Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Service

St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center
Phoenix, AZ

The Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Service honors member institutions with a longstanding, major institutional commitment to addressing community needs. The award recognizes exceptional programs that go well beyond the traditional role of academic medicine and reach communities whose needs are not being met through the traditional health delivery system. The award was renamed this year to honor Spencer "Spike" Foreman, M.D., president of New York City's Montefiore Medical Center and a member of the AAMC Executive Council. Dr. Foreman established the award in 1993 while serving as chair of the association.

When the Sisters of Mercy founded St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center in 1895, they saw a dire need to improve the living conditions of Phoenix, Arizona's sick and infirm. That unwavering commitment to the community continues more than a century later, through programmatic, volunteer, and financial support.

St. Joseph's, part of the Catholic Healthcare West hospital system, is a 690-bed non-profit, acute care teaching hospital with a special focus: to care for the poor and underserved. The institution's mission is to deliver compassionate care, to serve and advocate for the underprivileged, and to partner with others in the community to improve citizens' quality of life.

St. Joseph's provides medical care and community benefits to a subset of Maricopa County; its diverse service area is predominantly Hispanic, female, and younger than 25 years old. During its most recent triennial community needs assessment, the hospital identified four community health priorities: access to health care services, cardiovascular risk, chronic disabling conditions, and education and prevention. The hospital then developed a community benefit plan to address these concerns. Some examples of targeted community programs include:

• The MOMobile provides prenatal care to uninsured, low-income women not otherwise eligible for state health coverage, in an effort to reduce the incidence of premature and low birth weight babies. The program offers connections to social services for the whole family and gives each new mom car seat safety instruction. Last year the MOMobile recorded 2,300 patient visits.
• The Stroke Check screening program provides free blood pressure checks and laboratory tests, as well as education and outreach to make the community aware of stroke risk factors.
• The Intercity Asthma Intervention Program helps children age five to eleven suffering from this chronic condition. The program tracks the use of controlled medications, symptoms, and hospital treatment, and provides home visits for additional observation and education. The children participating in the program experienced a significant decrease in symptomatic days, hospital stays, and emergency room visits.
• Barrow Injury Prevention Programs focus on water safety, bike helmet safety, young driver safety, and brain and spinal cord injury prevention.

Last year, St. Joseph's provided more than $60 million in un-sponsored care, including $16 million in public programs, $12 million in traditional charity care, and $4 in financial donations. The hospital also partners with local human service organizations and state agencies to operate community programs and services.

Medical students and residents on rotations at St. Joseph's are offered various opportunities to give back to the community. The hospital provides students and residents with educational experiences in underserved areas, in the hopes that they will eventually return to practice in such communities.

"We are proud of the relationships and resources we have developed to help improve the health and wellness of our citizens," said Linda Hunt, president of St. Joseph's Hospital and Medical Center. "And we believe that our community programs truly make a difference."

Find out more about the Spencer Foreman Award for Outstanding Community Service, nominate a deserving institution, and view a list of previous award recipients.