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‘Cooling the Hot Spots’ Report Honored by Health Affairs Editor-in-Chief

A research paper published in September 2019 by care quality improvement leaders at Cincinnati Children’s was selected as one of 10 “Editor’s Picks” by the journal Health Affairs.

The paper—Cooling The Hot Spots Where Child Hospitalization Rates Are High: A Neighborhood Approach To Population Health—describes how the medical center achieved a 20% reduction in days spent in the hospital by children from two neighborhoods (Price Hill and Avondale).

The project involved mapping areas of the city with high hospital admission rates, engaging teams to address chronic disease management and working with several community partners on housing issues and other social needs. The project stands out in part because it did not focus on a single health condition, but aimed its interventions at neighborhood-wide health concerns.

“My top ten goes beyond our “most-read” and “most-shared” articles, which tend to focus on costs and spending. I like articles that ask particularly interesting questions, explore underreported issues, or analyze unique data sets,” wrote Alan Weil, Health Affairs’ Editor-In-Chief, in a blog post about his choices.

The Cincinnati Children’s paper “demonstrates that a public health approach can reduce the need for clinical services,” Weil wrote.

Co-authors of the paper are: Andrew Beck, MD, MPH, Kristy Anderson, LISW-S, Kate Rich, BS, Stuart Taylor, MA, Srikant Iyer, MD, Uma Kotagal, MBBS, MSc, and Robert Kahn, MD, MPH.

Read more about Health Affairs In 2019: Editor’s Picks