and co-director of the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care. Courtesy of SCF.
Southcentral Foundation (SCF) has partnered with the Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care to foster collaborations in research, education and practice. The partnership will offer the Center opportunities to study SCF’s innovative Nuka System of Care, an award-winning, relationship-based system of health care that has measurably improved the health of Alaska Native people while also reducing costs.
Through the partnership, Harvard Medical School students and faculty will have the opportunity to participate in SCF’s Core Concepts training, a three-day session that teaches participants how to build effective relationships and better understand how others’ values, life experiences and relationships influence behavior. SCF will participate in the Center’s InciteHealth initiative, which focuses on health care innovation and primary care redesign.
The seeds of this partnership were planted as early as 2013, when Harvard became interested in the dramatically different approach Alaska Native people were taking with the delivery of health care in Alaska. Thanks to initiatives like SCF’s Nuka System of Care, there has been a 23 percent decrease in ER/urgent care use and a 25 percent decrease in primary care visits from 2008 to 2015.
