Aligning Forces for Quality Initiative: Summative Findings

READ the American Journal of Managed Care Press Release

WATCH Dr. Don Berwick's Interview on the Aligning Forces for Quality Evaluation

Summative Findings and Lessons Learned From Efforts to Improve Healthcare Quality at the Community Level

Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q), the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation’s (RWJF’s) nearly decade-long investment to improve the delivery of high-quality, cost-effective, equitable healthcare across 16 regions, has given stakeholders more information than ever about both barriers and opportunities for change. According to former CMS administrator, Donald M. Berwick, MD, MPP, “the ambitious work of AF4Q offers insights for those who want to improve the health of their communities.”

• The Aligning Forces for Quality Initiative: Background and Evolution From 2005 to 2015
• Evaluating a Complex, Multi-Site, Community-Based Program to Improve Healthcare Quality: The Summative Research Design for the Aligning Forces for Quality Initiative
• Summative Evaluation Results and Lessons Learned From the Aligning Forces for Quality Program
• The Longitudinal Impact of Aligning Forces for Quality on Measures of Population Health, Quality and Experience of Care, and Cost of Care
• Reporting Provider Performance: What Can Be Learned From the Experience of Multi-Stakeholder Community Coalitions?
• Improving Care Delivery at the Community Level: An Examination of the AF4Q Legacy
• From Rhetoric to Reality: Consumer Engagement in 16 Multi-Stakeholder Alliances
• Lessons Learned About Advancing Healthcare Equity From the Aligning Forces for Quality Initiative
• Aligning Forces for Quality Multi-Stakeholder Healthcare Alliances: Do They Have a Sustainable Future?

The American Journal of Managed Care (AJMC) published a supplement on the lessons learned from the independent mixed-methods evaluation of AF4Q led by Dennis Scanlon, director of Penn State’s Center for Health Care and Policy Research, and researchers at Northwestern University, the University of Minnesota, the University of Michigan, and the George Washington University. This 10-year evaluation examined the largest privately funded community-based healthcare improvement initiative in the United States to date, implemented at a time of rapid change in national healthcare policy.

The supplement features three guest commentaries and eight original research reports. Collectively, the eight original research reports present the summative findings and lessons learned from the 10-year evaluation of Aligning Forces for Quality (AF4Q). Specifically, the articles provide in-depth information on AF4Q’s research design; background and evolution; interventions in the main programmatic areas of the initiative; AF4Q’s longitudinal impact on measures of population health, quality and experience of care, and cost of care; and the sustainability of the AF4Q multi-stakeholder healthcare alliances (coalitions).