Originally published April 3, 2010

AURORA | Access to insurance and medical care is among the chief concerns for a group of medical professionals and local community leaders that joined together in the wake of the current health care debate.

Aurora Health Access officially launched in January with a commitment to promote all facets of health in Aurora, while making it a point to increase access to care for residents and improve the line of communication between health care providers.

"The goal is to recreate a health care system that meets the needs of most people in Aurora," said Gretchen Hammer, executive director of the Colorado Coalition for the Medically Underserved, which will provide project management for the organization. "We'd like the entire project to be about how we can exceed (the city's) health care potential, while doing things to promote health."

The organization is led by a task force of residents, health care leaders, providers and community agencies, including the Metro Organizations for People, the Metro Community Provider Network and Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital.

The task force is comprised of 35 people who represent about 25 organizations.

"There are lots of different people that are going to contribute to the solutions," Hammer said, "so the goal is (for Aurora Health Access) to be an umbrella for all of those solutions for anyone who is interested in contributing."

Over the past five months, the organization has worked to identify problems with access to health care in Aurora by holding meetings and asking for feedback from residents and local professionals in all aspects of the health care industry.

A public meeting in November 2009, where more than 150 people attended to discuss problems in access to the city's health care services, spurred the creation of the task force.

The task force determined that one of the biggest problems in health care access is the multitude of residents who are uninsured or underinsured.

There are more than 72,000 uninsured residents in Adams County, representing about 17 percent of the population, and about 40,500 uninsured in Arapahoe County, representing almost 8 percent of the population, Hammer said.

Although the federal health care bill that was recently signed into law by President Barack Obama will mandate that all residents carry health insurance, Hammer said the problems with health care in Aurora go beyond the number of uninsured.

Additional problems that the task force identified were unequal distribution of health care resources, a lack of communication between doctors about patients' health, cultural barriers to healthy living, a need for a stronger public commitment to health and inadequate staff to meet the needs of all of the city's sick residents.

Foreign languages and costly health insurance are also barriers to health care access, Hammer said.

 "One of our main goals is how we can create a culture of health that permeates Aurora, while building on all the great things that the recreation centers, the city, and (health care organizations) are already doing," she said. "Secondly, we want to create better access to care in Aurora both through insurance and availability of care."

Changes in health care could be as simple as ensuring that safe and walkable streets are available for children so they can walk to school instead of taking the bus, Hammer said.

The task force have discussed ways for churches and schools to be access points for residents to obtain primary health care and chronic disease management services, in addition to private doctors' offices and community health centers, she said.

Many of the ideas that the task force have come up with are in the early stages of planning right now, said Dave Myers, president of the Metro Community Provider Network.

"We're at the very beginning of the process so the group has identified many areas it would like to work on and some which require funding and are long-term and some which are shorter-term," he said. The short-term opportunities include promoting the importance of issues in health care access and coming up with an easier and more efficient way for medical information to be transmitted from patients to doctors, doctors to specialists, and so forth, he said.

The organization meets biweekly and will soon divide up into groups to figure out how to tackle each of the goals they hope to implement, said Rich McLean, parishioner at St. Therese Catholic Church in Aurora and a member of Aurora Health Access.

McLean said the coalition of community members that has already band together with a mission to help residents obtain quality access to health care is

remarkable.

"It's going to put the power of community into the health care debate," said McLean, who is also a leader of the St. Therese Family group, a Metro Organizations for People committee that is tasked with solving community problems.

Often, residents feel as though health care reform is spearheaded only by the state and federal government rather than at the community level, McLean said, but the organization is changing that notion.

"This is a chance to demonstrate that communities can take control and design themselves meaningful systems for quality health care," he said. "You don't have to just put everything in the hands of state or federal bureaucrats. Ultimately, the power is at the community level."

Aurora City Councilwoman Molly Markert said Aurora Health Access is a testament of what community members can accomplish when they unite for a good cause.

"All reform, all change, and all good things are done best at the local level with the people who know the needs and resources," said Markert, who also the director of community outreach at Exempla Saint Joseph Hospital. "We are thrilled to be part of a community driven effort to identify access barriers, access concerns and access issues and even more thrilled about being part of the solution."