At NorthShore University HealthSystem (NorthShore), which includes Swedish Hospital and Northwest Community Healthcare, we believe that to truly care for the communities we serve, we must have clear understanding of community health needs and get involved in our communities. The Community Investment Fund (CIF) is one of many ways in which we seek to engage locally and provide community-connected care.
Goal:
The goal for the CIF is to reduce health inequities and disparities and drive impact in the communities we serve through measurable improvement in:
- Overall health
- Wellbeing
- Economic security
Focus:
In 2023, NorthShore is awarding $4 million to local partners to create or expand programming that promotes overall community health and wellbeing, health equity and economic security in ways that emphasize community health needs, as informed by our Community Health Needs Assessment:
- Access to health care
- Behavioral health care
- Prevention and management of chronic conditions and diseases
ASPIRE Evanston Community Healthcare Workforce Development Program
ASPIRE Evanston Community Healthcare Workforce Development Program
2-year award for $400,000Extend City of Evanston partnership. ASPIRE Evanston matched over 45 Evanston students and young adults to career exploration opportunities.
The inspiration behind ASPIRE is simple, but powerful. Combine the experience and expertise of community organizations that have a stake in educating and encouraging diverse young talent to stay local — and then invest in making it happen. In 2022, the City of Evanston and Finnegan Family Foundation also provided funding to support a breadth of opportunities including early exposure to healthcare roles, job shadowing, internships, and scholarships.
ASPIRE aligns the commitment and resources of the City of Evanston and partners such as Evanston Township High School and iKit, the Evanston Work Ethic (WE) Program, Youth Job Center, NorthShore University HealthSystem and many others to help teens and young adults explore healthcare careers through career fairs, job shadowing, internships, certification programs and more.
Says Evanston Mayor Daniel Biss: "Our goal is to plant that seed: What future can you imagine for yourself? What future seems tangible and possible? If we can influence that early, it can have enormous impact on the choices our young people make and their chances of thriving and staying in our community."
ASPIRE Lake County Community Healthcare Workforce Development Program
ASPIRE Lake County Community Healthcare Workforce Development Program
1-year award for $115,000Establish a new community collaborative to connect students and young adults with career exploration opportunities.
Inspired by its first-year success in Evanston in 2022, a new ASPIRE workforce development partnership is being created in Lake County. The program’s goal is to partner with local education, government and community organizations to expand existing workforce development programs and co-create new programs providing exposure to healthcare roles, building job skills, and supporting residents to attain healthcare jobs and meet community employment needs.
This award will support the creation of the collaborative, help partners listen and learn from the Lake County community to assess local needs and opportunities, and expand and launch programming based on the needs of the community.
The AUX
The AUX
Multi-year award for $500,000Support
Funds awarded in 2022 support the build of a new hub for startups, small businesses, Black entrepreneurs and Evanston job creation. In addition to its NorthShore award, it has raised nearly $6 million toward building costs through grants and investors.
The AUX will be a community-owned economic hub of Black entrepreneurs who are converting a 16,000+ square foot industrial building in Evanston into a vibrant space for Black-owned businesses with a common goal of improving community wellness. The endeavor features at least 8 anchor tenants, including a juice bar, a laundry café serving healthy fare options, a physical and mental health fitness center, and marketplace for like-minded pop-ups. In coming together, these Black business leaders support one another along with a network of Black-owned vendors and suppliers. They will create 30+ jobs, increase access to wellness services and inspire future generations.
The AUX, which plans to open in 2024, also uses a unique financial model that provides opportunities for community members to invest as owners. “We are not a charity,” says anchor tenant Tosha Wilson, a 20-year veteran and sergeant of the Evanston Police Department, who was turned down for bank loans for her laundry cafe. "We are business people seeking investments, taking risks, building community legacies hopefully, and making a path for other black businesses to succeed.”
Between Friends
Between Friends
3-year award for $463,237Expand domestic violence support programs to end the cycle of abuse, including a 24-hour helpline and counseling services. It provided wellbeing programs to more than 150 domestic violence survivors and their families.
For over 36 years,
Between Friends has centered its work to be responsive to the needs of individuals, families, and communities across Chicagoland who have experienced abuse, as well as educating our communities on domestic violence and healthy relationships.
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit, Between Friends experienced a large increase in the demand of supportive services from survivors. Through our partnership with the Northshore Community Investment Fund, we were able to hire a new bilingual counselor and re-launch our A Night Out program, which brings together survivors for an event like Zoo Lights at the Lincoln Park Zoo, the circus, and dinners to experience hope, support, and fun in a safe environment.
“With Northshore’s partnership, we can offer survivors and their families a chance to relax and enjoy after spending so much time just surviving” says Between Friends Board of Directors President Daniel R. Hernandez. “We were also able to address the increased demand we had for services in Spanish by hiring a bilingual counselor, who had a full caseload within two months of joining the organization, helping survivors on their healing journey.”
Fenix Family Health Center Centro de Salud
Fenix Family Health Center Centro de Salud
3-year award for $600,000Provide bilingual, bi-cultural and comprehensive medical care, mental health services and prenatal care in Lake County.
Fenix Family Health Center Centro de Salud is a high-quality, comprehensive family healthcare clinic providing services primarily to low-income and Spanish-speaking immigrant families in Lake County. Fenix is named for the mythological bird reborn from its own ashes. In many ways, it represents the health center’s Latino patients’ experiences in coming to the United States. A new home, new possibilities, a rebirth. Fenix’s mission is to ease this cultural transition by providing care for young and old in Spanish, the language of their homelands.
Fenix functions as a concierge clinic for the underserved, offering same-day and walk-in appointments, low cost of care, and on-site labs and x-rays. The center also offers an on-site counselor for nutrition, mental health, and offers assistance in navigating the healthcare system.
This award will support the expansion of the facility, improving access to care, especially to address the growing need for prenatal care services for the Latinx community in Lake County. This will help Fenix have a greater reach and provide more customized and compassionate services for its community.
The Friendship Center
The Friendship Center
3-year award for $504,250Support low-stigma food pantry, mobile outreach and accessibility to public benefits and resources in Chicago. It doubled its population served.
Hunger exists in each zip code and every neighborhood. Operating within a stone’s throw from NorthShore University HospitalSystem’s Swedish Hospital,
The Friendship Center has served those facing food insecurity for more than 50 years. But none of those years prepared the center for the crush of COVID-19 and the lingering economic challenges. In 2020, demand for groceries quickly increased 50% and its hot meals volume doubled, and in 2022, we saw another 50% uptick in people visiting the pantry vs 2021.
The NorthShore–Swedish partnership enabled The Friendship Center to reimagine its facility into one focusing on the neighbor’s perspective. Reducing stigma associated with visiting a pantry by transforming it to a welcoming, normalized grocery-shopping experience, and increasing access to available helpful benefits, information, and services make the pantry more client-centric. By becoming more flexible with mobile distribution and improving throughput, the organization can continue scaling to reach more families facing hunger.
“There are always those who have chronic or episodic need, never more than now,” says Executive Director Justin Block. "The NorthShore partnership dramatically accelerates our strategies to better serve them with respect and dignity at scale.’”
Highwood Library & Community Center
Highwood Library & Community Center
3-year award for $1,854,000Continue bilingual preventative health and mental health education, case management and family counseling. It served over four thousand community members.
Serving a community where 50% of the residents are Latinx, one-third are foreign-born, and many do not have access to transportation or medical coverage, this trusted neighborhood institution has long-focused on helping its residents to access the American dream: through literacy, knowledge, and a better quality of life.
The
Highwood Library & Community Center stays relevant with a grassroots approach that listens and responds to community needs. For years, the library has provided health literacy education and access to preventative health resources. Now, in response to a community struggling with emotional health needs exacerbated by the global pandemic and Fourth of July Parade massacre in neighboring Highland Park, the organization is providing bilingual mental health services.
"In a culture where mental health is stigmatized, preventing individuals from seeking the services they need, we continue to be a safe space where families can feel comfortable expressing their needs and seeking the support necessary to overcome challenges," says Carmen Patlan, Executive Director. "We are setting the standard in reimagining what libraries can offer to their communities. As a result of this programming, community members will understand the importance of seeking help; have increased access to resources, decrease perceived stress, anxiety, and/or depression; and ultimately increase their resiliency.”
Howard Brown Health
Howard Brown Health
2-year award for $402,175Upskill and expand capacity to treat people with complex trauma, especially those in the LGBTQ+ community, and training staff on therapy methodologies.
Howard Brown Health was founded in 1974 and is one of the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) organizations. Howard Brown serves as a health facility and is also one of the few health centers in Chicago offering sliding-scale behavioral health- and trauma-informed care to LGBTQ+ and other vulnerable populations.
Studies have consistently shown that lesbian, gay and bisexual adults are more likely than heterosexuals to suffer from depression, anxiety disorders, and substance abuse. Unfortunately, many LGBTQ people are hesitant to access vital healthcare including primary care and social services as a result of experiencing discrimination or shame due to their sexual orientation or gender identity. Affirmative care at Howard Brown requires aptitude with the unique risks the LGBTQ community faces and sensitivity to past discrimination.
Howard Brown’s behavioral health department is at capacity across all access points for serving patients in need of behavioral health services. This award will allow Howard Brown Behavioral Health Services to train its staff on dialectical behavioral training (DBT) and eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) therapy to support and treat patients with urgent behavioral health needs.
Josselyn
Josselyn
1-year award for $550,000Support renovation of a new behavioral health services facility in Waukegan for Lake County residents, especially Medicaid patients.
Studies show that people with low incomes are more susceptible to mental health challenges. Food and housing insecurity, living in unsafe neighborhoods, and other stressors created by low wages or unemployment affect mental health.
Josselyn exists to help these people.
Dedicated to providing ”mental health for all, ” Josselyn is a certified community mental health center that, for more than 70 years, has provided quality, accessible mental health services in a coordinated setting with access to therapy, psychiatry, and other specialized services. Through its clinics in Northfield, Waukegan, and Northbrook, Josselyn serves more than 4,400 children, adolescents, and adults from across Cook and Lake Counties.
This award will help support improved access to quality behavioral healthcare in northern Lake County. The population of low-income Lake County residents with behavioral health needs is estimated at 35,236 — well beyond the county’s capacity.
With the support of the NorthShore University Community Investment Fund, and others, Josselyn will double its capacity in the next two years and ultimately more than triple its capacity within five years. “Josselyn is pleased to partner with NorthShore University Health System Community Investment Fund to expand access to needed mental health services in Waukegan,” said Josselyn CEO and President Susan Resko.
Kenneth Young Center
Kenneth Young Center
3-year award for $600,000Enhance mobile behavioral health crisis response, providing safe, accessible and 24/7 mental health services, navigation and follow-up.
Headquartered in Elk Grove Village with offices in Arlington Heights,
Mount Prospect and Schaumberg,
Kenneth Young Center partners with communities to provide personalized prevention, intervention, treatment, and recovery support for people experiencing mental health challenges.
KYC’s newly expanded crisis programming ensures clients experiencing mental health emergencies receive 24/7 in-person and phone responses from a trained medical health professional and a person with lived crisis experience. This award will help support the expanded programming through a mobile therapy van and an emergency alert system.
The mobile therapy van offers a safe space for youth and adults at risk of harming themselves or others so they can receive confidential care when they need it most. Having a separate space to talk with behavioral health professionals is critical to deescalating crisis.
The emergency alert system allows staff a discrete way to contact law enforcement or other care managers when cases require additional responders to keeps everyone involved safer and provide support to the team in the field.
These expanded tools help responders remain employed in these critical roles longer, gaining experience and expertise to continually improve crisis-response measures and help ensure the highest level of quality crisis care.
Lutheran Social Services of Illinois
Lutheran Social Services of Illinois
1-year award for $120,00Provide behavioral health services, including individual and group counseling sessions for Budlong Elementary in Chicago.
Founded in 1867,
Lutheran Social Services of Illinois is one of the largest statewide social service providers. The organization welcomes all people as it strives to bring healing, justice, and wholeness to people and communities.
This award will help support LSSI’s Step-Up School-Based Counseling Program at Chicago’s Budlong Elementary School. The overall program goal is to provide mental health services for all who need them, at any level: students, parents, and staff.
This School-Based Counseling program will offer one-on-one counseling for students during the school day, as well as drop-in and group sessions for parents and teachers. These services will be informed by an Advisory Group of school members, who will provide ongoing consultation on the development, implementation, and evaluation of the services being provided.
LSSI believes that for children to prosper, they need a support system providing the resources they need to care for their own health. Integrating different types of interventions across the school community will allow LSSI, in partnership with Budlong Elementary and key stakeholders, to drive meaningful impact in the community and help children thrive.
Partners for Our Communities
Partners for Our Communities
3-year award for $430,408Increase access to vital resources for new immigrants and low-income residents. It served more than one thousand people monthly.
A decades-long partner of Northwest Community Healthcare (NCH),
Partners for Our Communities (POC) manages, in collaboration with NCH, an all-inclusive community center serving the northwest suburbs low income, immigrant population. Name a social service and it's here: a food pantry, clothing closet, English tutoring, adult literacy, healthcare support services, early childhood and youth programs, police crisis intervention, older adult services, a full public library branch and much more. Starting in a one-bedroom apartment 30 years ago, POC was tapped by NCH to bring their bilingual, bicultural staff and expertise to the center.
POC provides programming and coordinates the services of the agency partners housed in the center and NCH pays the operational costs. "How do you lift up a person to be the best they can be?" is the question that Executive Director Kathy Millin says grounds the work. "When I first started 20 years ago, I thought health was about going to the doctor. Now I know health means that you're educated, your mental health is solid, your children have opportunities, and that your life brings you joy."
Peer Services/TASC
Peer Services/TASC
3-year award for $1,026,926Expand services to treat substance use disorders and provide ongoing recovery support for Northern Cook County residents involved with the criminal justice system.
Criminalization of drug possession brings many people with significant, persistent substance use disorders (SUD) into contact with the criminal justice system, often for non-violent, low-level crimes such as trespassing, vandalism or drug possession. Yet, the criminal justice system does not currently provide sufficient treatment to meet individuals' needs, and it lacks consistent practices to facilitate entry into SUD treatment outside the system.
PEER Services (Prevention, Education, Evaluation, and Recovery) offers community-based substance use prevention and treatment services to the residents of Evanston, Maine, New Trier, Northfield and Niles Townships, and the north side of Chicago.
TASC, Inc (Treatment Alternatives for Safe Communities) offers specialized case management, treatment, and navigation services for people with substance use and mental health issues in Cook COunty and across Illinois.
This award will support the Second Chances Program, a partnership between PEER Services and TASC. The program will offer culturally-responsive outreach, lifesaving behavioral health services and wraparound recovery support to residents of Northern Cook County who are involved with the criminal justice system.
Through close collaboration and “warm hand-offs” to treatment and other social services, Second Chances will address chronic substance use disorders and the risk of overdose for a highly vulnerable population. It will offer holistic treatment to help participants succeed with reentry into the community, mitigate serious health issues, repair fractured relationships, and improve their overall self-sufficiency. For many, this will disrupt the cycle of addiction and its consequences.
Rohingya Culture Center
Rohingya Culture Center
1-year award for $500,000Support new space and multilingual services for citizenship and English language classes, group and youth services and case management.
The
Rohingya Culture Center opened in 2016 to serve the Rohingya refugee population in Chicago. RCC provides unique services in helping the Rohingya community, which is largely pre-literate, has little formal education, and speak languages that are rare: Rohingya, which is unwritten, Burmese, and Malay. In the past few years, the center has seen the numbers of constituents double, and individuals from different backgrounds seek service at RCC.
RCC currently offers an academic support program for students, citizenship and ESL classes for adults, girls and boys soccer, and a variety of clubs for youth, seniors, and women. It also assists in health support and COVID-19 support with medical case management and services.
This award will help enable RCC to buy a building that will make it possible to expand its services for the growing needs of the Chicago-area Rohingya and refugee
community. Plans include adding a dedicated space for group gatherings, childcare, and an office space to conduct essential business. Creating this permanent space for this community means that the Rohingya culture and language will survive.
Rosalind Franklin University’s Community Care Connection
Rosalind Franklin University’s Community Care Connection
3-year award for $1,750,050Expand mobile medical services in Lake County to improve health equity and long-term health outcomes. It improved community access to vital health services by 33 percent.
There’s a host of reasons why some people find it hard to access healthcare: lack of funds, time, and transportation, to name just a few.
Rosalind Franklin University seeks to solve these healthcare-access challenges by bringing expert healthcare to them, with compassion and a smile. Its Community Care Connection clinic-on-wheels offers a slew of free medical screening services to low-income Lake Country residents, many of whom are un- or under-insured.
This award helps support the expansion of hours of operation and increased access to its mobile clinical and educational services by bringing on new healthcare providers. Says Lupe Rodriguez, NP, director of community health engagement, “Our program helps our patients understand their health status and, if necessary, take steps to improve their health by connecting them with a primary care provider. This medical outreach empowers them to take charge of their health.”
YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago
YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago
2-year award for $279,993Promote culturally responsive outreach, education, health screenings, healthcare case management and navigation for individuals in Lake County.
YWCA Metropolitan Chicago is dedicated to eliminating racism, empowering women and promoting peace, justice, freedom, and dignity for all. Its Health Promotion and Navigation Services Program addresses barriers to health access, specifically for low-income individuals and those for whom English is not their first language, especially in Spanish-speaking households.
This award will help YWCA Metropolitan Chicago expand its culturally competent health education and diverse staffing to reach all members of the community and create an inclusive environment, with the goal of reducing disease prevalence, educating community members, assisting with disease management, and navigating the health care system. By providing trauma-informed and client-centered education and services, and providing those services in Spanish as well as English, the Health Promotion and Navigation Services program addresses the largest barriers to health access in Lake County.
Through education, outreach, screenings, diagnostics, referral coordination, follow-up care, and case management, YWCA Metropolitan Chicago’s services can more fully address the major health conditions affecting the community. These include: diabetes, influenza, breast cancer, mental health, cardiovascular health, and COVID-19.