Evergreen Cooperative Laundry (ECL) announced a major expansion today in collaboration with Ohio’s second largest employer, taking over management of the Cleveland Clinic’s laundry facility in Cleveland’s Collinwood neighborhood. The expansion brings more than 100 new employees into the company, joining the 50 workers employed at the original laundry. (The Cleveland Clinic is a member of the Healthcare Anchor Network.)

ECL is part of the Evergreen Cooperatives, a nationally celebrated network of companies in Cleveland, Ohio, that creates jobs and builds community wealth through cooperative business ownership. These businesses are located in historically disinvested neighborhoods. For Brett Jones, Executive Vice President at the Evergreen Cooperatives, “this expansion validates the core idea at the heart of the Evergreen model—that businesses owned by workers can succeed and thrive in the market, helping close the wealth gap.”  

By shifting the contract for the operations of this facility to ECL, Cleveland Clinicis using its economic resources—in this case, where it services more than 19 million lbs of its laundry each year—to build a stronger local economy.

Ralph Turner, executive director of patient support services at Cleveland Clinic, said “We are proud of this new collaboration with Evergreen Cooperatives because of the impact it will have on the local community. We see this as an important step we can take to support the health and wellbeing of our neighbors, including the ECL employees.”

Read more about the expansion in Next City: "Turning Health Care into Community Wealth in Cleveland"

Read the press release.

A Healthcare Anchor Network member, Boston Medical Center recently announced a $6.5 million package of investments in a range of investments designed to tackle critical community problems. These investments, explicitly framed as upstream interventions in the social determinants of health, will help a variety of community partners provide access to affordable housing, address homelessness, and work for food security.

Read more in The Boston Globe: "Boston Medical Center has a new prescription for its most vulnerable patients: housing"

Read Boston Medical Center's press release.

One of Boston Medical Center's community partners on these investments is the Healthy Neighborhoods Equity Fund, an interesting example of how healthcare anchor institutions can collaborate on innovative financing for inclusive development with other community stakeholders.

Listen to Marketplace on the Healthy Neighborhoods Equity Fund: "Investors make a bet to lift Boston-area neighborhood out of poverty"

Via Health Leaders Media, a look at how Promedica CEO Randy Oostra is driving investments in community development to address the social determinants of health:

"As a health system CEO, Randy Oostra knows that "job one," as he calls it, is clinical excellence. But as the leadership and board at Toledo, Ohio-based ProMedica have educated themselves in on the impact of the social determinants of health, the health system's focus has evolved to be more deeply involved in areas some would consider far afield of the mission of treating and preventing illness. These include affordable housing, inner-city groceries, community outreach, and increasingly, real estate investment."

Read the article: "This Health System’s Nontraditional Investment Strategy Targets Population Health"

From Kaiser Permanente's Center for Total Health (which has graciously hosted our first two network convenings), a look at how the Healthcare Anchor Network is building a collaborative space to advance the anchor mission:

"These efforts are not easy—at Kaiser Permanente, we are working day-by-day to overcome the obstacles to adopting an anchor approach cross-functionally across our organization. We believe that our individual and collective journey in this important work will be greatly improved and our positive impacts amplified, if we work together. The new Healthcare Anchor Network will convene health systems in order to share best practices, address common challenges, and identify areas where collaborative efforts may be possible."

Read the full post here