$8 million donation to U. of C. Medicine aims to improve health care in Black communities

An $8 million donation from a North Chicago drugmaker is intended to reduce health care disparities in Black communities on the South Side.

AbbVie’s donation, announced Wednesday, will boost efforts by University of Chicago Medicine’s Urban Health Initiative to build relationships with community leaders and organizations, with the goal of improving the quality of care for South Side residents.

Most of the money will go toward hiring 14 community health workers who will stay connected with patients once they leave the hospital or primary care office. Those workers will be part of the new Liaison in Care program, who help keep patients educated about their care.

“Community health workers will be deployed to help patients in the community, and at various health centers on the South Side, navigate to the resources they need to improve their health,” said Brenda Battle, vice president of the Urban Health Initiative. “They will not simply link them to services and leave them, but stay with them to get over any barriers that pop up so they can achieve wellness.”

Battle said one of the biggest hurdles is that some patients may forget or misunderstand what they must do after going home from the hospital. The community health workers can make sure people continue taking their medications and following their wellness plans.

More importantly, Battle said, these workers will have the trust of patients because they will work in the communities they live in.

“These funds allow us to provide additional support to community members that will help reduce disparities,” Battle said, noting that the work community health workers do for patients is not covered by Medicaid. “There is evidence that community health workers help with health care inequities.”

The Urban Health Initiative has relied on these workers since Michelle Obama helped launch the effort in 2005.

Battle said the Initiative was behind the Violence Recovery Program, which helps victims being treated in U. of C. Medicine’s trauma center. It also created the South Side Pediatric Asthma Center after learning communities were struggling to find asthma care for their children.

The donation also allows the Urban Health Initiative to do robust data collection and evaluations to help its team of epidemiologists assess the impact of its programs.

The $8 million donation will also let the Urban Health Initiative donate a total of $50,000 per year for the next five years to community-based organizations to help those groups serve more residents.

AbbVie’s donation to the Urban Health Initiative is part of the drugmaker’s $50 million, five-year philanthropic efforts supporting Black communities across the United States.

Karen Hale, vice president and deputy general counsel at AbbVie, leads those philanthropic efforts. She said what community health workers do resonated with her. As a Black woman, she said, she saw firsthand the uncertainty her grandmother felt when she left the hospital.

“This kind of philanthropy is extremely important, and there is so much needed in the world that in some ways it is overwhelming,” said Hale. “This type of philanthropy will hopefully motivate others to come and give bigger donations and recognize we can do more together than individually.”

Manny Ramos is a corps member in Report for America, a not-for-profit journalism program that aims to bolster Sun-Times coverage of issues affecting Chicago’s South and West sides.