The Commonwealth Fund looked at a few U.S. communities that have made progress on a majority of healthcare indicators included in the Commonwealth Fund’s latest “Scorecard on Local Health System Performance”.  Interestingly, half were in regions where poverty rates exceed the national average.

It looked at how, for example:

• “Stockton, the northern California city that filed for bankruptcy after the 2008 housing crash, managed to reduce avoidable hospitalizations, emergency department visits, and readmissions.
• “Pueblo, a Colorado city where nearly half of the population lives below the poverty line, promotes shared accountability for solving problems.
• “Paducah, in rural western Kentucky, leveraged Medicaid expansion to meet the primary care needs of newly insured low-income residents.
• “Akron, Ohio, in the nation’s Rust Belt, has been tackling obesity, infant mortality, and opioid addiction.”

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