Grant from Kaiser will drive mental health, Data xChange

Kaiser Permanente’s “transformational” grant will complete The L.A. Trust Data xChange and fund The L.A. Trust Student Mental Health Initiative.

A three-year, $750,000 grant from Kaiser Permanente will fund two key initiatives at The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health: The L.A. Trust Student Mental Health Initiative and The L.A. Trust Data xChange.

“The size and the scope of this grant is transformational,” said Anna Baum, director of development and communications for The L.A. Trust. “It will allow us to expand our mental health outreach and advocacy, which is so needed, especially now,” Baum said.

“It will also allow us to complete work on our ground-breaking Data xChange, which gives decision-makers and providers crucial insights on the state of student health in Los Angeles.”

“Access to mental health continues to be a priority for Kaiser Permanente,” said Will Grice, senior vice president and area manager for Kaiser Permanente Los Angeles Medical Center. “The integration of mental health and primary health underscores the fact that a healthy mind is just as important as a healthy body. Through this grant, we hope that students and their families can identify a need for quality mental health services early on and get the support they deserve.”

Mental health agenda

The grant will help expand student mental health awareness through The L.A. Trust’s Student Advisory Boards (SABs), peer advocacy groups at L.A. Unified campuses with Wellness Center clinics.

SAB members reach out and educate fellow students on key behavioral health topics, including healthy relationships, sexual and reproductive health, substance use and suicide prevention.

“The mental health of students is the priority now,” Baum said. “The Kaiser grant will support our entire youth mental health effort.”

Read more about our Student Mental Health Initiative

Data-driven decision-making

The second component of the Kaiser Permanente grant is finalizing The L.A. Trust Data xChange byintegratrating confidential, de-identified mental health and school medical data into the Data xChange platform.

The Data xChange will also establish community-informed reporting protocols tailored to student, school and community partners and distribute them twice a year.

The L.A. Trust will work with UCLA Pediatrics to release an issue brief highlighting key findings from the Data xChange and the impact of L.A. Unified Wellness Centers on student academic outcomes.

“This grant is very strategic,” Baum said. “It puts our two most important initiatives on overdrive and will have a lasting impact on student healthcare in the region.”

Read more about The L.A. Trust Data xChange 

Grant from W.M. Keck Foundation accelerates Data xChange

A grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation will expand The L.A. Trust Data xChange, connecting health and academic achievement data. 

A two-year, $300,000 grant from the W.M. Keck Foundation is supporting the full build-out of The L.A. Trust Data xChange, a first-in-the-nation data analytics platform that joins confidential and anonymized student health and academic data to advance wellness and success. 

The investment will help The Los Angeles Trust for Children’s Health identify health equity deficits and emerging public health concerns; leverage data to pioneer performance and quality improvement practices; direct local-control funding; and design prevention and education programs to meet student and community needs. 

“This generous grant helps us address two critical issues,” said Maryjane Puffer, executive director of The L.A. Trust. “The first is healthcare inequities. The second is the mental well-being of our students. Both of these issues are especially urgent as we recover from the pandemic.” 

Expanding scope  

During the next two years, The L.A. Trust will incorporate primary care and mental health records from additional providers as well as students’ academic, attendance and other health services data from Los Angeles Unified. Community and expert opinion will be integrated into the technological build-out, and communication protocols will be established.  

The grant will support the work of newly hired senior data and research analyst Alex Zepeda and continue the work of Data xChange business lead Patty Anton (principal at Anton Consulting) and her database architect team. 

The new funding will help the Data xChange incorporate clinical records from four newly opened Wellness Centers, community-based mental health providers serving school campuses, and care provided directly by Los Angeles Unified. The Data xChange will also work with specialists to help standardize data elements for mental health records and provide reports to decision-makers. 

“We are grateful to the W.M. Keck Foundation for taking The L.A. Trust Data xChange to the next level,” said Anna Baum, director of development and communications. “Their decision to invest in this important platform demonstrates real vision and commitment to the health of our students and communities.” 

Data xChange points way to better healthcare solutions

Dr. Ron Tanimura said The L.A. Trust’s Data xChange would drive new healthcare strategies to better serve students and communities. 

Technologies like telehealth and initiatives like The L.A. Trust Data xChange are key to better student health outcomes, according to speakers at the online Wellness Network Learning Collaborative on May 7, 2020. Dr. Ron Tanimura, director of student health services at LAUSD, and Sang Leng Trieu, wellness program manager for The L.A. Trust, gave an update on The L.A. Trust Data xChange, which compiles and compares detailed Wellness Center patient data. They spoke to more than 100 representatives from LAUSD and the District’s Wellness Centers. 

Pia V. Escudero, executive director of LAUSD Student Health and Human Services and a member of the executive committee of The L.A. Trust, noted that the clinic network was founded almost 15 years ago “to reduce health disparities impacting the lifespans of our children in families.” She said “there’s still a lot of work to do,” and insights like the Data xChange are key to finding effective solutions. 

“The data is so wonderful,” Escudero said. “It gives us a good baseline to start having future conversations and doing some hypothesis working and strategic planning in this transformational time that we’re living in.” 

Tanimura said data was critical. “We have to look at every one of our divisions and departments and integrate and (utilize) some of the resources we have outside, mainly The L.A. Trust. I thank you for the work you are doing, especially on Data xChange.” 

He added, “The more data we get the better. When we look at the Data xChange, this is a thousand times better than just encounter data. We look forward to integrating all the data – dental, mental health, attendance and other academic data. Imagine what we will be able to do for our kids and their communities.”  

Current reports include such measures as unique patient visits, type of patient encounters, co-morbid conditions, demographics and student vs. community visits. The database also tracks services provided and benchmarks on key performance standards, including risk assessments, well-child exams, BMI screening, chlamydia tests and depression screening. 

The L.A. Trust distributed report cards with clinical metrics to each clinic in February and will add new datasets on mental and oral health later this year, expanding the database insights.