Reflecting on 2020

As the Bree Collaborative closes out 2020, I cannot help but be proud that despite the stress and tumult, we continued to bring people together to channel frustration into insight and forward-thinking healthcare transformation. January and February saw the start of Amy’s visits to our pilot site clinics for in-person practice coaching and the initiation of our behavioral health integration webinar series – you can see the entire series of webinars here. As the state and our world shut down in March, we shifted to relying on internet connections to keep momentum going – changing our behavioral health integration summit to a virtual format and shifting from March to June as our St Patrick’s day chocolate coins and rainbow decorations remain gathering dust in our shuttered office. Through 2020 we held nine webinars – from introducing our behavioral health integration recommendations in January to Implicit Bias and Racial Inequities in Health Care. You can watch them all here. I am also very proud of our two summits – behavioral health with a focus on trauma-informed care and adverse childhood experiences in June and on moving the health care system to value in November.

Throughout the year, I was honored to be able to share a conversation space focused on reorienting reproductive and sexual health care delivery to be culturally humble and based in an acknowledgement of the historic coercion of black, indigenous, and people of color running with such a wide array of community groups and those with lived experience. Having these pragmatic, action-oriented conversations parallel to the national black lives matter movement helped us to feel part of a national dialogue in creating an equitable society. We were able to learn in public about the life-long work to be antiracist and how to incorporate a racial justice lens across our topics from colorectal cancer screening to primary care to oncology care.

We completed our Colorectal Cancer Screening, Oncology Care, and Reproductive and Sexual Health Reports and Recommendations and now move into our adoption phase of the work. Our Primary Care Recommendations and our refresh of the Perinatal Bundled Payment Model are out for public comment. Finally, we have had the opportunity to explore how the social determinants of health may be assessed and addressed within clinical care – this workgroup will meet through 2021 as we continue to refine our community standard.

As James Baldwin said (a quote I have returned to again and again through 2020), “Not everything that is faced can be changed, but nothing can be changed until it is faced.” Facilitating these conversations on a virtual, state-wide level, and having the ability to run our implementation pilots allowed our Collaborative to face both the bright and dark spots of our health care system and move together toward a better tomorrow.

Through 2021, we will continue our focus on equity, transparency, and value – for our members and community partners and in the delivery of health care.

Ginny Weir, MPH
Interim CEO, Foundation for Health Care Quality
Director, Bree Collaborative