Learn More About Building Healthier America
What We Are
- •A confidential and trusted communication and collaboration site for families to address the challenges they face every day.
- •A personalized approach for information and services for, and with families.
- •A network of like-kind families to learn, engage, and support one another.
- •A collaborative noncompetitive partner with community agencies for the common good of their community's families.
- •A Family / Community Navigator available to initiate and assist families, providing unique technologies to support family's and their children's specific needs.
- •A service and an organization that is evolving in partnership with, and for families.
- •Available to families regardless of their child's age, location, illness, disability, insurance status, time of year, income or any other category or status.
- •Accessible on a family's schedule, 24 hours a day.
What We Are Not
- •An advocacy group.
- •A replacement for a community's natural supporting resources.
- •A source of medical information or care.
Why We Are Doing This
Children with a chronic illness and/or disability are cared for by their families with the help of medical organizations, human services, educational and local community systems. Families are thrown into these bureaucratic, complex, intimidating and highly variable systems without navigation or tools to coordinate among the resources necessary to manage a child's care and the family's hope for their child.
Services for families are often time limited, location specific, narrowly funded and requiring scarce family resources to discover, and then access, needed help. Often the family is left hanging with needs that arise from the activities of daily family life and the intermittent crisis inherent to their child's condition.
We can and must do better!
How We Are Approaching the Challenge
Building Healthier America is partnering with families in the St. Croix Valley of Wisconsin and Minnesota and organizations such as the YMCA, St. Croix Therapy, and Bridge for Community Life, to launch our pilot community -- an online hub for families to connect with others who are walking a similiar path.
The BHA community is hosted on Handzin, a trusted and secure online platform. The dedicated Family / Community Navigator is located and employed by a local community agency, St. Croix Therapy. The Navigator will partner with community agencies, use collaborative communication technology and our website assets to assist families with their needs.
Focus is on building family strengths to navigate this journey. Evaluating these initial community sites and establishing a culture of learning will generate a locally adaptive program model, attractive and flexible to other communities through our partnership with the national YMCA and other national multisite community critical hub organizations.