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When patients leave the hospital, there’s usually some healing ahead. More often than not, special services or assistance are needed to help recovery — crucial resources that may be lacking for vulnerable populations.
Kaiser Permanente’s Thrive Local was developed to address these needs. Thrive Local features a community referral network that integrates health systems, government agencies, and community partners to connect members to all sorts of services, including food, medical equipment, and transportation. With Thrive Local, hospital staff can easily link patients to services that meet their non-medical needs and track what happens next.
Learn how Thrive Local improves lives and strengthens communities. See if you can make it work for your community.
Advancing Health Equity for California
This program is part of CHA’s Health Equity Leadership Series, which will provide members with information, tools, and practices to reduce inequities in care and improve the lives of the patients they serve.
- What is social health and why this is a Kaiser priority
- Why Kaiser focuses on housing, food insecurity, access to transportation, social connectedness, and financial wellbeing
- How promoting social health supports health equity
- Strategies to address social health and health equity
- The Thrive Local program development process
Anand Shah, MD, MS
Vice President, Social Health
Kaiser Permanente
At Kaiser Permanente, Dr. Shah is responsible for developing and implementing national social health strategy. He collaborates with leaders across KP to establish enterprise systems, programs, and standards to screen for and address myriad social factors influencing health outcomes and health equity. His areas of focus include driving the adoption of standardized screening tools, scaling evidence-based interventions, and integrating a platform into the organization’s electronic health record system to connect members with social services and other community-based programs that alleviate food insecurity, homelessness, and other social needs.
Prior to joining Kaiser Permanente in 2019, Dr. Shah was the chief product and clinical officer at Pieces Technologies, where he helped develop a new platform to connect health systems and community organizations together to address social needs. He also oversaw the development and implementation of a population health analytics platform that was used to stratify and segment populations based on clinical and social risk.
For additional assistance and other inquiries, email CHA’s Education Department at education@calhospital.org.