At Primary Children’s Hospital, utilizing Utah’s statewide data can be misleading since much of the state’s population shares very similar demographics. This has made it difficult for the community health team to understand the unique barriers and challenges in urban and rural communities.
Traditionally, publicly available state data is lagging and not detailed enough to identify specific community needs. To address these challenges, Primary Children’s created a Healthy Kids Scorecard that provides real-time county and street data from Intermountain Health to identify disparities across different geographic and demographic groups.
“When you look at rural versus urban metrics, the disparities really jump out, and we really wanted to focus on those,” said Jace Meier, Healthy Kids Scorecard program manager. “We needed a better way to track disparities so that all kids can have the best outcomes possible.”
Primary Children’s now uses this data to work collaboratively with community partners and improve the health and well-being of children across the state. By leveraging community coalitions and quality improvement principles, they target high-need areas and track the success of interventions.
Alignment with community priorities
Driven by the hospital’s Community Health Needs Assessment, the Healthy Kids Scorecard will focus on eight health domains, with four already underway:
- Mental well-being.
- Preventative services.
- Injury prevention.
- Lifestyle and healthy habits.
The hospital has made significant strides in the preventative services area. A coalition made up of members from every health district in Utah, encompassing rural counties, was formed to focus on immunization rates. Using the scorecard’s dashboard, the group identified early childhood immunization rates were below state average in rural communities and among Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander children.
“We are keeping rural health districts informed through better access and transparency, showing them the downward trends in their communities,” Meier said. “Now, we can find actionable bits and work together to improve outcomes in those areas.”
Through a collective impact model, the coalition established a plan to address the disparities:
- Common agenda: Improve immunization rates for all Utah children.
- Shared metrics: Track Healthcare Effectiveness Data and Information Set (HEDIS) combination seven and combination two immunization rates, which measure the number of children who have received certain vaccinations by their 2nd and 13th birthdays, respectively.
- Mutually reinforcing activities and continuous communication: During monthly coalition meetings, one or two members report on their activities toward the common agenda using the quality improvement model.
“It feels like equity has become actionable in a way that we can actually show and demonstrate the community needs,” Meier said. “We noticed the disparity through the data. We’ve identified change opportunities, and now we can track if those opportunities are addressing the concern.”
Now, Primary Children’s has partnered with the Utah Pacific Islander Health Coalition and rural health districts to create a qualitative survey on barriers to primary care for those children.
Empowering communities
The collective impact model’s defined approach allows Primary Children’s and community organizations to learn more effectively, align goals, and integrate actions to achieve change.
Instead of taking the lead when a need is identified, the hospital advances community-driven change by soliciting ideas, teaching quality improvement methods, and focusing on results.
“We’re expanding beyond the people employed by Primary Children’s to everyone in the state,” Meier said. “There are tons of people invested in improving health outcomes. Let’s get them involved in the quality improvement process and give them data to support their work.”
Future goals and expansion
Looking ahead, Primary Children’s plans to create a public online platform for organizations across the state to access Utah’s pediatric health data and outcomes.
The hospital’s long-term goal is to share best practices with legislators and policymakers to ensure lasting positive health outcomes for children.
“Our goal is to rework the infrastructure so that we can intervene early, prevent these disparities from happening in the first place, and give kids greater opportunities,” Meier said.
