With Community, For Community

In parts of the Twin Cities’ East Metro, a mere three-mile difference in where you live can mean up to a 13-year difference in your life expectancy. We’ve always known these health disparities exist, but events of the events of 2020 forced us acknowledge their deep roots – race, ethnicity, where you live, or how much money you make.

Since 2019 Fairview has been working with employees, community members, and partners in the East Metro to develop a new approach that focuses on getting ‘upstream’ in community care. Through community conversations, outreach, and research, we have seen and heard the need for more accessible preventive care and other wellness services that help people get well and stay healthy.

This week, Fairview made an important announcement: Beginning this fall and continuing into 2022, St. Joseph’s Campus will become the Fairview Community Health and Wellness Hub, marking a new chapter in our service to St. Paul. These plans represent our intentional, holistic approach to health and well-being – as well as our commitment to serving all in our community, especially people and communities who have historically faced the biggest barriers to healthcare. As part of this new hub:

• Minnesota Community Care, Minnesota's largest federally qualified health center, will operate a new community health center offering no- to low-cost primary care and other supportive health and wellness services and education. Fairview will support the clinic’s operations with ancillary services.
• M Health Fairview will expand outpatient mental health and addiction services currently provided in St. Paul and move to a new location within the Hub. Here, our teams will build on the early success of programs like Transition Care Services and other innovative models across the continuum of care.
• Ebenezer Senior Living, a subsidiary of Fairview Health Services, will open and operate an enhanced adult day program to help seniors in St. Paul maintain active, independent, and healthy lives. This model of service for seniors is new and innovative in the state of Minnesota.
• A newly established M Health Fairview Center for Community Health Equity will serve as an incubator for the next generation of community-based health and wellness programs focused on prevention and addressing the Social Determinants of Health.
• Second Harvest Heartland, together with The Sanneh Foundation, Keystone Community Services, and Christian Cupboard Emergency Food Shelf, will operate food storage, distribution, and pop-up food shelves at the Hub to address food access and fight hunger in St. Paul.

The Hub is an important, transformational step for Fairview as an organization, and as a member of this community.. But our work is not done. We must do more to confront the outsized role factors like race, income, and zip code have on a person’s opportunity to be healthy.

Progress toward health equity will require healthcare, community, and policy makers to rethink how, together, we can create health, remove barriers to healthcare, and dismantle the systemic problems that impede wellness. We are dedicated to innovating and collaborating with the community. We will continue to co-develop and co-implement solutions that support health and drive toward health equity. I expect and hope that others will join us along the way. Together, we can accomplish so much more.