The Multicultural Health Foundation is the recipient of $1 Million of Innovation Initiative (i2) funding to establish the Prevention Alliance. The Prevention Alliance will convene the first coalition of ethnic organizations to secure and share sustainable funding and infrastructure for preventive health services in multicultural, immigrant, and refugee communities. Alliance Healthcare Foundation’s funding will support creating the Prevention Alliance’s infrastructure to further launch prevention programs in communities that historically have not accessed maintainable prevention services.

The Prevention Alliance is pioneering a novel sustainable economic model that enables a number of multicultural community-based organizations to deliver proven prevention services paid through medical reimbursements, a new income stream. The Prevention Alliance’s initial focus will be on establishing a model for diabetes prevention. Within five years, a workforce of 350 diabetes prevention coaches—sourced from the communities who join the Prevention Alliance, will bring prevention services to 8,500 residents. The Prevention Alliance will infuse capital into resource-poor, but proven effective, multicultural communities’ prevention care services.

The health system needs this solution to solve an old problem in a new way. Community-based organizations exhibit the ability to lower chronic diseases, without the capacity to bill for it. The Prevention Alliance solves that problem. Members of the Prevention Alliance will be able to share a billing and claims system to contract with insurance companies and gain market share for sustainable funding. For the first time ever in San Diego County, community-based nonprofits will be able to access a new funding stream from Medicare, Medicaid, and commercial insurances directly to bring the much needed prevention services that improve health outcomes while reducing health disparities.

The Prevention Alliance is comprised of a team of organizations, including:

“The mission of the Multicultural Health Foundation’s Prevention Alliance aligns with our mission,” noted Elizabeth Dreicer, AHF Interim Executive Director. “The Prevention Alliance’s focus on creating a sustainable economic social enterprise model to support ongoing, long-term prevention efforts within the San Diego and Imperial County ethnic, immigrant and refugee communities is important to our vision of closing the health equity gap. We anticipate this will result in long-term positive impact in the communities they serve. Further, as AHF understands that we cannot spend more as a ratio of our overall GDP (gross domestic product) on healthcare, this project supports our aim to improve quality and improve access while reducing overall costs.”

Broadly, the Prevention Alliance coalition will focus on four project areas including—1) economic empowerment; 2) system-level change; 3) workforce development, and 4) policy and environmental level change. In each of these areas, the Prevention Alliance has identified targeted improvement goals with a five-year timeline for reaching those goals.

“Our innovation is the economic empowerment of community-based organizations who are on the front lines for reducing chronic diseases,” observed Nataché Muschette, Executive Director of the Multicultural Health Foundation. “With the Prevention Alliance we will introduce the business of healthcare to charity-based organizations to demonstrate the economic value of redirecting revenue from insurance companies into the medically-underserved, ethnic communities, who need it the most.” “While Medicare, Medicaid and commercial health insurance plans have the money to fund prevention services, they lack distribution channels into high-risk, high-cost ethnic communities where the greatest reduction in chronic disease and health disparities can be realized.” “We understand how to serve this historically hard-to-reach population.”

Dr. Hood is the founder and initial funder of the Multicultural Health Foundation and serves as the foundation’s current board chair. Dr. Hood has practiced medicine in San Diego for more than 30 years and has long been involved in the health and wellness of the local multicultural community as a physician treating individual patients and as a community leader serving on numerous nonprofit boards of organizations supporting communities in need. Dr. Hood also serves as a Trustee of Alliance Healthcare Foundation (Dr. Hood did not participate in the Alliance Healthcare Foundation selection or voting process for this award).