Northern Michigan Health Consortium

As part of our partnership with healthy kids delta dental we provided outreach to 500 families. This outreach included personal calls to inform them of their child's dental benefits, assisting with finding a provider and scheduling appointments if requested. We also addressed any barriers they may have to attend these appointments including transportation benefit information. We work with several dental clinics who will not allow some clients to schedule again because of frequent no-shows. They will allow those families to reschedule once they have connected with our program to increase the likelihood that they will attend the next scheduled appointments. Through a partnership with the munson physician organization, northern care partners, we were able to provide community health worker (chw) assistance to address social determinants of health (sdoh) needs for over 300 referred clients who had no other payment source. These patients are screened for sdoh needs at the physician office and referred to the community connections chw program if needs were identified and the patient consented. These chw's provide navigation assistance utilizing an evidence based, primarily home visiting model. We were able to successfully assist with things like food insecurity, transportation, housing, medical homes and specialty referrals, as well as health insurance. Addressing these needs helps meet our community vision of healthy people in equitable communities, which includes a universally accessible comprehensive chw navigation system.