Two federal grants totaling nearly $12.6 million have been awarded to programs led by MetroHealth physicians.

A $6.4 million grant will help MetroHealth’s Department of Family Medicine serve as a central hub for recruiting, training and retaining providers to care for the Medicaid patient population.

A nearly $6.2 million grant awarded to a research team at the Center for Reducing Health Disparities will examine ways to provide evidence-based kidney transplant and organ donation interventions to the Cleveland community.

Improving Care for Medicaid Patients

The Medicaid Technical Assistance and Policy Program (MEDTAPP) Healthcare Access Initiative was awarded to The MetroHealth System and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine through Ohio Medicaid.

This renewable grant will support workforce development aimed at positively impacting the health of the community while increasing access in anticipation of MetroHealth’s Medicaid waiver application being approved.

New care providers will serve in disadvantaged neighborhoods and community health clinics while helping patients manage their short- and long-term health needs.

“We’re really excited about this because it gives us a better opportunity to educate students and faculty while providing training to help our patients,” says Christine Alexander, MD, Interim Chair, Department of Family Medicine.

Recent medical school graduates, residents and fellows in the areas of primary care, social work and behavioral sciences will be recruited, trained and encouraged to create best practices to care for Medicaid beneficiaries. They’ll follow patients in a fashion similar to MetroHealth’s Patient Centered Medical Home concept.

“This is a wonderful honor. It speaks to the work that’s been done here for so long,” says Leanne Chrisman, MD, the grant’s pincipal ivestigator.

Medicaid beneficiaries tend to have worse outcomes when it comes to major health issues.

This is about providing health care differently to better care for our patients," Dr. Chrisman explains.

She says it’s important for these patients to have a primary care provider as they manage major health issues.

“It’s about relationships; the primary care provider is a binder to quality health care.” 

Several other MetroHealth departments are part of the MEDTAPP grant. Through CASE Children’s Access Now (CaseCAN), Robert Needlman, MD (Pediatrics), and Terry Stancin, PhD (Psychiatry), will lead a team working to develop and implement a program that will train students, residents and faculty in providing enhanced care and services to children in low-income households.

Boosting Organ Donations, Kidney Transplant Rates

Ashwini Sehgal, MD, Director of the Center for Reducing Health Disparities, is the principal investigator for a five-year, $6,183,799 grant from the National Institutes of Health.

For this project, Dr. Sehgal and his team plan to build on their previous research by engaging Cleveland communities and institutions to promote evidence-based health disparity kidney transplant and organ donation interventions.

They plan to use several methods, including:

• A transplant navigator intervention, which will be based at four transplant centers and will be available to 1,800 end-stage renal disease patients.
• An organ donation video, which will be available online to 4,000 college students at six universities.
• A collaborative training program to increase research and evaluation capacity among community organizations in Greater Cleveland.

A component of the grant will be based at Cleveland State University. This will involve recruitment of students — especially from multicultural backgrounds — into educational and service learning programs, as well as faculty that will foster research and teaching that could contribute to a reduction in health disparities.

The Center for Reducing Health Disparities is a joint program between MetroHealth and Case Western Reserve University School of Medicine.