Richard Johnson, MS, CHES®, TTS, is a busy man. As a public health educator for Person County Health Department (PCHD), he is involved in several projects designed to help his community lead healthier, happier lives. He gives presentations on respiratory care, speaks about the importance of high-quality sleep for good health, teaches cardiovascular disease prevention in women, and promotes tobacco and smoking cessation, just to name a few. He also uses NCCARE360 to connect individuals and families in his community to much-needed services and resources.
Richard has worked in healthcare for more than 30 years, but it was when he began working as a Community Health Worker (CHW) two years ago that he really came to understand the importance of community partnerships in improving health outcomes. During the COVID-19 shutdowns, he spent a lot of time going into communities to locate individuals and families suffering hardships caused by the pandemic. This is when he was introduced to NCCARE360 and found that it was an easily navigated referral system that enabled him to connect community members with needed resources. In March 2022, he came to PCHD to lead his department’s onboarding to NCCARE360. Richard said the onboarding process for their department may have been more involved due to their number of programs and users (seven separate programs and 17 platform users), but they started the initial inquiry of onboarding in September 2022, completed all training in November 2022, and received their first referral in December 2022.
In March 2023, Richard coordinated an information meeting to introduce NCCARE360 to the Person County community. He worked with PCHD’s Equity Advisory Council to invite a variety of community-based organizations, faith-based organizations, civic organizations, African American Greek organizations, and other organizations that serve historically marginalized populations. The meeting was successful and largely attended, and a post-event survey revealed that seven organizations attending the meeting indicated an interest in moving forward with plans to onboard to NCCARE360 within the following 90 days!
Richard continues to be a strong champion of NCCARE360. In April 2023, he co-presented with FHLI and Unite Us at the Eastern District North Carolina Public Health Association (EDNCHPA) 63rd Annual Conference, detailing his experiences and successes with using NCCARE360 in Person County.
“While using NCCARE360, I saw families receive food. I saw instances where the electricity bills were paid. I saw individuals connected with legal assistance to help them avoid eviction from their homes in the dead of winter.”
Richard reports mostly positive experiences and outcomes using the NCCARE360 network, including thousands of pounds of food delivered to individuals and families, and successful COVID-19 testing and vaccination for many underserved communities. We are proud of our partnerships with local health departments like PCHD and supporters like Richard, and we are doing all we can to help them grow and succeed. Thank you, Richard & PCHD, for your continued use and support of NCCARE360. We couldn’t do it without you!
This April, we’re commemorating the passing of the Fair Housing Act and honoring National Fair Housing Month by raising awareness of the importance of equal access to housing and by recognizing the progress that has been made in the fight against housing discrimination.
Housing stability has a significant impact on health outcomes, as there are many ways in which a lack of housing or poor-quality housing can negatively affect health and wellbeing. Experiencing housing instability may contribute to stress, anxiety, or other mental and physical health issues. Housing is a foundational resource that everyone needs. One goal of NCCARE360 is to provide access to resources to address housing needs. While housing services can be a complicated landscape, we aim to streamline the referral process and connect to coordinated referral systems that already exist. Late last year, NCCARE360 began piloting a Housing Referral Determination Screener built directly into the Unite Us Platform. This screener can assist network organizations in understanding what resources a person may be eligible for to address their housing crisis, with the goal of providing clarity about eligibility for housing programs and increase the quality of referrals to housing agencies and homeless service systems.
In addition to streamlining housing referral services, NCCARE360 has the potential to improve the overall quality of care for individuals and families by facilitating collaboration among service providers and ensuring that all needs are being met. This comprehensive approach to care is especially important for those experiencing homelessness or housing instability, as they often face complex and interconnected challenges.
Rachel Waltz, Program Manager at Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness, uses NCCARE360 to help clients experiencing homelessness. Rachel has always had an orientation toward what felt just and fair as well as an interest in being an agent of change in her community. She decided to explore social work as an avenue of change for individuals, families, and communities when she learned the young people in her therapeutic wilderness program were returning home without the proper social supports needed to continue their growth and development. She now works to end homelessness because she knows that the housing crisis can affect any of us.
NCCARE360 fosters collaborations between service providers and people experiencing homelessness, which Rachel sees as the foundation of our success as a community. NCCARE360 is also allowing for a more equitable lens through which to help. She notes that the people who experience a housing crisis that is unable to resolve on its own are disproportionately Black and African American folks, and this inequity is happening because of policy decisions that have a harmful and persistent legacy.
“The NCCARE360 network enables us to pair folks with the right resources at the right time.” –Rachel Waltz
Rachel says NCCARE360 has been a game changer in terms of looking at how referrals can be sent through the service provider networks in addition to the Orange County Housing Helpline. To successfully find and keep housing once in the formal homeless service system, most folks need a navigator who can help connect them with the right resource at each stage in the process. The Partnership depends on service providers to help make informed referrals to ensure that someone with complex needs receives a higher level of assistance. The NCCARE360 network has enabled the Partnership to continue to focus on some of most vulnerable community members while offering a lighter touch to community members who can successfully meet their housing needs with less intensive intervention.
As we celebrate National Fair Housing Month, it is important to remember that equal access to housing is a fundamental human right. NCCARE360 is a tool that can help us move closer to that goal by streamlining the housing referral process and improving access to the resources individuals and families need to achieve stable housing and a brighter future.
This Black History Month, we are honoring our Black community leaders and spotlighting Natreace Buie, NCCARE360 Referral Manager for The Arc of North Carolina. Natreace is passionate about helping people in her community and she talked to us about how she is able to better support them through her use of the NCCARE360 network.
Natreace graduated from Queens College of CUNY in New York with a major in sociology and a goal of helping others, especially those who needed an extra helping hand. She finds personal and professional fulfillment in providing guidance to people and advocating on their behalf when they are unable to do it themselves. Having two family members with intellectual disabilities helped put her on her career path when she witnessed just how difficult it was to connect them to healthcare providers or community support and resources because of the isolated and fragmented care systems. She found her calling when she realized she could use her experience and skills to help reduce that burden not only for her family but for other North Carolina families experiencing the same struggles.
“It is definitely my calling because it fills me when I’m able to help someone.”
Natreace is the NCCARE360 Referral Manager for The Arc of North Carolina where she supervises the referral journeys for their clients. The Arc of NC provides direct support and services to individuals with intellectual disabilities to enable them to live fully and independently in the community. When The Arc of NC needed someone to implement the NCCARE360 network using the Unite Us Platform, she once again felt that calling. Natreace brought her years of experience working in a variety of roles ranging from providing direct support to individuals in group homes, to working as a coordinator in the health care sector, connecting them all to care and resources that would make their lives a little easier. All these roles have allowed her to provide guidance to those who need it most.
“When I learned [about the NCCARE360 network] I was like, ‘hold on […] to be able to identify the need and to connect our individuals to organizations and to close the loop is phenomenal. With one click!’ It’s phenomenal what the NCCARE360 network offers.”
Natreace also appreciates how the NCCARE360 network addresses health equity by allowing her to identify unmet needs in the community and then reach out to help close those gaps. The network allows her to pull data and graphs to visualize what is missing, where those missing supports are needed most, and when one demographic may need more help than others.
Natreace is excited to see how the NCCARE360 network continues to grow in the future. As she put it, “teamwork makes the dream work and we do it one referral at a time.” Thank you, Natreace, for all of the work you do to help others, and for being a valuable member of our community!
