MeritCare gives back to the community
through Community Connections
As far back as the early 1900s, when MeritCare began as St. Luke's Hospital, there has been a commitment to serving the community — a commitment that went beyond meeting the needs of medical and hospital care. This has been a part of MeritCare's heritage over the years, and it continues to be in a variety of ways — from helping neighborhoods after a disaster, to working with others to understand and address community issues, to participating in boards and organizations. Now MeritCare has taken it a step further with a program called Community Connections.
Community Connections is one way MeritCare gives back to the community. The program was organized after MeritCare's board and employees met with area clergy, service providers, educators and business people to learn more about issues facing the community. Out of these discussions, three consistent topics arose — parish nursing, area youth, and people coping day-to-day with chronic health conditions. These ideas were established as priorities for MeritCare's Community Connections program and solidified into specific projects — parish nursing partnerships with area churches, Living Well with Chronic Conditions education, and youth-focused programs including an Adopt-a-School project with Roosevelt Elementary in Fargo.
Through these priority projects MeritCare is developing innovative partnerships, allowing us to link more closely with people where they live, work and meet. In this way we are able to address health improvement opportunities outside the medical setting. "Community Connections focuses resources and energy on specific actions that make people's lives better," says Susan Bosak, coordinator of the Community Connections program. "By being directly involved and reaching people in the community setting, we can really get a sense of their needs and the best way to support them. We are already seeing benefits - and that's our goal - to use the resources we have to make a difference for individuals and the community."
"We know that there's much more to health than the care that's given in the traditional medical setting," says Roger Gilbertson, M.D., president and CEO of MeritCare. "We need to find new and innovative ways to address community needs, and Community Connections is MeritCare's opportunity to do this."
That is why this project is a top priority at MeritCare, so important that the board of trustees is directly involved. According to board member Esther Allen, developing and maintaining a healthy community is as important to MeritCare as the delivery of health care. "A healthy community is so much more than treating diseases. It's happy families, good employment opportunities and educational programs. At MeritCare, instead of just continuing our health delivery system we've branched out to include even more facets of a healthy community, and that's exciting."
Return to Front Page of Valley Health Journal.
Do you have comments or suggestions for Valley Health Journal? Email us