The Indiana Primary Health Care Association announced its partnership with the Indiana Department of Health, Purdue University, and dozens of other organizations as part of a statewide initiative that aims to ensure Hoosiers have better access to the resources they need to improve their health.

The two-year Indiana Healthy Opportunities for People Everywhere, or I-HOPE, initiative will deploy teams across the state to facilitate community-level conversations, resulting in strategies to address the factors that prevent people from living their healthiest lives. The work will examine longstanding risk factors, as well as the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on Hoosiers’ health. The effort is being funded by a $34.8 million grant from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

In addition to addressing chronic disease, food insecurity, opioids, obesity, smoking, and other Indiana health challenges exacerbated by pandemic-related isolation and treatment delays, I-HOPE partners will address factors that make it difficult for people to get healthy and stay healthy such as limited access to healthcare, affordable housing, transportation, childcare, and safe and secure employment.

As a partner in this I-HOPE initiative, IPHCA’s focus is on sustaining and expanding the data infrastructure to support health centers response to COVID-19 and support their patients who may have delayed care during the pandemic. By improving access to clinical information and information about social needs, health centers can better coordinate and manage transitions of care from hospitals and specialists and make community referrals to support needs around access to food, housing, employment and other services. IPHCA is also reviewing how patients have been served by virtual services like Telehealth and remote monitoring of vital signs throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. IPHCA hopes to learn from our experience over the past 18 months to inform how these virtual services can be expanded in the future to care for more patients in their homes and keep them out of high cost care settings.

During the two-year grant term, Purdue University’s Registries Center for Healthcare Engineering will deploy statewide teams to collaborate with the many I-HOPE partners working on projects statewide as well as 30 Indiana counties that have been most impacted by the pandemic. I-HOPE will support stakeholders with innovative tools aimed at building collaboration, hearing the voice of the community, and guiding participants to action.

For more information about I-HOPE, visit http://i-hope.purdue.edu.