Our Team! Our group came together a few years ago with a mission to positively impact patient lives beyond blood draws and prescriptions.
Ultimately, we want to connect with our patients and community and start a movement to change how we care for one another. As healthcare providers, we are not happy with what healthcare has become.
The Colorado Center for Primary Care Innovation (CCPCI) has been a 501c3 nonprofit organization since 2007 with a mission to facilitate primary care demonstrations of cutting edge ideas. Since its establishment, the Center has worked to design, implement, and study initiatives; driving new ideas in primary care and finding dynamic ways to improve patient care in our local community and beyond. CCPCI has expanded its reach by creating the Aspen Renaissance Transformation Team (ART2) in 2018. This team recognizes Larry Green, M.D.’s pioneering work (ASPN) in practice-based research and strives to return humanism to health care, as well as, nurture the art of medicine. ART2 brings together the best, innovative family medicine clinicians in Colorado to drive new ideas in primary care, find dynamic ways to improve patient care, and to support primary care sustainability. The Center collaborates with ART2 to design, implement, and study initiatives to enhance healthcare for patients in our local community and beyond.
One way that we have identified that we can make a change in healthcare is by getting to know our patients better and supporting our community in fostering healthy connections.
Why we want to help? How often do you feel you lack companionship, feel left out, or feel isolated from others? If you answered “sometimes “or” often” to any of the questions above, you may be experiencing loneliness. You may have heard about the loneliness problem in recent articles and news publications. 1 in 3 adults and 1 in 5 school aged children are affected by loneliness. Loneliness isn’t about being alone, but rather about not feeling connected. People can feel lonely even when among family and friends. Research shows that loneliness has a similar health impact to smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
Loneliness is a health problem in our community. A recent study in Colorado showed that about 1 in 4 people are experiencing loneliness. Our mission is to increase loneliness awareness and design and implement community-centric, evidence-informed interventions to treat loneliness in our community.
We have already started! Across our 7 clinics, we screen patients for loneliness using a validated screening questionnaire. This has helped us identify the need and prevalence our clinics.
Now that we have identified the need, and with your support, we can implement programs to treat loneliness, which will include facilitating social and education activities in group settings, improve access to behavioral health services, and hosting events in our community.
What you can do? Help us change what healthcare looks like and invest in the potential of what it can be by supporting our work in addressing loneliness! Your donation can make all the difference.