Advocate Trinity continues its commitment to inform and engage the community

Advocate Trinity Hospital has been hosting community meetings to inform residents about its plans to improve health care on the South side of Chicago. PHOTO PROVIDED BY ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE.
Advocate Trinity Hospital has been hosting community meetings to inform residents about its plans to improve health care on the South side of Chicago. PHOTO PROVIDED BY ADVOCATE HEALTH CARE.

 Advocate Trinity continues its commitment to inform and engage the community

 

By Tia Carol Jones

The Advocate Health Care and Advocate Trinity Hospital are continuing its community engagement with a set of meetings to inform the community about its recent more than $1 billion investment to the South side of Chicago over the next 10 years.

On Wednesday, Jan. 15th, Advocate Trinity Hospital hosted two community meetings, one at Compassion Baptist Church and another at the Vodak Public Library Branch. Two more meetings are scheduled for Wednesday, Jan. 22nd. One will take place at 10 a.m. at Compassion Baptist Church, located at 2650 E. 95th St., and another at 1 p.m. at the Vodak Public Library Branch, located at 3710 E. 106th St.

Part of the investment includes a new $286 million state-of-the-art hospital facility at 8080 DuSable Lake Shore Drive; and a $706.5 million investment in clinical programs and services.

During its Reimagining Care on the South Side of Chicago meeting, Advocate Trinity Hospital informed residents about how the investment would benefit the community. The goal of the sessions is to have conversations with the community that build on the conversations Advocate Trinity Hospital facilitated last year to get community input on ways to improve health outcomes and health care on the South Side of Chicago.

Gwendolyn Oglesby-Odom is the Executive Enterprise Vice President of Community Engagement for Advocate Health Care. Prior to this role, Ogelsby-Odom was the Chief Nursing Officer at Advocate Trinity Hospital.

“I cannot tell you how happy I am, how invested I am, that we have this opportunity as a community to now have state-of-the-art health care on the south side of Chicago,” she said. She added the community has really worked with and alongside Advocate.

Dr. Michelle Blakely has been the President of Advocate Trinity Hospital since 2022. She walked the attendees through the process Advocate went through to create the plan for the investment. She said she wanted to continue to listen to the community and get their input. She said the plan is to develop a health care strategy that is different than anything Advocate has done before.

Blakely said during those listening sessions that took place in 2024, Advocate heard from more than 400 people from the community. She said those sessions were instrumental in creating the plan to close the 30-year life expectancy gap.

Blakely said the goal is health and wellness; and that is not laying in a hospital bed.  She said hospital beds are for acute care when it is necessary or when someone needs elective procedures.

“For the rest of everything you need, my desire is for you to have access to those services in an outpatient space, going to a clinic down the street and going right back home. That’s the vision we have,” she said.

Blakely said access was a recurring theme in developing the plan -- access to food, access to pharmaceuticals, access to work and access to a place to exercise. The expense of healthcare was another part of the feedback from the community. With the $706.5 million, $500 million will be for 10 neighborhood care sites, and $200 million will be for virtual and in-person specific chronic disease management clinics.

Blakely did acknowledge that Advocate Trinity needed to do a better job of bringing the providers out into the community to engage with them as a way to improve health and wellness. She said there is a plan to do that. She also said there will be a pharmacy vending machine in clinics to provide access to prescriptions.

“We really are intentional in making sure we’re bridging these gaps, based on what people have told us,” she said.

Community residents who attended the meeting had positive feedback about the investments.

The Reverend Lloyd Biddle, Interim Senior Pastor at Compassion Baptist Church, said he was encouraged by Advocate Trinity’s commitment to pay community residents a good wage. Another community member thanked Advocate Trinity for their plan to bring a new hospital to the community. He said, “something like this makes you want to get well.”

For more information about Advocate Health Care’s investment, visit MyVoiceMyHealth.com.


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