Dr. Cathy Davis, a 2006 Ph.D. in Health Services alumna and director of the UAW-Ford Community Health Care Initiative in Kansas City, Mo., was recently awarded a $600,000 grant on behalf of the Kansas City Quality Improvement Consortium from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to improve health care for people with chronic illnesses.

The grant is part of the foundation’s Aligning Forces for Quality: The Regional Market Project, a national program designed to help communities across the United States improve the quality of health care for patients with chronic conditions such as diabetes, asthma and heart disease.

The Kansas City Quality Improvement Consortium was founded by local stakeholders and the UAW-Ford Community Health Care Initiative, which Davis directs, to address health care quality in the Greater Kansas City area. The UAW-Ford Initiative is one of more than two dozen consortium members, among them health care providers, insurers and medical schools.

Davis emphasizes that the initiative is not a program exclusively for autoworkers or union members. “It focuses on the health care needs of the Kansas City area as a whole. It serves the whole community,” Davis says.

The RWJF’s regional market project helps providers measure and publicly report their performance; it also assists patients by helping them understand their role in recognizing and demanding high-quality health care.

Lifelong Learning
Davis began working for the auto industry in the late 1970s as an occupational health nurse in auto production plants. “My colleagues and I did hearing tests, physicals, emergency calls. Everything from cuts to chest pains,” she says. “We cared for more than 100 workers a shift.”

In the beginning of her career, Davis was a diploma nurse, but with the encouragement of her colleagues, she earned her bachelor’s degree, then a master’s, continuing her education throughout her life. She worked as a practicing nurse until 1998, when she became an administrator. Davis earned her Ph.D. in Health Services from Walden in 2006.

From Workplace to Dissertation
Davis says that the RWJF grant is the first large grant she has been awarded. “I thought it would be a great fit for us, the consortium, because we share similar goals with the foundation,” she says. The consortium was already sending diabetes and asthma feedback reports to local physicians so they could see how they ranked compared to other Kansas City physicians in terms of effectively managing patients’ chronic illnesses. (Davis even used data from the first two years of physician reports and their impact on diabetes care as the basis of her dissertation.)

Community Health Promotion
Before receiving the RWJF grant, the consortium was already involved in patient engagement and education. It created “lay guidelines” for the treatment and management of particular illnesses, such as asthma. “The guidelines tell patients what they should be doing to manage their disease and what their doctors ought to be doing for them,” Davis notes.

She says the guidelines have helped patients to not only understand their illnesses, but also to receive better health care. Davis recalls an instance where a mother took a copy of the asthma treatment guidelines to her son’s doctor. “Her son was going to the ER regularly for breathing problems because his asthma was not under control. With the guidelines in hand, the mother asked why her son had not received a specialist referral—as the guidelines recommended,” Davis recalls.

As a result, the physician sent the boy to a specialist, and now his asthma is under control, Davis says, adding that the consortium finds this very satisfying. “The guidelines have empowered patients with the knowledge to demand better care.” 

The grant, which was awarded in February and covers three years, will be used for planning, convening, coordination and infrastructure development.

May Ponder front page