Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care and SCF partnership

The Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care and Southcentral Foundation (SCF), an innovative Alaska Native health care organization based in Anchorage, Alaska announce the formation of a strategic partnership designed to foster collaborations in research, education and practice. Both organizations are committed to improving primary care delivery and creating new approaches to health and wellness.

The partnership will support the Center’s leadership development curriculum and programs for front-line primary care leaders, including physicians, other health care workers and staff. In addition to providing opportunities to study SCF’s Nuka System of Care, a relationship-based whole health care system that has measurably improved the health of the Alaska Native people while reducing costs, the partnership will offer leadership training and exchanges between the two organizations.

«We are thrilled to announce this partnership between SCF and the Center for Primary Care. Southcentral Foundation models the flexible, bold solutions that we need to solve our current crisis in primary care,» said Dr.Russ Phillips, director of the Center for Primary Care.

Through the partnership, Harvard Medical School students and Center faculty and staff will have the opportunity to participate in SCF’s Core Concepts training, a three-day session that teaches participants how to build effective relationships and better understand how others’ values, life experiences and relationships influence behavior. The course is the foundation on which SCF’s story-driven system of care is built. SCF also will participate in the Center’s InciteHealth initiative, which focuses on health care innovation and primary care redesign.

The Harvard Medical School Center for Primary Care works to improve the health of communities through transformation in primary care practice and education. The Center recently profiled SCF’s Nuka System of Care in a case series that supports leadership development curriculum and programs for physicians, other healthcare workers and staff. The SCF cases focus on organization culture, leadership, governance, succession planning, teams, finance, sustainability and the integration of primary care with other health services and wellness programs. While creating the cases, the leaders of the two organizations were impressed by the alignment of goals between the two organizations and committed to work together to achieve those shared goals.

«Through this partnership, the exchange between Harvard and Southcentral Foundation will increase the knowledge of our primary care providers, Harvard students, and other health care professionals,» said SCF President/CEO Dr. Katherine Gottlieb. «We look forward to sharing our system’s foundations with them.»