As Stewards of Change Institute moves forward on several important initiatives in 2022 (more on those below), we’d like to report that professionals in over a dozen organizations across the U.S. have now taken – or have signed up to take – the initial courses of our InterOptimability Training and Certification Curriculum. If you’re new to ITCC, it’s a first-of-its-kind educational program designed to provide organizational teams and individuals with the knowledge, skills and tools they need to work more effectively and collaboratively within and across their increasingly complex, interconnected fields.

There’s more good news, too: Starting this year, with thanks to the California chapter of the National Association of Social Workers, we are offering Continuing Education credits to anyone taking either of our current courses (except in New York and New Jersey, which have their own CE requirements). They are:

• Understanding and Implementing InterOptimability. Utilizing a “systems-thinking” approach, this foundational course provides the core knowledge and tools needed to assess and/or advance your own organization’s interoperability efforts.
• Managing Information Privacy and Consent. This second offering provides a roadmap to help any organization – public or private – manage privacy and consent across health and human services domains within the parameters of federal and state laws and regulations.

We’re delighted to say that the reviews of these courses have been uniformly terrific! Just a couple of examples, among the many we’ve received:

“The ITCC program is genuinely unique and will be very helpful for addressing our Department’s work to integrate service delivery across multiple divisions. After taking the first course, our team unanimously found it will further their work, while also improving our collective strategic planning.”

                               – Michael A. Becketts, Director, Fairfax (VA) County Department of Family Services

“The need that Stewards of Change is working to address, specifically regarding true coordination of care across multiple, complex systems of systems of care, is the future of human services.” 

              – Timothy Trickett-Robles, Senior Director of Administration, Fred Finch Youth Center 

To learn more about ITCC and to sign up for either or both courses – as part of a cohort from your organization or as an individual learner – go to the Stewards of Change Institute website. If you have questions or comments, write to info@stewardsofchange.org.

Please use the same email address if you’re interested in partnering on or sponsoring additional courses. The ones we’re now planning are on Confidentiality & Security; Diversity Equity & Inclusion; and Adverse Childhood Experiences. We’re also very open to ideas for other offerings that would be useful for you.

At the Top of Our Agenda: Consent

SOCI strongly believes that modernizing the processes for obtaining and managing informed consent – which are currently highly siloed and paper-based – is critically important for advancing data sharing, enhancing care coordination, driving greater operational efficiencies, ameliorating racial and economic disparities, and broadly improving health equity and outcomes. So our overarching priority for this year, and beyond, is the development, piloting and implementation of our Consent Service Utility (CSU).

The CSU is an open-source, open-API, standards-based technical solution for providing and/or revoking permission for the exchange of personal/private data across healthcare, social services (such as child welfare), education, behavioral health, justice and other domains that greatly impact health, safety and well-being. Our intent – with implementation partners in Colorado, New York, and New Jersey – is to demonstrate the potential to dramatically improve consent processes within and across those domains, so that solutions can be replicated and customized across the U.S. (and potentially in other countries, too).

Informed consent is at the core of being able to responsibly and securely share, access and use data more effectively for decision-making, treatment, payment, operations and research. These and other critical insights emerged from our recently published report: “Modernizing Consent to Advance Health and Equity: A National Scan of Key Technologies, Legal Issues and Promising Practices.”

Development of the CSU is part of SOCI’s Project Unify, which is an advanced, cross-sector initiative of our National Interoperability Collaborative (NIC). The dozens of professionals participating in NIC and Unify are exploring the use of existing and draft standards to implement secure information sharing and interoperability across healthcare, behavioral health and human services, as well as other domains that encompass the Social Determinants of Health and Well-Being.

Join Us Wednesdays at 4 p.m. ET

As hundreds of you already know (because you’ve participated), we’ve been holding interactive Zoom sessions at 4 p.m. ET almost every Wednesday for over two years. Their primary focus is on various aspects of NIC and Project Unify with special guests – such as subject matter experts, organizational leaders, senior technologists and government officials – at most of the sessions.

The discussion is always informational, insightful and very lively! Links to the recordings of each week’s session are on our  Collaboration Hub, so you can take a look at what you’ve been missing (or share what you saw with colleagues)! If you’d like an invitation to the next session or want to be considered as a presenter, write to info@stewardsofchangeinstitute.org.