Policy and Practice August 2016

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Policy&Practice August 2016 8
from the collaborative
For all of us, health and well-being
are key factors to living well and
having a good quality of life. Where we
are born, the quality of our schools, the
safety of our communities, the avail-
ability of jobs, and the level of stress on
ourselves, our families, our neighbors,
and our colleagues are among the
many external factors that impact our
health from a young age through adult-
hood and beyond. Understanding how
these social determinants affect our
health and well-being, and connecting
them to helpful supports along the
way, are the key to ensuring that each
of us can achieve our full potential.
A growing body of evidence shows
that improving care and service
coordination across multiple sectors,
beyond traditional clinical health care
services, together with the human
services and public health systems,
timely access to critical population-
based health information, and
leveraging existing public investments
more effectively, can produce healthier
and dramatically better and more
sustainable outcomes for all families
and communities. Human service
programs and providers already
in place are uniquely positioned to
provide valuable contributions to
improving overall health outcomes
if they are effectively linked to, and
coordinated with, the traditional and
evolving health system.
Over the past several years, APHSA’s
National Collaborative for Integration
of Health and Human Services
(National Collaborative) has focused
on rethinking how state and local
health and human service (H/HS)
agencies operate, developing tools
to help them reconfigure access, and
Human Services in All Policies
The National Collaborative’s Focus on Multiprogram Coordination
By Megan Lape
The Integration Vision
A fully integrated health
and human services system
that operates a seamless,
streamlined information
exchange, shared services,
and coordinated care delivery
that is a consumer-focused
modern marketplace experi-
ence designed to improve
consumer outcomes,
improve population health
over time, decrease poverty,
increase employment pos-
sibility and, ultimately,
bend the health and human
services cost curve by 2025.
—National Collaborative’s
Bridging the Divide, 2011