Conscience protection at risk 2 Keeping kids safe 3 Executive changes 7 PERIODICAL RATE PUBLICATION
DECEMBER 1, 2023 VOLUME 39, NUMBER 19
‘Democratizing’ tech: Providence digital leader talks benefits, pitfalls of AI By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
NEW FRIENDSHIPS EASE LONELINESS
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Ruth Vaill, left, and her friend Cathy Johnston share a love of nature. The two were paired up through Mercy Care for the Adirondacks, a nonprofit in northeastern New York state that helps elders ward off isolation and loneliness.
I’m an outdoor person and I really needed to get out in the natural world. And Cathy likes the natural world, too, so we started out walking, and for me it saved my life.” — Ruth Vaill
Through volunteer program, Mercy Care for the Adirondacks addresses isolation among elders By LORI ROSE
When Ruth Vaill needed to move to a new city to be closer to family after her husband died, she left not only her home of 40 years but also her circle of friends, most of her belongings, and all that was familiar to her.
The move from her longtime home in New Hampshire to Lake Placid, New York, was difficult but coupled with the COVID lockdown that occurred shortly after she arrived, Vaill found herself reeling from both a loss of independence and from loneliness. “I had suffered many losses sort of all at once,” said Vaill, who is 87 and lives with vision loss from macular degeneration. “I was in pretty bad shape emotionally. It was very discouraging, and I really fell into a dark place. I needed some kind of a lifeline.” Continued on 8
Cambodian Americans Unifying as a tax district enables Cedar Rapids get culturally sensitive hospitals, neighbors to boost the community care, support at St. Mary By JULIE MINDA
A program that Southern California’s Dignity Health — St. Mary Medical Center launched in the late 1980s to help new Cambodian arrivals access health care has evolved significantly over the ensuing four decades. It now helps thousands of firstgeneration immigrants and their descendants with a range of needs. The first iteration of the Southeast Asian Project that St. Mary and its foundresses established focused on aiding refugees who had fled to the U.S. amid the Cambodian genocide that started in the late 1970s. Those immigrants got help understanding how to care for their health and how to navigate an unfamiliar health system. Over the years, St. Mary has evolved the program, which the hospital renamed Families in Good Health, to meet the emerging needs of the large Cambodian-American population in Long Beach.
CEDAR RAPIDS, Iowa — When the three major health care players here joined the city of Cedar Rapids around 2011 to back the creation of a self-taxing medical tax district, they were saying to property owners that it would be worthwhile to pay an added tax because it would spur the type of local improvement that no one organization could achieve on its own. About a decade since the establishment of the MedQuarter Regional Medical District, those providers say it has enabled the 55-block quadrant of Cedar Rapids to achieve a significant level of community and economic development. Dr. Timothy Quinn is president and CEO of Mercy Cedar Rapids. He Quinn says the district is and will continue to be “something greater than what it was before.”
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By JULIE MINDA
Sara Vaezy is in the problem-solving business. She and the Providence Digital Innovation Group she leads build technology to make it easier for people to get healthier and for clinicians to do their jobs better. Vaezy is executive vice president and chief strategy and digital officer at Providence St. Joseph Health. She was a CHA Tomorrow’s Leaders honoree in 2019. Vaezy The Providence Digital Innovation Group has incubated multiple companies for spin off. This October, it announced its fourth one, Praia Health, which adopts the digital flywheel concept used by Starbucks, Amazon, Netflix and others that captures various measures of customer use and employs algorithms Continued on 7
Digesters at Ascension hospitals keep food waste out of landfills By VALERIE SCHREMP HAHN
In the kitchens of 69 Ascension hospitals, churning, stainless steel food waste digesters are doing their part to help the planet. Food and nutrition associates feed the digesters leftovers and the scraps made while preparing foods — pineapple tops, apple cores, potato peelings, and, to a lesser extent, chicken bones and meat trimmings. “We have learned over time that digesters are happier if they are vegetarian,” said Lois Sechrist, Sechrist the manager of sustainability at Ascension and Medxcel, a facilities management subsidiary. As of early November, the digesters had kept more than 704 tons of waste out of landfills. That’s important because food waste is one of the largest emitters of methane, a greenhouse gas emitted from landfills. Continued on 6
The MedQuarter Regional Medical District has branded the entire 55-block area with signage.
> PeaceHealth hospital prioritizes preparing fresh foods on site, reducing waste. 6