Evaluation of a Population Health Learning Network for the Center for Care Innovations

As health care increasingly moves towards value-based care, community health centers are actively making changes to how they deliver care to patients and their communities. There is growing recognition that leveraging data to identify and address medical, behavioral, and social needs through a population health management approach is a promising way forward in the path toward higher value care.

In 2018, the Center for Care Innovations (CCI) engaged JSI as the evaluation partner for the Population Health Learning Network (PHLN). The PHLN was a two-year learning collaborative of 25 California community health centers that focused on sharing best practices and building population health management capacity. The goal of the evaluation was to assess participants’ progress in strengthening their population health capabilities, the impact of population health changes made, and the value of technical assistance delivered through the PHLN. We implemented a mixed-methods approach to data collection that included interviews, surveys, quarterly progress reports, and annual capacity assessments with PHLN participants.

We produced a final report that highlighted key learnings and synthesized data from participating community health centers. JSI also developed case studies to highlight innovative strategies that hold the potential to move the needle in a clinic’s population health management journey. The case studies highlight how community health centers use population health management to identify and respond to social needs during the COVID-19 pandemic, improve colorectal screening rates, and better track and monitor behavioral health data.