AMA Foundation Supports Telehealth Initiative in Chicago's West Side

The American Medical Association Foundation is donating $100,000 to a Chicago organization that uses telehealth to help underserved residents monitor hypertension.

The donation to West Side United is part of an ongoing collaboration with the AMA and American Heart Association to support local care providers targeting high blood pressure in Chicago’s downtown areas and to help improve health and wellness in a community with high chronic disease rates.

“The AMA and our AMA Foundation are committed to optimizing patient care in vulnerable communities across the nation,” AMA President Susan R. Bailey, MD, said in a press release. “This partnership with West Side United is an important step to achieving this goal. These neighborhoods have long been impacted by social, economic, and health inequities, and through our work with local care teams and the patients they serve, we are making strides to improve health outcomes in our own backyard.”

“High blood pressure is the leading cause of heart attack and stroke, and it may be a contributing factor for poor outcomes in people who have contracted COVID-19,” added Lisa Hinton, the AHA’s Metro Chicago executive director. “This investment from the AMA Foundation comes at a critical time for patients on Chicago’s west side, many of whom are managing chronic conditions at home during the pandemic. These resources will help members of the community improve their blood pressure control and live longer, healthier lives.”

This includes support for telehealth and remote patient monitoring programs that use connected health devices to help residents monitor their vital signs at home. Recently, the AMA and AHA partnered with three West Side providers to distribute 1,000 mHealth-enabled BP devices to residents diagnosed with hypertension.

“Through the AMAF funds, underserved patients within the west side community will gain access to BP measurement devices, with the provision of vital equipment and wrap-around support to enable effective hypertension management at home,” AMAF President Jacqueline Bello, MD, FACR, said in the press release. “The funds will also help facilitate future initiatives such as a community-wide summit that will bring together west side HCOs and other community organizations to improve BP control.”

Health systems, community health organizations and others have launched innovative connected health programs in underserved communities across the country aimed at improving access to care and boosting engagement in health and wellness programs.

In several communities, barbershops and beauty salons are supplied with mHealth devices to take BP readings and, when necessary, coordinate care with local providers.

“I’m pursuing three things,” Craig Settles, a telehealth and broadband business planner who launched one such program in Cleveland and several other cities earlier this year, told mHealthIntelligence in a January 2020 interview. “One, demonstrating how the effective use of telehealth in barbershops and hair salons can increase the number of customers screened and moved into treatment. Two, explore other telehealth solutions that can be implemented from barbershops and salons. And three, determine how I can leverage barbershops and salons as launch points for community broadband buildouts that in turn drives residential telehealth into surrounding neighborhoods.”

“It really doesn’t take very long, maybe five or 10 minutes, to take and record someone’s blood pressure,” he added. “But it’s enough to time to become a little ritual that folds in with everything happening in the shop. It adds a lot to the camaraderie.”