Vanderbilt University Medical Center is the largest comprehensive research, teaching and patient care health system in the Mid-South region, with more than 3 million patient visits annually in more than 200 ambulatory locations. An estimated 88,000 surgeries are performed, and 75,000 inpatients are discharged each year from the main-campus adult, children’s, psychiatric and rehabilitation hospitals and three regional community hospitals.
Amid this vastness, the Medical Center’s unifying mission of “Making Health Care Personal” could get lost, but during the recent Strategy Share 2022, more than 70 VUMC employees and community partners shared powerful stories that give unmistakable evidence that the health care provided at VUMC is intensely personal.
Strategy Share 2022 was centered on initiatives and programs that advance the three components of the Medical Center’s Strategic Directions: Making Diversity and Inclusion Intentional, Design for Patients and Families, and Discover, Learn and Share.
“These Strategic Directions provide a framework that guides all of our activities — those that are ongoing as well as the new ones we’re going to hear about today,” said Jeff Balser, MD, PhD, President and CEO of VUMC and Dean of Vanderbilt University School of Medicine. “By using this framework, as opposed to a written strategy that’s frozen and sits on a shelf, we can pivot quickly as the world around us changes and at the same time, stay true to our missions. Health care is one of the fastest changing landscapes in the global economy, and our adaptability and willingness to embrace new ideas is vital, not only to our success, but it’s really vital to our survival.”
Because of the COVID-19 pandemic, this was the first in-person Strategy Share event at the Medical Center since 2019. Held in Langford Auditorium, 300-500 individuals also joined the two-and-a-half-hour event virtually.
An emphasis on intentionally strengthening diversity and inclusion at the Medical Center ran throughout the event’s panel discussions and presentations, both as these efforts impact VUMC’s workforce and as they improve the delivery of health care and services for patients and their families. In a move to make the event itself more inclusionary, the on-stage discussions were shared in American Sign Language by interpreters, and videos shown on a giant screen were open captioned.
Strategy Share 2022 topics shared by VUMC employees and community partners covered a wide range of subjects, including:
- Successes in personalized geriatric care in the Acute Care of the Elderly (ACE) Unit.
- Programs and partnerships to better diversify VUMC’s workforce.
- Community members’ active collaboration in the All of Us Research Program.
- Efforts to expand global health efforts, including in VUMC’s own backyard.
- Scaling medical training to reach classrooms around the globe.
- Engaging young research participants with on-site collaborations at Adventure Science Center.
- Personalizing cancer care through improved access to genetic testing.
- Initiatives to address maternal health more completely to include behavioral health.
- Improving care delivery through health care bundles.
- Tailoring health care services to employee groups through Vanderbilt Total Health.
- Overcoming resistance and sustaining change in health equity efforts.
- Using peer-led videos to address vaccine hesitancy in individuals with special needs.
- Understanding the meaning of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI).
- Efforts to better serve culturally and linguistically diverse patient populations.
- Building a community partnership to address a medical assistant shortage.
- Efforts to approach the Medical Center’s work in a greener, more sustainable way.
- Collaboration with a new community partner to promote health equity.
- Reaching broader audiences through the Vanderbilt Health DNA podcast.
- Partnering with the nonprofit Uprise Nashville to grow and diversify the workforce.
“Strategy Share is most important, from my perspective, for bolstering, maintaining and nurturing the VUMC community — bringing us together,” said David Calkins, PhD, assistant vice president for Research, who led the Strategic Directions Team. “It’s a venue to not only share strategy and ideas but also to understand and appreciate all the efforts by our many work streams. With each new Strategy Share event, I learn something that just blows me out of the water.”
Videos of each segment of the Strategy Share 2022 program can be viewed online at www.vumc.org/strategy/strategyshare. Members of the VUMC community are encouraged to use these videos in meetings and work going forward.
Members of the Strategy Share 2022 Committee are: Muktar Aliyu, MD, director of the Vanderbilt Institute for Global Health; Elisa Friedman, MS, associate vice president for Community Health and Health Equity; Alvin Jeffery, PhD, assistant professor of Nursing and Biomedical Informatics at Vanderbilt University; Lindsay Miller, MSN, RN, associate nursing officer for Adult Ambulatory; Jillian Williams, MBA, associate program director for the Vanderbilt Health Affiliated Network; Tiffany Woynaroski, PhD, CCC-SLP, assistant professor of Hearing and Speech; and Del Ray Zimmerman, director of the Vanderbilt Program for LGBTQ Health.
In addition to Calkins, members of the Strategic Directions team are Jennifer Pietenpol, PhD, Chief Scientific and Strategy Officer, Reed Omary, MD, MS, chair of the Department of Radiology and Radiological Sciences, and Susan Meyn, senior director of the VUMC Office of Research.
Members of the event production team are Steven Weissenburger, MEd, senior project manager of Strategy and Innovation, Iain Montgomery, lead communications specialist, Kathy Rivers, communications manager of Internal Communications, and others from Marketing and Engagement, the CEO and Dean’s Office, the Office of the Chief Operating Officer, VUMC IT and Strategy and Innovation.
