Emily Fletcher: Policy Pitch Competition

Hi My name is Emily Fletcher and
I'm a 2nd year M.B.A. M.P.P.

dual degree student and my journey here
started when I left my hometown of

Seattle Washington to attend Dartmouth
College where I studied neuroscience and

anthropology and through these
majors I discovered a passion for

health care because health care seemed
like a way to address complex deeply

meaningful problems and have a real impact
on people's lives so after I graduated

I spent some time working in global health
programs and then health care research and

consulting and I really liked working at
the intersection of public policy and

business but I found that working at
these sort of high level health care that

the level of high level health care
stuff didn't really scratch my itch for

having an impact on people's lives and
seeing the end result of my work so

returning to school I discovered that I
wanted to have a more local focus to my

work so this summer I interned at civic
consulting Alliance in Chicago which

is a nonprofit consulting organization
that works with public sector and

nonprofit sector clients in the areas of
public safety education health care and

economic vitality and

C.C.A. is unique because they receive
funding from the business community and

philanthropic organizations with which
allows them to provide consulting services

free of charge which is pretty amazing and
so why it hope to diversify

my experience and expand outside of
health care I found myself working with

a collaborative of 6 hospitals and health
systems known as West Side United and

West Side United is a really innovative
initiative because it's 6 hospitals coming

together to collectively address
social determinants of health and

these hospitals typically view
one another as competitors so

in Chicago in the downtown area where
you may have taken a selfie in the being

Oregon to see Hamilton life
expectancy is 85 years if you

go 3 miles west to Garfield Park Life
expectancy is 69 years.

And a lot of people think this is
completely attributable to gun violence

and that's just not true it's heart
disease it's diabetes it's a wide range of

social determinants rating from ranging
from education to job opportunities

to overall economic vitality
in those community areas and

these community areas
comprise 560000 residents so

working with these hospitals I was
tasked with a den of finding ways

that they could really embrace their
anchor institution mission and

address community health on the west
side so we I used my Ford school skills

to analyze quantitative health data from
the city in the C.D.C. I interviewed

the west side in their places of work and

I aggregated these analyses into
decision making frameworks that I walked

through with my executive level clients
in steering committee meetings so

my deliverables were very thick power
points as well as some major sees

that I walked them through and
forced them to make decisions on and so

we coalesced around 4 key priority
areas Maternal and Child Health

childhood asthma behavioral health care
and hypertension and then we did further

research into best practices and evidence
based interventions in each of those

areas and indemnified 3 in each area that
could be scaled across the 6 hospitals

so why hadn't intended to work in health
care I loved this project because it

allowed me to work in the community
where the impact would happen and

these priorities will guide future
program and partnership development

moving forward so I'm excited to continue
watching the work of West Side United and

I hope you'll pay attention to because
it's a really really cool project so

I told my managers when I left C.C.A.
that I loved my time there but

because I have this passion for local work
and I'm originally from Seattle which is

also a city facing some unique challenges
in terms of growing economic inequality

affordability funding public
education my next step and

I hope my next professional adventure
will take me back to Seattle so

maybe I'll be opening up C.C.S.
Seattle office in a few years thank you.