Kaiser Permanente Provides $500,000 in Grants to San Francisco Community Health Organizations

Kaiser Permanente announced $500,000 in grants to health organizations in San Francisco to help increase access to care for people who are at greatest risk for heart attacks and strokes. The grants are part of a larger, $5.8 million investment aimed at expanding the reach and scope of the organization’s Preventing Heart Attacks and Strokes Every day (PHASE) program, as well as additional resources to support training and technical assistance aimed at optimizing implementation of the program in community settings.

PHASE combines medications and lifestyle changes to provide an evidence-based, cost-effective treatment for people with existing heart disease and those at greatest risk for developing it, including individuals with diabetes who are ages 55 years and older. The heart healthy regimen has helped Kaiser Permanente reduce heart attacks and stroke-related hospital admissions among its own members by 60 percent since it began the program in 2002. Kaiser Permanente has been sharing the program with community health centers through a combination of grant funding, clinical expertise, and physician mentors since 2006.

“We are committed to improving the health of our members and our communities, says Dr. Maria Ansari, Cardiologist and Physician in Chief, Kaiser Permanente San Francisco. The success of our PHASE program is proof that adopting a healthy lifestyle, increasing exercise and improving ones diet will reduce heart attacks and stroke in our members. Providing the program to community clinics allows us to help more people get access to care and in turn develop habits to live a healthy lifestyle.”

Today, 112 clinic sites in Northern California, which includes 25 public hospital/health department clinics (representing 4 public hospital systems) and 87 clinic sites from 32 health centers (representing 4 consortia) are providing care to more than 120,000 patients with diabetes and hypertension.

San Francisco General Hospital has participated in PHASE since 2008. The $500,000 grant will help them increase the number of clinic sites from nine to twelve sites and from 17,000 to 20,400 patients. Over the next 36 months, they will work to optimize electronic tools for data reporting and visualization, develop roles of nurses and pharmacists in chronic disease management; and enhance self‐management support to include counseling for smoking cessation. SFGH will also create linkages to community resources, particularly to healthy foods, in response to the social non-medical needs identified in PHASE patients.

“Before the implementation of the PHASE program, patients with heart disease often needed many office visits and phone calls before getting the appropriate treatment,” said Marc Jaffe, M.D., an endocrinologist and internist at Kaiser Permanente South San Francisco. “With the PHASE program now in place, we are seeing tremendous results as Kaiser Permanente and its partners are making heart disease treatment more accessible, affordable, consistent, and convenient in the communities we serve.”