Stormont Vail Health Community Engagement
Pillars of Community Engagement
Together We invest our time and resources in our community. Stormont Vail Health partners with like-minded organizations to advance our mission of improving the health of our community.
We strategically invest in efforts at the intersection of community health and our ability to impact change. We currently focus on the following five strategic areas:
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Food Security: Make healthy foods the easy choice.
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Health Equity: Ensure everyone is equally equipped to improve their health.
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Education and Literacy: Eliminate barriers to understanding to live healthy.
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Economic Vitality: Strengthen our workforce and our community.
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Community Leadership: Supporting our community through volunteerism.
Stormont Vail Health Community Partnerships
Endocrine Clinic Prescriptive Food Pantry
In July 2019, Advisors Excel approved a three-year $150,000 grant for Stormont Vail Health to provide a prescriptive food pantry at the Cotton O’Neil Diabetes & Endocrinology Center.
Our goal is to improve the management of a chronic condition, Diabetes Mellitus, by addressing a major social determinant of health: food insecurity. We stock the food pantry with boxes of shelf-stable healthy food purchased from Harvesters. Since launching the initiative, patient health has remarkably improved with decreasing A1Cs, blood pressure, and weight.
Health outcomes for endocrine clinic patients receiving food boxes were so successful that we received another grant to develop the program in the fall of 2021. In addition to expanded referral sources, we supplement packages with meat and fresh produce to enhance nutritional impact and further improve health outcomes. Care Managers order the meat and produce online using Walmart’s pick-up service, making it convenient for patients to receive meals.
Check out the video below to learn more about this program!
Contact Dana Blindt, Director Care Transformation, for more information.
LINK Health Partnership
In May 2019, the Topeka Community Foundation awarded the LINK Health Partnership a two-year grant of $371,203. In 2021, the initiative expanded with an additional two-year $431,202 grant.
The LINK Health Partnership comprises five local organizations. We collaborate to improve the health of low-income, uninsured residents of Shawnee County. Each organization works within and beyond the traditional healthcare safety net system to help our most vulnerable citizens become healthier. We accomplish this by addressing patient goals related to the social determinants of their health (SDOH).
- Stormont Vail Health social workers review SDOH patient surveys and enhanced risk assessment scores to refer eligible individuals to behavioral health resources.
- Valeo Behavioral Health Care Community Support Navigators assist patients with goal-setting, support, and access to local resources.
- Harvesters provide nutritious food for patients.
- Washburn University nursing students provide health coaching and patient education for lifelong success.
- HealthAccess facilitates access to donated medical care and prescriptions to meet patients’ basic health needs.
Stormont Vail Health Mobile Primary Care Clinic
The Stormont Vail Health Mobile Clinic in Your Neighborhood rolled into our community in February 2022. Funded by the Stormont Vail Foundation, the clinic-on-wheels brings crucial healthcare to North Topeka, East Topeka, and Oakland neighborhoods lacking readily available healthcare.
The 37-foot-long, ADA-accessible clinic offers the same services a primary care office provides, including well-child visits, annual physicals, chronic care follow-ups, lab work, diabetes check-ins, immunizations, and much more. Patients can call (785) 270-4440 to schedule an appointment or walk-in.
On Thursdays, the Mobile Clinic joins other community units as part of the Mobile Access Partnership, adding healthcare to the community outreach services for unhoused individuals.
Central Kansas Foundation
In 2015, Stormont Vail Health Behavioral Health partnered with the Central Kansas Foundation, a nonprofit corporation driven to deliver quality, affordable alcohol and drug education and treatment services. This partnership aims to improve treatment and services for substance use disorder patients seeking emergency care at the Stormont Vail Topeka Campus Hospital.
Patients admitted to the Emergency Department needing further treatment for a substance use disorder receive support from an integrated team of Stormont Vail and CKF healthcare professionals, including licensed addiction counselors, social workers, nurses, and more.
