welcome to new beginnings with karen delk where we celebrate the creativity courage and wisdom of people creating change i am so pleased to welcome my panelists who are here from a variety of organizations we have bob atkinson who's the executive director of the new jersey health initiatives we have jennifer barrett serif the who is the community programs director for the new jersey house bill association and we have janice salinger who is the documentarian of many of the programs that the these two associations produce so welcome thank you and i want to ask you a little bit about the new jersey health initiative foundation in the united states focused on health and health care and its home is right here in our garnsey and so we have a special commitment to new jersey and for the past thirty years it has been doing really important work in new jersey through new jersey health initiatives and so the new jersey health initiative work with hundreds of organizations across the state to improve health and health care and it's been a really exciting it's a privilege to be serving the foundation the great save new jersey that way and so it is a great program that's wonderful wonderful and what about the hospital association what how did you collaborate with the new jersey health initiative well i actually work with the nonprofit daily at the hospital program yeah we're going to be learning a little bit more in detail this is where janice comes in because she actually created a documentary that we're going to show a little bit later so what led to that collaboration i know you talked about  ca what led to that collaboration well it was almost happenstance we had applied because we do a number of programs that support health care initiatives in the community and we had applied to be a federal navigator through the brand new health insurance marketplace and we did not receive that grant but we had you know all the planning in place we were ready to go to scale and on the same day we got the news that we were turned down my boss received a call from dr atkins saying we have this idea and we need someone a partner to get it done so it was just the perfect timing that's great that really was this really for sure because we talked to a lot of different stakeholders across his feet about the form of character what we happens that the lead homes jennifer's boss is a former navy veteran and she's a nurse and she's done great work in the state and she's a person i've turned to a lot i called i said and then you know we have a problem when you have any ideas and she's i was just so happens says i'm perfect and wonderful wonderful i think this is such an innovative idea because what you're doing is you're taking unemployed veterans as you said you're giving them opportunities give back in the communities they can utilize their skills and they can help other people and then you're collaborating they're out in the community doing good work and then the people at the end are getting health care and i mean what could be better i mean i mean and they take in this group that are used to working in teams used to having the shifting kind of challenges in terms of how to address those challenges using limited resources being to figure things very quickly and so it's a perfectly good to work with them you just really kind of fortunate that it all came together like yeah that's it we're really proud of the work that they the twenty five veterans that work with us did and it was a little over a year that we worked with them on this project and then they really brought more to the table than we could have ever imagined and in terms of like i said every source of all this their connection to the community and just their their passion dedication to serving others and here they were themselves unemployed and facing struggles of other parts of the country or unique in that approach and the reason i asked that is i'm aware that in other communities they hired laymen who you know went out and you know their role was to get people in a room and to explain the affordable care act and try to get signed up so i'm not aware of your approach i'm aware of the rip approach i'm describing so are you aware that other people collaborated in the way that you did utilize the resources that you did to bring about that positive result were brothers a new jersey's always we like to get out ahead and so we were very innovative and  know we just kind of thought this opportunity to address a couple different problems right the foundation has a very deep commitment to of on populations and i think our unemployed military veterans are definitely a vulnerable population who has a lot pointed out and so this idea of kind of marrying what we need in terms of getting individuals this health insurance which is so important being a take that together was something that we were just really proud that we will do to do here in new jersey and there we unaware of any other program and a lot of we want of different organizations across the country of reached out to us and and said oh this is great you know and that's about it and i think it's great and we should find more ways for us to take our military veterans who  general point out have this really deep you know sense of giving back in service and finding ways to you know integrate them into building help their communities and that's exactly what they did through this project and it's really a great time to show your work jan and then i'd like to cue up the grammys the video so we can see it it really talks about you know a couple of different people but one particular veteran  who you know his skill set what he's able to do is multi lingual and he was able to you know integrate in the community and tell people about the affordable care act in the benefits of it so and we show that was difficult to find a job at first it's almost seemed like i was just coming out of high school and the world wasn't ready for veterans at the time here just the stereotypes grew up in elizabeth new jersey he did tours in iraq and afghanistan with both the marines and the army he finally got a civilian job thanks to a unique project developed by the new jersey health initiatives a statewide grant making program of the robert wood johnson foundation for decades developed an innovative project to hire and train twenty five unemployed veterans to serve as certified application counselors and to conduct community based outreach and bilingual romit assistance new jersey open issues then provided a one point eight million dollars grant to new jersey hospital association to implement and evaluate the project alien holmes felt a special connection to the unemployed veterans i wanted to really work with veterans because i'm a military veteran myself they are in leadership they bring independence they bring duty and they bring responsibility the new jersey family care program yesterday federally funded robert epstein was a vietnam war vet who retired from his leather goods manufacturing business he year and to find another job but couldn't get hired until n j h a came along he too was interested in helping people now gate the health insurance maze it was a perfect fit i have accounting experience and insurance experience and i applied for the drop and was high and it's very important that families feel comfortable i sorted out for them an interview that when i was training last year at the new jersey hospital then i met with robert at my restaurant he came there and he told me he was doing entrance and then i asked him can you help me just show nels family is from turkey english is not their primary language naturally they have trouble understanding the paperwork involved in getting health insurance robert epstein explained it to them he got me insurance in like two months which is a really short time and then he got my dad and my mom my brother actually my cousins he got everybody in trans new jersey is one of the most diverse states in the nation some of the veterans who worked as certified application counselors spoke a number of languages appeared as a spear ians for example was born in haiti and spoke french and creole he used that background to reach many people who are uninsured going to community events and appearing on radio shows larry to jeezy is a hairdresser who lost his job and his insurance he spiritus or pierre as he calls him was a big help i was out with a friend and he introduced me to p r who helped facilitate me getting the medical and they wound up being a really big help to me because i shortly after that i slipped and fell on some black ice and i cracked two ribs and if i didn't have that medical i would have been drowned and that i felt a little more at ease when i found out he was a marine very well spoken total gentleman and really see whether person is healthy ok or person has stage four cancer and lost their insurance it's people say you literally own life the certified application counselor program was designed to last just eighteen months yet it continued in unexpected ways actually helping robert in pure just land other jobs when it ended one man was so impressed and so grateful that he got  job at a construction company within six months just started his own construction business from there i kind of went into understand how that world of business works and and it just that took off from there robert is continuing to help the uninsured get coverage as the chief navigator for the family resource network it's very exciting to see somebody who hasn't had health insurance for five ten years get health insurance for the first time and we've here in  because they can now afford health care and not be afraid to go to a doctor i mean that's really an amazing thing to be able to say i would use one word and that's a sense of pride i feel a deep sense of pride in the twenty five individuals that  work for us for a time for their ability i hope go on and get employment post and and for the six thousand plus individuals that they insured who have insurance who have insurance the rest of their lives likely because of these twenty five individuals so janice we were able to see that video and pierre did a great job you heard the testimony of how did you get involved with the new jersey health care initiatives in producing this work short well you know i have a one background of doing documentary production i used to run in j and public television i also did documentaries for them for many years and i had been doing some you know work where i was talking to people from who are who are johnson foundation said you know i've read about all these wonderful projects that you made possible but wouldn't be great to be able to document it in video and i you know did a proposal through eagle vision productions which is a five a one c three that i'm and volved with and using sara lee kessler whose voice you heard she voices that over and she was our health medical correspondent sanjay and so she certainly understands health issues and you know we did a proposal to try to document some of the really wonderful work that's being done and so this was actually the first video that we did it was a little bit of a challenge because the project was over by the time we tried to do the video so we were through jennifer's help we were able to identify some of the veterans that had worked in the program who you saw you know went on to get other jobs thanks to that and when i actually working you know in a similar kind of field and we were able to also talk to people that they helped and so we don't allow us to tell the story with some archival footage and also following the people today so we were really pleased and honored to be able to document such you know worthing work it's wonderful to be able to help veterans and also to be able to help the uninsured so we think it was a win win and we were really pleased to be able to tell that story absolutely absolutely it is a win win and that really in my mind creates a question because we have heard a lot of negative around the affordable care act and i don't want to necessarily bring up the you know the debates but how come more of the positive side isn't being shown i mean the quality of the video and the innovation that you two were able to collaborate that should elevate not just in the garden state but on a national level to say here's why this is a great opportunity it does so many things what why do you think there's this resistance to not do what you're doing but the end result is that there is a push to not have people have you know affordable health care but i think this message has to be told at all levels and certainly some of this work and hopefully this video footage can really tell some of that story and get the many bad things and they had such patience and delivered such an important message on and they wouldn't finish engaging with someone until that person had everything they needed and they've built a report and trust and i think at that level they're able to spread the message to folks you know at the gravel when so how did how did that that initiative work i mean pierre you could see him kind of going door to door member hospitals as a hostile facetious so they got in the door in some of the hospitals also they had their own connections in the community they would set up that community organizations and they also built a great reputation among our partners throughout the state  deployed in many ways to different communities that were going to be having some sort of vent so we can get our military veterans or those teams there the certify that case encounters so they could be there and help to go through this process because it is  important thing that you have and so for them to get it established that report and get in there and that and as you pointed out karen it's so important to tell my story that's right and that's why we really want to bring in janice we said janet we need to get these stories out there because there's so much great work it's a great idea and so now how have you you know marketed or shared this work how have you shared it so that other people are aware of it were that you know people have seen it here but how does it get shown we need to have other kinds of partners like yourself to kind of help us make sure people know about this and hopefully you know they'll tell their friends or family and look at this kind of very program and hopefully it also drives a conversation right i mean that we really want to make sure driving conversations and promoting innovations because this is something is really innovative variant of something we should be talking about something that i think even for those that are most hardened against the formal care act i think it's hard for them to say this is you know very veteran doing something great in the community and it's hard hard to kind of push against that i would think so we really want to get that out there because it is something i think everyone understands you know everybody wins eps absolutely it's a win win win so now tell us results right because you know i know military they have targets you know similar to corporations they have goals to meet so what was the the goal in terms of you know conversion getting the information out in the end getting to you know the people to sign up what was the success rate well they exceeded our expectations and they were in place throughout the state and they were able to personally contact well over twenty thousand individuals and families they assisted with six more than six thousand applications for both marketplace and jake family care and interestingly enough us some of them had connections to radio stations and  other linked languages other than english and get the message out to over one hundred thousand spanish or creole speakers throughout the state so we really were pleased with the outcome right and when think about how valuable health insurance is to a family i mean in terms of annually what what it actually does in terms of like if you wouldn't have met that money for that and that the big one point one point eight million dollars grant we made two and g h a to do this i mean i'm sure that you know several times over that there is a payback in terms of return on that investment in these unemployed military veterans in these communities and so if we're really proud of that that you can look at and say wow i thought so many different kind of families one donor is kind of lives yeah so what's next on the horizon i mean what are other kind of innovative projects because i'm sure you know this collaboration doesn't just stop i mean this was an eighteen month project and you were able to document it which is great now you're you know communicating the message what other kinds of things do you see yourself doing either funding or collaborating are finding is really news and health initiatives we're really trying to figure out how do we build a culture health so this idea of how we work where people work play live and learn from how they call it upstream sometimes or focuses downstream with doing the patient provider not really think about let's think about what happens in the communities and the neighborhoods in the households in the schools in the workplace and how can we work with different kinds of players in our communities right so use we do what the public health and hot health care systems when they're always going to be very important but we need to involve our elected officials our business sector  faith based groups our schools when you think about transportation and housing and parks and playgrounds and all these things that make healthy communities and so we're working right now we funded ten cross at the coalition in two thousand and fifteen we hope to fund another ten in july of two thousand and sixteen to have twenty crosshatch a coalition all across the city right now in places like newark trenton jersey city elizabeth can then we can in salem county in late city and so these all these are thinking about what are the problems in our community and what we're hoping to do is have conversations with these cross arctic ocean to say you know what do you need do you need access to care do you need to work on these combine super overflow problems you need to work on housing or our school graduation all these things that employment held and then they tell us this is what we need be doing that's going to affect our granting so we're going to really partner with them they're going to tell it to do we should do a grant making and we're really excited about this opportunity to have better conversations that you're spent you have a lot of partners right now but you should always you think about how do you bring in more voices and so we are on our website you can find in all these different communities contact the project director and tell them you want to come and come to their meetings and parties conversation and we're really excited about that opportunity getting more getting more people involved in thinking about what does it take to build their community because it we're almost together absolutely absolutely and thinking of this new easy care i think of him from pronounc virus and and you know that's scary stuff very scary and you know it's not the first thing we've had and certainly won't be the last but to your point you know health is something that you cannot purchase right and so you know the investment in making sure that we have healthy communities is paramount because you know if you're ill it's difficult right you know people are depending on you and if you are you know if you're not an income earner then it's it's a depletion just to care for the person so it's it's a huge huge initiative that you're putting together and you know it's good work it's god's work it's both it's both you know we're really thrilled to be able to be documenting some of those coalitions as well so we may be back to doing other projects i would love that i don't love but i would love it because i i think that you know there's so much negativity around the affordable care act you know and i'm careful not to call it the obamacare but that it creates confusion and people just pull back from it because they're like you know i don't understand it and there seems to be negativity and i do need health care but i don't want that right and i think taking this documentary and really putting it on a national stage and i'm not just saying that to boost you up and i'm saying it because number one i think it was truly innovative and number two i think it needs to be out there  now because there's nothing to counterbalance that negative association with ca and so i think if you have that opportunity it's great but the garden state all dense as it may be is small not i don't know of anything right that the does what you have been able to do there are three of you have been able to do right and they've been able to continue with they now are employing some of those veterans to do the same kind of work younger really plays we learn so much from this program in terms of on just the lessons learned from the veterans themselves and the type of programming they need in the community they identified but also just opened our eyes to the many needs of veterans themselves and so we have several project starting out that specifically address the needs of veterans and their wonderful wonderful and we are just out of time and i it's been a pleasure to talk to you all i thank you and jennifer and janice cell injure for joining us on new beginnings with karen dell please visit the website of the new jersey health initiatives and the community programs for the new jersey hospital association and again janice thank you for bringing this wonderful project to our attention thank you