What Is CREATE Health?

The Vision

CREATE Health is an imperative. As many Coloradans already understand, in twenty-first century America, create health! is the most critical imperative of all. If we are going to do anything at all-as individuals, as a community, as a state, or as a nation-we must all create health as we are doing it, or else we are very likely involved in creating something that is the opposite of health, and contributing to the chronic ills that bring us down as individuals, and as a state overburdened with a broad spectrum of community dysfunctions, as well as with demands for costly medical interventions that already exceed the supply of professionals and resources.

The Core Mission

CREATE Health has received initial support from The Colorado Health Foundation, the Colorado Area Health Education Centers, and the University of Colorado Anshutz Medical Campus to align health care workforce programs throughout Colorado into a single uninterrupted pipeline, while educating key decision-makers, developing and supporting leaders, building coalitions and raising the public consciousness of the state's health and health care workforce issues.

By developing state-wide collaborative relationships with stakeholders invested in the health of their communities, CREATE Health is an evolving nexus of expertise on community health needs, the health career pipeline, and health care workforce development.

The CREATE Health Advisory Council (see below) was formed in early 2011. The Advisory Council is composed of  leaders in health care and education, broadly representative of the State's regions, who are committed to fundamental public health principles of population health, built-environment, and behavior for healthy choices.

CREATE Health will collaborate with organizations already engaged in health professions education, recruitment and other pipeline activities, and CREATEHealth.com will showcase all of these activities and organizations, and collect participant data so that the future health care workforce of the state may be seen as it's taking shape. CREATE Health will serve as a coordinating hub of the State's movements to develop and transform the training of health professionals-facilitating the dissemination of ideas across the state and enabling individuals and organizations to seek new ideas, support, and long-term partnerships.

The CREATE Health Scholars Program is a health career college enrichment program and community transformation project that supports and encourages undergraduate students, particularly from rural or urban underserved areas, to pursue graduate education in medicine, dentistry, nursing, public health, behavioral health, health business, and all of the allied health fields. Central to the curriculum is an innovative year-long community outreach and transformation project, as well as the teaching of integrated team models that aim to replace and out-perform traditional provider arrays, and the teaching of public health and preventive medicine principles and practice, so that all CREATE Health Scholars will share and aid in disseminating the broadest possible understanding of health.

Our CREATE Health Faculty Advisors network brings Pre-Health Advisors and Faculty from four-year and community colleges all over the state to Denver for a summer workshop designed to enhance their ability to provide critical guidance to students who are preparing for entry into graduate professional programs. Over the course of Academic Year 2011-1012, we will expand the scope of the CREATE Health Faculty Advisors to include the high school counselors in their region, thereby extending the reach of the mission into the school populations.

The Larger Mission

Ultimately, CREATE Health aims to create a complete and growing inventory of all of the Coloradans who already make our health a priority-and to define a state-wide movement and that links all of these vital endeavors, end-to-end, into a seamless whole: a state that radiates vitality from every corner.

In addition to the educational programs that aim to meet the growing demand for health professionals, there are countless educational programs that incorporate healthy objectives in their training of other kinds of students and professionals. Replenishing the ranks of health care professionals alone--though it's the urgent and vital end of the pipeline--will not adequately create health for the state. Colorado needs sustainable businesses, food production practices that heal rather than harm the land and the consumer, green energy, clean chemicals, sustainable technologies, and a wide-scale cultural change in lifestyle choices and behaviors from childhood to old age.

CREATE Health will identify the educational programs that incorporate these broader global health objectives, profile them, and include these students too in its growing database and social network.

Beyond the diverse educational efforts, there are countless Colorado businesses that already make it a priority to create health-for their customers, for their employees, for the State, and for the environment. CREATEHealth.com will identify and profile them. And, by profiling them and their healthy business goals and practices, CREATEHealth.com will crystallize and replicate the synergistic global health movement that is revolutionizing the nature of business as usual in Colorado, the United States, and the world.

The CREATE Health Movement

CREATEHealth.com aims to grow constantly-by attracting more individuals, programs, and businesses to sign on to the site, and the movement, by profiling themselves, describing their own healthy aims, and networking with each other to bring the achievement of a healthy Colorado within immediate reach for the twenty-first century and beyond.

Unique partnerships to create health for Colorado now forming! Please contact us for more information.

 

Vincent D. Atchity, Ph.D.
CREATE Health Director

CREATE HEALTH ADVISORY COUNCIL

Lynn R. Borup, Executive Director, Tri-County Health Network (Telluride Foundation)

Jacqueline Brown APRN, MSN, FNP, Director and Health Officer, Prowers County Public Health & Environment

Lisa Brown, CEO, Northwest Colorado Visiting Nurse Association (NWCOVNA).

John Emhoolah, Jr. has led the Denver Indian community for many years.  Perhaps the most widely known spiritual elder in the Denver area, Mr. Emhoolah carries his message of traditional spiritual ways and prayers to countless events, organizations and gatherings.

Stephen Holloway, Director of the Primary Care Office, The Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment

Freddie L. Jaquez, M.A., Executive Director, San Luis Valley Area Health Education Center

Russell W. Johnson, CEO, San Luis Valley Regional Medical Center

Maryanne (Moe) Keller, Vice President of Public Affairs and Systems Advocacy, Mental Health America of Colorado

Felix Lopez, President, Trinidad State Junior College (TSJC)

Michele Lueck, President and CEO, The Colorado Health Institute

Mitzi M. Moran, CEO, Sunrise Community Health, Inc.

Kristine Reuss, Ph.D., R.N., Department Chair, Health Sciences, Colorado Mesa University

Bev Sloan, President and CEO, The Denver Hospice

Mark Wallace, M.D., M.P.H., Executive Director, Weld County Department of Public Health & Environment; President, The North Colorado Health Alliance