CommonSpirit Health Seeks to Harness the Power of Kindness

A new institute at the health system will focus on kindness research, fostering healthier communities, workforce development, and health justice.

CommonSpirit Health has launched the Lloyd H. Dean Institute for Humankindness & Health Justice.

Research has shown that kindness in clinical care can decrease patients' stress and emotional turmoil. The new institute is designed to use the power of kindness to treat the social causes of poor health and advance health justice.

The institute is named after Lloyd Dean, former CEO of CommonSpirit.

Evidence shows that kindness, compassion, empathy, and trust in clinical care impact healthcare outcomes, says Alisahah Jackson, MD, president of the institute.

"We have decades of research about kindness, compassion, empathy, and trust. There are multiple organizations that have been doing this research. CommonSpirit partnered with Stanford several years ago to look at how kindness, compassion, and altruism in a healthcare setting can influence health outcomes. There were a couple of things that were discovered. We found that patients who received compassionate care from their providers were better adherent to their medication regimens. We found that patients who went into surgery and received compassionate and kind care afterwards healed faster," she says.

Kindness is particularly powerful, Jackson says. "We know that kindness can lower anxiety levels. Research has shown that kindness can lower blood pressure. So, there is research that tells use there are tangible outcomes for individuals when they receive kindness and when they give kindness. There is research that shows people have better mental health outcomes when they are participating in random acts of kindness or volunteering for the common good."

The institute has four focal points, she says:

• "One is humankindness in action. That will be looking at how we accelerate the research that has already been done in clinical settings. We also want to bring new research forward."
   
• "The second area will continue our organization's focus on healthier communities. We all now recognize the terms social determinants of health or social drivers of health as well as the impact they have on all of us in terms of health outcomes. At CommonSpirit, social determinants of health have long been a component of our mission to build healthier communities."
   
• "The third area is focused on workforce development and pipeline programs. If we are going to be honest about addressing justice in this country, we must make sure we are addressing economic mobility and financial stability. This is important for CommonSpirit because we tend to be anchor institutions in the communities that we serve. One of our goals is to think about pipeline programs earlier. Many times, pipeline programs start in high schools. But we know that girls in particular start losing interest in science, technology, engineering, and math in middle school. We need to see whether there are things we could be doing to keep their interest in STEM fields sooner—even in elementary school."
   
• "The fourth key area is the notion of health justice. This will require a lot of strategy around policies. I like to think of it as 'Big P' policies and 'little p' policies. Big P policies include federal, state, and local government policies. The little p policies are organizational policies—sometimes we have policies in place at healthcare organizations that unintentionally drive disparities. We need to be constantly reviewing policies with a social justice and health equity lens."

Institute as accelerator

The institute is going to build on work that is ongoing at CommonSpirit, Jackson says. "The institute is going to serve as an amplifier and accelerator of great work that is already happening. We are already connecting community resources to clinical care. One of the things that our community health division runs is a program called the Connected Community Network, which is a program that allows for patients to be connected to community resources because they are screened for social needs in our clinical care settings."

The Connected Community Network program is a powerful tool for clinicians, she says.

"As a family medicine provider that means I can screen my patients for social determinants of health. If they screen positive, where there is a Connected Community Network, I can make a referral for my patients to community organizations to have needs addressed. Ultimately, our goal is once those needs are addressed and I can have a conversation with the patient to make sure they are getting the things that they need, by getting those social needs addressed that starts to help them in their healthcare outcomes. Those are the types of programs that the institute will be looking to accelerate across our entire organization."