve each patient’s care journey, but also strengthen violence interventions through improved collaboration with community stakeholders,” said Sheila Regan, COO of Acclivus.
“Like Acclivus, we have strong roots in Chicago and care deeply about preventing and reducing violence in our city,” said Rachel Kohler, CEO of NowPow. “We are grateful to be part of this exciting collaboration to grow, track and optimize the impact of this critical intervention, which has the power to improve lives, inform policy decisions, and strengthen our entire community.”
