What is the Harvard Pilgrim Foundation?
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Most people may not even know that Harvard Pilgrim has a Foundation, much less what it does. Well, among other things, it supports the Institute for Linguistic and Cultural Skills, which provides in- person cultural competency training and education to providers and employers around the region. Most recently, Institute Director Shani Dowd told me they were recently awarded a $360,000 grant by the Metrowest Foundation (which is located in the western suburbs of Boston) to provide cultural competency training to all 1,600 people who work in the Metrowest Medical Center’s health care delivery system. This is huge news for two reasons – first, it’s a great opportunity for Shani and her team to do some good in our own backyard, and second, it’s a ringing endorsement of the program’s teaching methods and curriculum.
Our Foundation also supports - jointly with the Harvard Medical School - the Department of Ambulatory Care and Prevention, which does teaching and research in a field called health care services research. DACP basically studies how care is delivered, what works and what doesn’t, what’s cost effective and what isn’t and how the health care system intersects with other health and public health activities. Most recently, Dr. Tracy Lieu’s team at DACP, which is among the most well-known and respected groups researching the effectiveness of vaccination programs anywhere in the world, completed a study on how to go about implementing a cost-effective pneumococcal vaccination program for infants in 72 developing countries. The work was so well received and influential, that it prompted, along with some other research, a $200 MM investment by the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations in pneumococcal vaccines, and a $1.5 BILLION commitment from the Gates Foundation and five other countries to develop and distribute these kinds of vaccines in developing countries. Sounds to me like they made an impression.