Updated: Menino celebrates models in primary care

By Chelsea Conaboy , Globe Staff

Four Boston organizations were recognized yesterday with the second annual Mayoral Prize for Innovations in Primary Care during a ceremony at the Boston Public Library.

The winners, which will receive $1,000 each, include two health centers: the Joseph M. Smith Community Health Center in Allston, for a program to screen more people for breast, cervical, and colon cancer with the help of patient navigators and medical records; and Whittier Street Health Center in Roxbury, for its Vibrant Communities program, a partnership with the Boston Housing Authority in which health coordinators connect public housing residents with medical care and community services.

The financial services firm John Hancock was honored for its successful employee wellness program, according to a city press release, and the Richard and Susan Smith Family Foundation was recognized for investing almost $3.6 million in five Boston community health centers to improve diabetes care.

“I am enormously proud of these institutions for the ground-breaking work they are undertaking to improve primary care and reduce the burden on our health care system,” Mayor Thomas M. Menino said in the release. “Their innovative and creative thinking is exactly what’s required to transform the primary care system and to make it more effective, efficient, and patient-focused. Boston is richer for the contributions they are making.”

The awardees are examples of how some of the best models for improving care are developing at the ground level, said Dr. Paula Johnson, executive director of the Mary Horrigan Connors Center for Women’s Health and Gender Biology and chairwoman of the Boston Public Health Commission board and the mayor’s primary care task force.

“In our backyard, we have people doing amazing things that need to be supported and be brought up,” she said in an interview today.

As the health care industry grapples with meeting requirements for “meaningful use” in electronic medical records, for example, the Allston health center has found a way to use their records in a way that truly benefits patients, she said.

“If we think about global payments, if we think about where we’re going around health and managing care, you know, this is brilliance here,” Johnson said of the winners. “It is truly brilliance, and all we need to do is to begin to look at even what our community health centers are doing, at our Boston Public Health Commission along with (Boston Medical Center). What’s happening here that can be used as models that can be transported to the larger city and state?”