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MGH celebrates community and equity
 The MGH Center for Community Health Improvement (CCHI) and the Disparities Solutions Center (DSC) celebrated 20 and 10 years respectively of addressing healthy communities and health equity with a joint event hosted by MGH President Peter Slavin, right, on June 4 at MGH. Both centers exemplify MGH's nationally-recognized leadership in efforts to reduce health care disparities and to improve the health of the local communities MGH serves. Dr. Joe Betancourt, left, directs the Disparities Solutions Center. Joan Quinlan, center, Vice President for Community Health, leads the MGH Center for Community Health Improvement. Joan talked about
some of CCHI's accomplishments over the past 20 years.
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20 years of CCHI by the numbers
- 5,000 Boston, Chelsea and Revere students had opportunities in STEM
- 9,000 victims of violence and child witnesses to violence received support and advocacy
- 300,000 additional minutes of physical activity for Chelsea Public School children
- 16,000 vulnerable patients "navigated to cancer screening and follow-up
- 229 opioid overdoses reversed
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Boston Mayor Martin Walsh praised MGH for new substance use disorders initiative
 Mayor Walsh was one of the featured speakers at the celebration. He recognized MGH as a leader in programs led by CCHI and the DSC to reduce disparities in health care through healthy communities. He also praised the hospital's comprehensive new initiative to treat patients with substance use disorders. "Thank you to Mass General for your commitment to prevent and intervene in substance use disorders and to look at the whole person in the treatment of this disease," he said.
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Recovery Coach Nicole Bourgeois offered a personal story of addiction and recovery
 One of the key components of MGH's new initiative is recovery coaches. Recovery coaches are peers, in recovery themselves, who meet patients where they are and assist them with whatever changes they are ready to make. One of these recovery coaches, Nicole Bourgeois, shared her story of homelessness, addiction and recovery to illustrate the lifesaving importance of this new initiative. "I am so proud to be associated with this program and to work at MGH and to help other people like me. And I am proud that in two days I will celebrate nine years of sobriety," she said.
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Victoria Reggie Kennedy recalled the late Sen. Ted Kennedy's support for high quality health care access for all
 Victoria Reggie Kennedy stood in the same spot where her late husband, Sen. Edward M. Kennedy, stood to help MGH celebrate the 5th and 10th anniversaries of the Center for Community Health Improvement. "Through Mass General Hospital's programs in Revere, Chelsea and Charlestown and through the Disparities Solution Center, you are demonstrating the will needed to achieve the goal of high quality health care for every man, woman and child in the United States," she said.
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Dr. Garth Graham described the 'two worlds' in health care
 Garth Graham, MD, MPH, President of the Aetna Foundation and Former Deputy Assistant Secretary at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, described how social determinants of health--income, education, employment, housing, safety--can impact the quality of one's life. "They create two different worlds. For African-Americans in Boston, the average life expectancy today is 68 years, the same average life expectancy in the U.S. in the 1950s," Dr. Graham. "We all share the responsibility to address these social determinants of health in our communities."
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More On Us
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