The Kraft Center for Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) is focused on leading innovation in community health.
The Center was established in 2011 by a generous gift from Robert Kraft to expand access to high quality, cost effective health care for disadvantaged individuals and families. Robert has focused The Kraft Center’s initiatives on developing a new generation of clinical leaders committed to community health care, as well as delivering direct, frontline services to populations in need.
The Kraft Center for Community Health aims to catalyze innovative solutions to real world community health problems, execute solutions locally, and make them scalable and ready to spread nationally to improve health outcomes for disadvantaged populations throughout the Commonwealth and nationally.
To fulfill our mission of catalyzing and spreading innovative best practices in community health, we will work through four stages of the cycle of innovation:
Identifying Community Health Problems: The findings of triennial Community Health Needs Assessments, and the work of Kraft Center alumni and partners will inform our priorities. To identify new areas and programs in future years, we will convene Community Health Strategy Forums.
Catalyze Innovative Solutions: We will also use the forums to bring together a wide-range of leaders from community health, social entrepreneurs, academia, public and private sectors and philanthropy to crowd source ideas and develop solution prototypes.
Execute Locally: Leveraging the network of community health centers, other health care providers, insurers and other local partners, we will pilot and evaluate the most promising solutions.
Make Solutions Scalable and Ready to Spread: We will scale the pilots in a range of ways locally and nationally and will identify new partners and potential funders for national spread to achieve this goal. Where appropriate, we will develop toolkits to facilitate national expansion.
Since, The Kraft Center has focused on the following major programmatic areas and additional special initiatives to deliver on our mission:
- Mobile Health Program Offering Primary Care and Addiction Services
- Cancer Care Equity
- Community Health Training
- Special Initiatives
The Kraft Center is administratively housed within Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital. MGH was established to provide care to Boston’s sick, regardless of socioeconomic status—an innovative idea in 1811. In the words of MGH’s founder, John Warren, MD, “When in distress, every man becomes our neighbor.” Consistently ranked among the top hospitals in America, MGH is committed to delivering the most advanced and compassionate care, pushing the boundaries of medicine, educating the next generation of care providers and researchers, and making a difference in the health of the diverse communities it serves – locally and around the world.
Learn more about MGH at www.massgeneral.org.
Learn more about the MGH Center for Community Health Improvement (CCHI) at www.massgeneral.org/cchi/