Macro Social Work Stories for Your Classroom or Training Session

The Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice in Social Work announces that its YouTube channel for “Macro Social Work Stories” is operational with more than 10 episodes available for viewing and use.

Ranging from Dr. Darlyne Bailey’s take on social justice in 2021 to Joanna Jane Batholomew’s insights on how social entrepreneurship can be used for social justice and community development, the episodes focus on issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion from a variety of standpoints. Recent additions include key insights on working with young African Americans by Dr. Melissa Buckley to Isabel Lee’s discussion about Asian Americans’ increasing interest in social work at a time when there are heightened safety concerns in many Asian American communities.

In the near future, the Special Commission is planning to host live podcasts, where practitioners and students can attend and chat in real time with the guests, as well as taped recordings. More information about macro social work, including how to get involved with the channel, is available from Steve Burghardt at sburghar@hunter.cuny.edu.

— Source: Special Commission to Advance Macro Practice in Social Work

STCC-Elms Social Work Transfer Program Expands With Master’s Degree Option

The human services/social work program at Springfield Technical Community College (STCC) in Massachusetts is linked to Elms College’s bachelor program in social work. Students in the STCC associate degree program can move seamlessly into the bachelor’s degree program at the College of Our Lady of the Elms in Chicopee. After earning a two-year associate’s degree, students can continue their classroom studies on the STCC campus for another two years to obtain a bachelor’s degree from Elms.

What many students find convenient is that the bachelor program takes place on the STCC campus on Saturdays.

The STCC-Elms partnership recently expanded to include St. Louis University (SLU), which offers a Master of Social Work degree. Master’s-level classes are taught online and in person on the Elms College campus.

Richard Greco, dean of the School of Liberal and Professional Studies at STCC, notes that the STCC-Elms program has helped students pursue their goals. “Our partnership with Elms has been invaluable,” Greco says. “Our students enter Elms well prepared for the amazing program they offer, and they support our students as they transition.”

Greco adds, “Social work is the fabric that holds a community together. Human services serves so many different needs that enrich the city of Springfield. Elms understands this and prepares our student citizens in their mission.”

More information about the STCC-Elms social work transfer program is available from stcc.edu/elms, soufane@elms.edu, or 413-265-1718.

— Source: Springfield Technical Community College

Unite Us, Carrot Health to Integrate Health, Social Care

Unite Us, a technology company connecting health and social care services, announces the acquisition of Carrot Health, an action-oriented health analytics company focused on removing barriers to health and optimizing care. Across all 50 states, the two companies now bring a solution that can proactively identify and engage with clients across the community, ensuring they receive services from a secure coordinated network of thousands of community-based organizations.

Carrot Health brings an expansive consumer and health data set that powers more than 500 proprietary predictive models focused on improving health behaviors and outcomes that support more than 250 million individuals. This adds to Unite Us’ interoperable end-to-end solution, which includes its outcomes-focused national care coordination platform, prediction and enrollment capabilities, and payments products to reimburse community-based organizations for their impact. Unite Us’ software and on-the-ground presence in the community, together with Carrot Health’s person-centered analytics, enables organizations to provide wraparound care and invest in impact together, and address inequities to create new models of care that improve whole-person health.

“Adding Carrot Health and its outstanding team to amplify our end-to-end solution combines the power of data analytics with our market-leading coordination platform and products,” says Dan Brillman, cofounder and CEO of Unite Us. “With our networks that truly track outcomes and address social factors, we will immediately enable our combined partner base of community-based organizations, governments, payers, and providers to accelerate their impact together, leveraging advanced analytics that improve health for their populations and communities.”

Stakeholders addressing health understand that they must move beyond nationwide lists of resources and the unmet promises of closed-loop referrals with disconnected technologies and siloed initiatives. The shift to value-based care models to reduce unnecessary health care utilization requires a close-knit network of accountable community-based organizations creating a new type of care team, fulfilling last-mile services. This new type of privacy-first care reduces burdens for clients, creates a 360 view of a client journey, and brings public and private sectors together to analyze and invest in the greatest impacts on health and communities.

“This combination is the realization of the vision we had from day one: to capitalize on the understanding of the need and translating that into meaningful action to improve people’s lives,” says Kurt Waltenbaugh, CEO of Carrot Health. “Health leaders no longer need to string together multiple vendors and now have access to one turnkey solution as the scaled industry standard.”

The country is at a pivotal time. It’s prioritizing health equity and investing more than ever to improve equitable access to care with better coordination in communities. With thousands of health and social care providers already working together in Unite Us’ ecosystem, the companies will further drive a new standard of care that identifies where disparities exist, enabling communities to direct targeted investments in social care services that improve health and reduce the cost of medical care.

— Source: Unite Us