Posted by anderc8 on Friday, December 7, 2018 in News, TIPs 2017.

Written by Sarah Ray, Administrative Intern (Monroe Carell Jr. Children’s Hospital)

Surely you have been curious about the results of last week’s Strategy and Innovation Session. In fact, I’m sure you are quite eager to hear the next steps for addressing the “Vandy Reach: Putting Obesity Science to Work” Initiative! Don’t worry, you can rest assured knowing you’ve come to the right place. Highlights from the event are outlined below. To briefly review, the session featured a number of healthcare experts considering how to best configure a clinical decision support system to aid in combating obesity and link clinical opportunities with community resources.

Among the 40 professionals gathered were product developers, community engagers, clinical decision support experts, bioinformatics professionals, IT thinkers, obesity prevention researchers and behavioral health analysts. Through various activities, presentations and elaborate discussions, this exchange assisted in creating a deliberate framework for obesity prevention and intervention. Quality participation was noted early on, as the introductory “speed-dating” discussion foreshadowed thoughtful conversations to come. The bulk of the session involved participants breaking up into smaller groups and collaborating on one of the following topics:

• Linking Clinic to Community Resources
• Clinical Decision Support from the Provider View
• Clinical Decision Support from the Patient View
• Connecting Data Back to Clinic
• Longitudinal Health
• Future of Health and Place

These break-out groups generated an array of ideas, identifying patterns of thought and prioritizing points of focus. The event concluded with everyone re-convening to present group discoveries – a point that allowed participants to begin visualizing how these notions could potentially fit into a larger healthcare context.

As healthcare chatter clouded the air, many approaches regarding obesity prevention were particularly predominant throughout the day. Some ideas to consider and next step approaches included: incorporating technology to map out relevant community resources that support health behavior change, analyzing data harmonies across family members to promote longitudinal health, computing an updated list of patient-specific outside resources, advancing health education tools and more.

We look forward to continuing our collaborations with experts across the field to examine the use of the electronic health record to assess nutrition and physical activity behaviors linked to actionable evidence-based counseling advice, and ultimately linking to existing community resources to improve health outcomes across the lifespan.