Letter from the IOMC President  Raul Garza

A MESSAGE TO OUR FELLOWS and COLLEAGUES

August 2022

Dear Institute of Medicine Chicago (IOMC) Community,

I hope this newsletter finds you as well as possible in these trying times. Collaborations like IOMC bring results forward by bringing distinguished leaders in the health field who come together to collaborate to improve the health of the public. As my first letter to you all as President, I am excited to not only continue the critical work and dialogue we drive forward as a community but to help highlight some incredible work we have been working on over the last few months.

I want to take a moment and recognize the immediate past President, Dr. Cheryl Rucker-Whitaker for her leadership in making the IOMC’s professional offerings more robust, but grounding us in our charge to reinvigorate what the IOMC’s relationship is with the communities where we live and work. I would like to thank Dr. Rucker-Whitaker for her example, and the high bar she blessed all of us privileged to work closely with her these past 24 months.

As a part of this work, the IOMC and our Fellows are positioned to address the physical, mental and social crises that continue to plague our individual and community health and wellbeing as a part of our two-year strategic focus areas (2022-2024). We will be creating ‘work groups’ in Fall 2022 to address these five issues. The purpose of the workgroups will be to identify steps to make a change in each identified area and to collaborate with other stakeholders for achieving health equity in areas that have been deprioritized in our healthcare field. Stay tuned for more information as we launch these groups, but see a description below from our February conversation fleshing these areas out during the IOMC’s State of Health of Chicago.

Focus Areas

• Maternal and child health

-Improve access to entry-level OB care

-Establish a Level Two OB facility on the south side

-Address transportation issues for people seeking upper-level OB care

-Create an open network for OB care for Medicaid managed care plans 

-Address the issue of malpractice rates for OB-GYN physicians

• Homelessness

          -Continue to promote and support homelessness as a public health issue; as part of

           the critical infrastructure.

-Ensure the system addresses all issues (medical and non-medical) in the   treatment of the homeless.

-Treat individuals and all of their underlying conditions- not only the issue of   homelessness.

• Nursing Home Reform

-Address the racism issues that still affect nursing homes in Chicago

-Identify how to address the staffing issues faced by nursing homes

-Continue to promote and support the importance of communications with     nursing home residents and their families/caregivers.

• Telehealth

-Continue to support the use of telehealth in mental healthcare and in other   disciplines when feasible.

• The DCFS Placement Crisis for youth in psychiatric hospitals beyond medical necessity

More> 

Best wishes, 

Raul Garza

President, Institute of Medicine of Chicago