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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 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).

READ the American Journal of Managed Care Press Release
WATCH Dr. Don Berwick's Interview on the Aligning Forces for Quality Evaluation