Community-led collaboration was a key theme at the two-day Soulsville Heart Health Summit August 9 and 10 at Stax Museum of American Soul Music, the first annual meeting of the Tennessee Heart Health Network in partnership with the Soulsville Foundation. The network is the signature project of the Tennessee Population Health Consortium at the University of Tennessee Health Science Center.
“We have the opportunity to literally and figuratively give life by focusing on preventive care and better access to health care,” Shelby County Mayor Lee Harris told attendees. “Only by all of us working together—not everything in silos—can we make a difference.”
The summit was held in the Soulsville neighborhood to call attention to the needs of underserved areas. Approximately 140 people registered to attend in person or via Zoom. Speakers included Mayor Harris; Memphis Mayor Paul Young; Regional One Health Chief Integration Officer Susan Cooper, MSN, RN, FAAN; UT Health Science Center Chancellor Peter Buckley, MD; and Knowledge Quest founder Marlon Foster. All are passionate about bringing health care to medically underserved populations and addressing the social determinants of health (SDOH) that make that more challenging.
Community-led collaboration to encourage better health for Memphians in areas with lower access to primary care is already in evidence through Tennessee Heart Health Network initiatives. These include the UTHSC Health Hub – Uptown and ShelbyCares on 3rd, a partnership between UT Health Science Center and Shelby County.
This effort will expand through the UTHSC Health Hub – Soulsville, opening in a temporary location at 1122 College St. in the fall and in its permanent location at 870 E. McLemore Ave. next year.
These locations offer health screenings, health coaching, classes in healthy cooking and exercise, and connections o primary care doctors and social services to address barriers. such as a lack of transportation, access to food, or housing challenges. In addition, the Soulsville location will offer adult and pediatric primary care services and mental health counseling.
“I have never seen Memphis come together as much as it has today,” said Ed Dismuke, MD, MSPH, FACP, FACPM, longtime Memphis physician and affiliated faculty member in the Center for Health System Improvement at UT Health Science Center. A proponent of addressing SDOH, he also pointed to a new level of excitement within UT Health Science Center about what can be done in partnership to address those barriers and improve population health.
The commitment to working together to address the social determinants of health—chiefly food insecurity, lack of transportation, housing issues, and lack of social support—was evident throughout the summit. These factors are barriers to quality health care for many underserved Memphians.
Until these challenges and lack of insurance are addressed, keynote speaker Susan Cooper said, “The best health care in the world is not going to help.” She described Regional One Health’s One Health initiative, which addresses SDOH by connecting patients with services including SNAP benefits, free transportation, and health insurance. Cooper said this approach has brought significant improvements for both the health and the lives of patients.
Preventive care is an important focus that encourages patients to adopt healthier lifestyles to head off heart disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions so that heart attacks or other health crises do not happen. According to Jim Bailey, MD, MPH, executive director of the Tennessee Population Health Consortium, our health system does not do a good job in this area.
“I have seen unnecessary amputations, I have seen unnecessary heart attacks, and none of them needed to happen if our health care system fired on all cylinders,” said Dr. Bailey, who is also a professor of preventive medicine and the Robert S. Pearce Endowed Chair in Internal Medicine at UT Health Science Center.
Preventive care is the focus of the UTHSC Health Hub – Uptown and ShelbyCares on 3rd, and patients who utilize them praised their services during two community and patient panels representing the Soulsville census tract. Panelists particularly relied on services provided by health coaches, including exercise and healthy cooking classes, and support groups. The panelists described what they see as barriers to health care—not just transportation, social support, and access to healthy food and housing, but also long waits to see a doctor and medical education materials either lacking or too intimidating to be useful.
Tennessee ranks third in the country in heart attacks and strokes, a reality that motivates partners in the community to continue to work together on the barriers that prevent underserved Memphians from getting the preventive health care they need to stave off heart disease.
“It can be easier to do it on your own, and that way you can get good results,” Mayor Young said. “By working together, you can get great results.”