Community Services

Northwestern Memorial provides support to the community through a longstanding commitment to its Patients First mission and ongoing partnerships with a number of community-based healthcare organizations. Working in partnership with neighborhood health centers, Northwestern Memorial embraces a goal of creating long-term, sustainable programs to address health problems of importance in the community. Through this approach, the hospital and its partners work to identify, understand and begin to address priority health needs. Through hospital programs and services and its longstanding partnerships with neighborhood health centers, Northwestern Memorial continues to build on its tradition of making world-class healthcare available, regardless of the ability to pay.

An example of our commitment to enhancing care for our community is the Diabetes Collaborative, a partnership that joins Near North Health Service Corporation, Northwestern Memorial Hospital, Northwestern University and Northwestern Memorial Foundation. Developed in 2006, the Diabetes Collaborative serves to meet the critical need for diabetes education and treatment in medically underserved communities.

At its inception, the Diabetes Collaborative served 500 patients at Near North’s Winfield Moody site. It was then expanded to three more Near North health centers and in 2007, the program model was replicated at another community health center in Chicago, Erie Family Health Center, where it reaches nearly 500 patients. At Erie, the Diabetes Collaborative was tailored to meet the needs of the predominantly Hispanic population in the Humboldt Park neighborhood on the city’s West Side. The initiative has focused on finding meaningful ways to reach patients with varying levels of education and literacy and unique cultural beliefs. Educational tools have been developed in Spanish to support self-management of the disease. Other Erie Family Health Center locations have since implemented the Diabetes Collaborative and there are plans to expand the initiative to serve patients at Near North’s Denny Center at the Lawson House YMCA. Today, more than 2,800 patients from communities throughout Chicago are benefiting from the Diabetes Collaborative.

Contact

To learn more about how to support community services programs, contact David Sack, director, Philanthropic Foundations & Corporations at 312-926-0436. For more information about supporting the diabetes program, please contact Kendra S. Cooper, philanthropy associate, at 312-926-7077.