Health Innovation Team, April 2019

In the first we look at a mission-driven non-profit, the ALS Association Mid-America Chapter, which is a social services agency serving the community of people living with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, “Lou Gehrig’s Disease”, as well as associated family members, care givers, and clinicians. The Chapter has chosen to meet the challenge of lean resources and growing service needs by continuing to innovate. Two areas, in particular, involve the use of technology to connect more meaningfully with the people being served, in one case through an on-line engagement platform that also tracks the progression of the condition and will ultimately feed clinical research, in the other, through video links between knowledge resources.

The discussion will be led by Sally Dwyer, M.Ed., Director of Mission Strategy. Sally has been with the ALS Association Mid-America Chapter since January 1995. She holds both master‘s and bachelor’s degrees in education and taught for 11 years. She oversees the Chapter’s care services, education and advocacy in Kansas, Nebraska and the western two-thirds of Missouri. Sally and her team use a service delivery model that incorporates case management and programmatic approaches. Over 400 people are living with ALS within the Chapter’s service area and that number appears to be growing.

In our second discussion, we will look at MySidewalk, a technology firm specializing in making local government data effectively inform policy making and connect with citizens. They track, analyze, and communicate progress on citywide goals in a Smart Cities context. For the Health Innovation Team audience, it is particularly important that one of their areas of specialization is public health and their commitment in this area was recently affirmed by their hiring of one of Kansas City’s own public health officials, Dr. Sarah Martin.

Dr. Martin is currently Director of Health Solutions at mySidewalk. She was previously the Deputy Director of the Kansas City, Missouri Health Department where she oversaw the Department’s initiatives to influence the social and economic policies that shape health inequities, as well as performance management, communications and marketing. Dr. Martin received a Master of Public Policy, a Master of Public Health (Epidemiology) and a PhD in Public Policy from the University of California, Berkeley. Dr. Martin is currently a Gubernatorial Appointee to the Missouri State Board of Healing Arts, a board member for the Missouri Budget Project and an adjunct professor of Health Services Research at the University of Missouri, Kansas City’s Bloch School of Management.