The demand for integrated health care and social services for patients and communities is growing, as value-based payments and place-based community health initiatives accelerate. HealthBegins offers field-tested support to the health care, social service, and community-based organizations building these care models together. Through strategic consulting, hands-on technical assistance, and innovative models, we help these new partners quickly clarify their goals, identify technical and cultural barriers, set clear measures of success and milestones, and drive successful integration. 

Value-based care is prompting increased integration of health and social services to provide better care for patients with unmet social needs, and that’s an important start. But we also work further upstream to help improve and transform the health of communities and society. HealthBegins is a trusted partner in efforts from improving community-level food insecurity and civic engagement to helping to undo redlining and other forms of structural racism. We offer deep expertise in convening and helping cross-sector partners address community social determinants of health and broader societal-level structural determinants of health and equity.

Whether it’s a relationship between a health system and a community-based nonprofit or a large cross-sector health initiative with multiple stakeholders, work that advances equity and the social drivers of health cannot be accomplished without a constellation of voices and partners. HealthBegins helps clients and partners strengthen working relationships — both within and across organizations — using a combination of relational and technical expertise in partnership development. Instead of never-ending consulting contracts, we offer a model of engagement and support that focuses on building the capacity of clients, partnerships, and communities to sustain and grow their impact on the social drivers of health and equity.

Upstream care is not only a healthcare approach, it’s an investment strategy — one that demands solutions to challenges from developing a business case to designing sustainable financing models for clinical-community partnerships and multi-stakeholder collaboratives. HealthBegins offers concrete, practical support to help clients and partners identify costs, quantify benefits, and design optimal payment models and contracts. With technical expertise and innovative tools, HealthBegins also helps funders of upstream interventions — hospital community benefits departments, foundations, health plans, and place-based collaboratives — design and manage Upstream Investment Portfolios that balance health, social, and economic objectives for defined populations and communities.