Civic Consulting Alliance:  Smart work.  Great city.  
 
 
 
 
 

FY 2015
YTD totals
 
15
PRO BONO
PARTNERS

33
PROJECTS
 
$2.4M
PRO BONO INVESTMENTS

205
PEOPLE
 


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Reinventing Chicago's healthcare future  

 

Rendering of the new City Colleges of Chicago School of Nursing and Health Sciences at Malcolm X

 

While City Colleges of Chicago prepares 13,000 students each year for careers in healthcare, its healthcare education programs are spread out across several colleges and satellite sites. This legacy approach is more expensive than it needs to be, precludes the concentration of capital investment to create truly best-in-class facilities, and makes instructional consistency a challenge.


To guarantee that all Chicagoans have access to best-in-class healthcare programs and facilities, City Colleges is investing in a new $250 million Malcolm X College. The new campus will house a School of Nursing and Health Sciences and feature a virtual hospital, all near the heart of the Illinois Medical District. Healthcare programs across the college system will be consolidated at the new School of Nursing and Health Sciences by 2016.


  

 

This transformation, part of the broader Reinvention of City Colleges of Chicago led by Chancellor Cheryl Hyman, will allow City Colleges to solidify its status as a preferred option to prepare students for the healthcare jobs of the future.


Civic Consulting Alliance is helping City Colleges implement this ambitious, complex consolidation by developing plans to:
 

  • Increase quality internships and clinical rotations
  • Obtain specialized accreditation for programs
  • Execute physical movement of resources
  • Communicate with students, faculty, and staff 

"Civic Consulting Alliance knows how to cut through complex problems and relationships to get the work done," said Cheryl Hyman, Chancellor of City Colleges of Chicago. "We are lucky to have them as partners in this work." 

 

For more information, please contact Rose Fealy.

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Making strides in community-based healthcare  

Pro bono partners:

 

 

 

 

Imagine walking into a clinic with a foot injury, only to be told you would need to walk a third of a mile - 700 steps - to see your clinician. Until recently, this was the experience for patients at the Cook County Health and Hospitals System's (CCHHS) main South Suburbs site, a sprawling, difficult-to-navigate campus.

 

CCHHS is a quintessential urban safety net hospital system and is seen as a bellwether nationally for the challenges and opportunities of the Affordable Care Act. Its Oak Forest Health Center clinic, which accommodates 13,000 patients each year, is one of few healthcare options in the South Suburbs of Chicago and serves some of the poorest residents of Cook County.  

 

This summer, Civic Consulting Alliance helped transform the facility into a one-stop shop for care, consolidating medical clinics and laboratories into a single wing and recommending process improvements to make the facility easy to navigate for patients. The goal is to help more patients receive timely care and avoid the need for emergency services. 

 


 

Now, a patient with a foot injury entering the clinic will need to take just 10 paces to reach the doorstep of his or her clinician, representing a major step in providing timely, high-quality care.

 

"The spark [Civic Consulting Alliance] gave to this effort was a huge relief to clinicians - but more importantly, patients - who had suffered by the inefficient and far-flung distribution of clinical services there," said Dr. John Jay Shannon, Chief Executive Officer at CCHHS.

 

For more information, please contact Shruti Jayaraman.

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In other news...

  • Thrive Chicago, the citywide effort to unite disparate organizations in improving the success rate at key transition points in youth development, recently presented a workshop at the Strive Together national convening in San Diego. Nearly 50 practitioners from across the country learned how Thrive Chicago successfully leveraged existing coalitions when developing new Change Networks. Thrive Chicago has also developed a model to determine the financial return on investment that is being explored nationally to help rally communities to action.
  • Brian Battle, Principal at Civic Consulting Alliance, recently moderated a panel on Thrive Chicago at the Kellogg Innovating Social Change Conference. Two hundred students, professors, and non-profit leaders attended the discussion, indicating the high level of interest that this innovative collective impact initiative has generated.

Questions? Comments? Interested in writing a guest article? Please email Wally Hilke with any newsletter feedback.