DuPage Health Coalition

Believing that communities thrive when ALL residents are healthy enough to work and care for their families, DHC’s mission is to develop and sustain a system for effectively and efficiently managing the health of low-income residents across the continuum of care. Programs keep people healthy, regardless of their ability to pay, supporting low-cost access that offers the greatest impact, while ensuring coordinated services.

Believing that communities thrive when ALL residents are healthy enough to work and care for their f

Goal One: Our primary short-term goals include increased access to: Primary medical care Specialty care Pharmaceuticals Culturally consonant and linguistically appropriate care

Goal Two: Mid-range goals Include: Improved management of chronic health issues Earlier diagnosis and treatment of mental health issues Decreased avoidable hospitalization Decreased ER utilization

Goal Three: Long-term goals include: Decreased socioeconomic health disparities Decreased mortality Increased earning potential of patients Decreased total cost burden of the uninsured in DuPage County

As the complexity of DHC work evolves, we have been concentrating on setting increasingly more sophisticated and tangible goals both individually and organizationally. To ensure that we are working on goals in concert with each other, the entire staff participated in an all-day retreat led by subject matter experts at the Center for Creative Leadership. Topics included: Foundations of Leadership, Conflict and Emotional Intelligence and Effective Feedback. Participation allowed us to build capacity across the organization, empowering members of our staff at every level of leadership to direct their individual and group efforts toward shared missional goals.

DHC is guided by the principle of collaboration. We believe that working in partnership results in greater community impact. Indeed, we believe that a true collaboration enhances the capacity of each partnering organization to fulfill its own organizational mission more effectively. A corollary is the belief that public/private partnerships often address both health and social issues more effectively than each sector could independently. We have hundreds of volunteer medical partners and community coalition partners. Our current COVID vaccine outreach is a prime example. Using a health equity lens, we have worked to address and overcomes vaccine hesitancy among our neighbors, especially immigrant populations encountering the dual barrier of lack of insurance and linguistic isolation. All outreach and education as well as vaccine events are safe, welcoming, culturally and linguistically accessible. We are thrilled to share that to date 83% of our AD population has been vaccinated.

DHC strategically anticipates changes in the needs of both our target population and the health care and human services sectors. We have always proactively planned for the future while satisfying current needs, applying this principle to both the system and the individual. This culture has served us well during the COVID-19 pandemic, when healthcare access is more critical than ever. We continue to implement changes to ensure that the enrollment process is barrier free and explore unique ways to conduct outreach. All our programs support health access with our target population being individuals with the greatest gaps between need and available services. Our programs emphasize community assets vs. deficits, helping us to tap into full potential instead of fixating on limitations.