In 2015, IBM selected the Rochester region for its Smarter Cities Challenge, bringing issues of complexity and confusion in the social care system to the forefront. The often-quoted “program rich but results poor” condition of Rochester was confirmed by the report, which focused on concentrated poverty and the misalignment of agency services. In response to the report, a team of community reformers began collaborating with IBM in developing innovative technology to help make Rochester a better place to live and thrive.
The Monroe County Systems Integration Project (SIP) began with local leaders, visionaries, and community advocates who wanted to change what wasn’t working for the city and the county, taking into full account the racism and inequalities that have historically contributed to poverty here. SIP was always about bringing together community and representatives across all sectors of care to maximize communication, collaboration, and human-centered design to solve these persistent problems.
SIP’s 5-year contract concluded this March with all requirements met! TogetherNow was born from SIP’s original efforts, and we’re excited to look back on the project’s innovation, design, and progress in making essential social care more accessible for thousands of individuals and families in our community.
“We’re not just developing a community information exchange; we’re not just connecting health and human services. This is as much about ending the cycle of poverty as it is about creating value for healthcare systems, and it is about creating connections between the school district, the health system, and community-based providers.”
Laura Gustin – Executive Director, TogetherNow
Community Engagement + Involvement
While building a community information exchange, it was imperative that the system be safe and a source of trust for those who use it. Over 100 partners went through an extensive vetting process during the development process by the SIP team.
The project has always been guided by transparency and collaboration. Through user testing and voluntary participation in MyWayfinder‘s development, providers and community members could see the burgeoning platform firsthand and contribute to decision-making along the way. Creating systems emphasizing consistency and effectiveness required a person-centered approach focused on all sides of the system. We were building a system for real people to use, so we invited those same people to tell us what they needed to succeed.
More Streamlined + Effective Care
The SIP team used “systems mapping” to find the root cause of social problems. While considering already-existing infrastructure and care systems, we went back to the drawing board to figure out how these systems could better benefit the community.
Why, in a community so full of resources and service organizations, are there so many struggling to meet their needs? What are the barriers keeping individuals and families from genuinely improving their well-being? How do we break the cycles of poverty that undermine the efficacy of assistance?
Multi-Sector Collaboration
SIP’s purpose is right in the name: systems integration. From the start, SIP has been about the fact that quality of life depends on many areas, sometimes called the social determinants of health. Individuals seeking help with one aspect of their lives often have interconnected needs, so we were determined to create a system to interconnect services.
During COVID we pivoted to prove the value of cross-sector collaboration, with vaccine distribution workflow design and the Eviction Prevention Pilot Initiative. This initiative was a collaboration with community-based organizations (CBOs) and 211/LIFE LINE to respond to the sudden and significant rise in housing insecurity due to the pandemic.
SIP never paused the progress towards bringing that power of collaboration to all the sectors: dependent care, education, employment, financial management, food, health, housing, income, safety, social connections, and transportation. And beyond collaboration across sectors, we wanted individuals to more easily navigate their own care.
Empowerment
Overall, one of the main driving forces of the Monroe County Systems Integration Project was figuring out how to provide care through a trauma-informed lens. Acknowledging that care systems have caused harm and ensuring that the integrated system being built would not do harm was centered in all of SIP’s efforts. The past five years have been dedicated to intentional and careful designs at every step of building a social care network to empower individuals and families to access all the resources they need without feeling lost and exhausted in a complex system.
“SIP is well on its way toward achieving the goal of engaging 10,000 community members participating in the system redesign by the end of the project in March 2024.”
United Way of Greater Rochester
While there’s still much to be done to uplift everyone in the Rochester region, better coordination has already helped hundreds of people find the care they need. The Monroe County Systems Integration Project will continue to live on through MyWayfinder and the TogetherNow Network of connected providers. Our community’s success can only be measured by the well-being of each person that lives within it, and through innovation and united effort we can forge a path towards true justice and equity for all.