Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 45

Beyond Vassar

Johnson event, roman Iwasiwka / Brenner, Karl rabe

I

n February, the AAVC Spirit of Vassar
Award was presented to Dr. Jeffrey
Brenner '90, a medical professional
who designed an innovative approach
to meeting the medical and social service
needs of vulnerable citizens in impoverished
communities.
The award, which recognizes the values
of service and civic responsibility that are
fundamental to a Vassar education, is presented to an alumna or alumnus who has
demonstrated extraordinary and distinguished leadership, contribution, and
commitment to serving a community and
effecting positive, transformative change.
As a young physician, Brenner practiced
urban family medicine in Camden, NJ, one
of the poorest cities in the nation. As he
revealed during a recent TEDx talk, his
experiences with patients in the city led him
to conclude, "We have the best health care
system in America-until you get really,
really sick, and then you get lost in that
health care system."
In the great Vassar tradition of "going
to the source," Dr. Brenner constructed a
searchable database of information, including geographic data, about all patients

discharged from Camden hospitals. He
discovered that a very small number of
patients consumed a disproportionate
share of the overall costs of health care and
social supports. Indeed, just one percent of
Camden's patients accounted for 30 percent
of medical costs.
"Hospitals in America are essentially
filled with very damaged people who had
horrible things happen to them in childhood," Brenner said in his talk. "This fact is
utterly unknown in the medical community,
and they want to go running out of the room
when I talk about it."
Undeterred, he established the Camden
Coalition of Healthcare Partners, bringing
together doctors in community-based private
practices, frontline hospital staff, and social
workers to participate in a strategy of
comprehensive preventive and primary
care. He also designed a system that delivers
daily information about hospitalizations to
the Coalition and members of care management teams. One result was a dramatic drop
in hospital and emergency room visits-and
a concurrent dramatic drop in hospital bills-
among the very patients he had identified.
The implications for public health in

The day of his award ceremony, President Bradley
held a Presidential Tea in Jeffrey Brenner's honor.
During the event, he spoke about his work in
health care with students, employees, and fellow
alumnae/i.

America were clear.
For his leadership in the public-health
arena, Brenner was honored with the
MacArthur "Genius" Fellowship in 2013 and
has been elected to the National Academy
of Medicine. He currently serves as Senior
Vice President of Integrated Health and
Social Services at UnitedHealthcare, leading
a unit that will pilot and scale new models
of care that bring traditional health care
services and social services such as housing
and transportation to millions of Medicaid
patients nationwide.
Accepting the award, Brenner credited
Vassar's emphasis on thought and discourse
with helping him learn to assimilate lots
of information and analyze critical issues.
But he added, "It's important for the next
generation of young people-not [just] a
single generation-to work to make health
care better." There is much hope in today's
students.
-Elizabeth Randolph
VA S S A r Q U A r T E r LY

45



Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018

Contents
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - Cover1
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - Cover2
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - Contents
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 2
Vassar Quarterly - Spring 2018 - 3
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