Cornerstone Care
- Project Title: H.O.N.E.Y. (Healthy Options, Nutrition, Exercise, Youth)
- Program Representative Interviewed: Donna Simpson, Director of Communication Outreach & Mobile Services
- Location: Greensboro, Pennsylvania
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Program Overview: Cornerstone Care is a
nonprofit network of Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) serving rural communities across
southwestern Pennsylvania and northern West Virginia. They offer integrated care and community health worker (CHW)
services along with family medicine, pediatrics, dental, vision, chiropractic, podiatry, and psychiatry and
counseling. They have longstanding outreach efforts focused on reducing barriers to care and specific
outreach programs for youth, women's health, oral healthcare, and social determinants of health. Cornerstone
Care is implementing the Healthy Options, Nutrition, Exercise, Youth (H.O.N.E.Y.) project, a four-year grant
addressing obesity and other chronic conditions among children. The project integrates health literacy into
their childhood obesity prevention initiatives as well as their care management initiatives for patients
diagnosed with obesity and other chronic diseases such as hypertension and heart disease.
The H.O.N.E.Y. project uses the CATCH (Coordinated Approach to Child Health) curriculum model in their Early Head Start program to introduce classroom health and nutrition for all grade levels. The CATCH curriculum provides training, curated online lesson plans, and other materials for teachers and staff to teach kids about healthy living, nutrition, and strategies to increase activity and exercise. Once enrolled, students are given wearable devices used to track and record activity level. The H.O.N.E.Y. project also delivers parent education by providing parents with healthy recipes. Students complete surveys about health and nutrition at the beginning and end of the project to evaluate outcome measures.
Cornerstone Care is partnering with a local hospital to train CHWs on ways to improve communication around health and nutrition using an integrated care model. CHWs will link H.O.N.E.Y. participants with their healthcare providers and encourage better communication with primary care providers, with the goal of improving health literacy and health outcomes through reduced emergency room usage.