The Kraft Center for Community Health at Massachusetts General Hospital is focused on leading innovation in community health. Below examples of Kraft Center programming to forward this goal:
Community Care in Reach® Mobile Health Initiative:
Community Care in Reach® is an innovative mobile health program that brings together partners in preventive care, addiction services, and harm reduction to serve individuals not well-connected to health care, experiencing homelessness and/or battling addiction.
Using an innovative partnership model, Community Care in Reach combats the opioid epidemic with accessible, on-demand care. Mobile teams consist of experienced staff from community partners providing a range of services and connecting patients to community health centers, treatment programs, or specialty care.
In the communities where The Kraft Center focuses its work, there are significant cancer-related inequities in diagnosis, treatment and mortality, among traditionally marginalized populations including: those who are homeless, have a mental illness, live in poverty or belong to a racial or ethnic minority. The significance of these inequities creates an urgency to find new, out-of-the-box solutions. In the fall of 2019, The Kraft Center received a 5 year grant to launch The Implementation Science Center for Cancer Control Equity (ISCCCE). This statewide center allows for rapid-cycle testing of innovative approaches to cancer prevention and control in settings that serve populations with health disparities.
The Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics in Underserved Populations in Massachusetts (RADx-MA) study is a collaboration between the Kraft Center for Community Health at Mass General, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers. RADx-MA aims to leverage existing relationships to support Massachusetts Community Health Centers in the development of community-partnered COVID-19 testing strategies in underserved communities. Strategies involve enhanced testing at partnering Community Health Centers as well as mobile testing and vaccination clinics in high-risk neighborhoods in Greater Boston. Other pandemic-related Kraft Center activities include mobilizing non-COVID health services to improve health care access for individuals experiencing barriers to care during the pandemic, and facilitating donations of care packages to high-risk patients in isolation and quarantine.
Building upon the network of The Kraft Center alumni established during The Center’s first five years, The Kraft Center annually sponsors a summer internship opportunity for local students who are interested in pursuing jobs in the field of community health, continuing the proud tradition of cultivating future community health leaders.