UChicago Medicine Community Benefit Report Touts Investments In Communities

Photo provided by UChicago Medicine.
Photo provided by UChicago Medicine.

UChicago Medicine Community Benefit Report Touts Investments In Communities

By Tia Carol Jones

The University of Chicago Medicine recently released its Community Benefit Report for fiscal year 2024. The report shows it invested $715 million in 2024 in an effort to reduce health disparities and strengthen community health. The effort not only includes the South side of Chicago, but also the South Suburbs and Northwest Indiana, through the University of Chicago Medical Center in Hyde Park and UChicago Medicine Ingalls Memorial in Harvey.


According to a release from UChicago Medicine, since 2013, it has reported more than $5.7 billion in community benefit investments. The report also showed that UChicago Medicine invested $631.5 million on the South Side and $79.4 million in the South Suburbs. The Community Benefit Report looked at 12 zip codes for the Medical Center in Hyde Park and 13 zip codes within Thornton Township. The investments included providing health education at workshops and events, providing patient advocates in the emergency department, its violence recovery program and employing community health workers.


DonElla Bradford, Executive Director for Community Benefit & Health Improvement at UChicago Medicine, said this kind of community health needs assessment is a tool that is commonly used in public health. She said its aim is to do an assessment of a community to see what the assets are, as well as where there are opportunities to help that community get healthier. Bradford called it an accountability tool to ensure that hospitals like UChicago Medicine were investing back into the health of the community.


Bradford said the investment was support in cash or in-kind donations given directly to organizations in the form of grants, or activities. That support was meant to help organizations address the three community benefits priorities: Prevent and manage chronic disease, build trauma resiliency and reduce inequities caused by the Social Determinants of Health. The UChicago Medicine teams engaged the community by participating or hosting 50 workshops and events where they shared health education and promoted wellness. Bradford said when talking about chronic diseases including diabetes, cancer and heart disease, there is research that goes into understanding the drivers of those issues. It is important that the team is educated and can educate the community.


“We’re making sure we have an educated workforce, competent, skilled people who can actually provide care to the communities that we serve,” she said.


Bradford clarified that just because the 12 zip codes in Chicago and 13 zip codes in Thornton Township were part of the priority area didn’t mean that UChicago wasn’t investing in other communities, it just meant in terms of allocation of resources, that is the area where there is a deliberate effort to invest. Bradford said that the interventions that UChicago Medicine is doing throughout the community are what is needed to start to address health disparities. She said there are other equity issues – where people live, access to jobs, housing and education level – that go into addressing chronic diseases in communities.


“What we have done consistently as a health system, is that we have made a commitment to our communities that we will continue to work toward providing resources, services, whether it is intellectual property, whether it is our money; whatever it is, we are investing in staying here and working with you, so that we can address this,” she said.


Bradford said the work UChicago Medicine is doing is not just in the treatment of the disease but also in looking at prevention of it. She said things like the proximity of a grocery store, whether a person has transportation, access to childcare, a job that pays a living wage can also affect a person’s health. She said the model at the University of Chicago with its focus as an academic medical center and using its research to help people, is the hospital’s greatest strength. She said its power is in it being a trusted partner and its reputation. She said the hope is to take the report and the investments and use it as leverage to use its reputation to help communities, bring back assets and resources that will help prevent and treat diseases.


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