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BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Foundation Awards 17 Grants to South Carolina Organizations

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The BlueCross BlueShield of South Carolina Foundation awarded 17 grants in the spring of 2021 to organizations working to improve the health of South Carolina’s economically vulnerable citizens.

Mental Health

Faces and Voices of Recovery (FAVOR) Greenville – To expand the Assertive Community Engagement (ACE) Recovery Coaching Program, connecting inpatients that present with symptoms or complications related to substance use disorder with peer support specialists and providing them with a continuum of supports (2 years).

SC Network of Children’s Advocacy Centers – To layer the Safe Babies Court Team (SBCT) approach within children’s advocacy centers (CACs) in Richland, Spartanburg, and Laurens counties, enhancing services provided to children under 3 that are involved in the child welfare system to prevent re-entry in to the system and promote family stabilization(3 years).

University of South Carolina School Behavioral Health Team – To develop a school mental health workforce pathway to meet the tiered mental health needs of SC public school students by increasing the number of school-serving mental health clinicians and evaluating the feasibility of utilizing mental health support staff as a supplementary workforce for schools (3 years).

Oral Health 

Florence Darlington Technical College – To support the community dental clinic at FDTC to replace outdated dental equipment and purchase supplies that will allow the clinic to provide care to patients who cannot afford services that are referred by free medical clinics, Head Start, and local schools (1 year).

Health Care Partners of SC – To establish school-based dental services within Florence School District 5. (1 year).

Medical University of South Carolina College of Dental Medicine – To establish a system of care to make sure children’s dental needs within Florence and Marion counties are met, utilizing pediatric dental residents and a community case manager to extend dental services (2 years). 

ReGenesis Health Care – To launch school-based oral health services within Spartanburg District 7 and continue exploring further expansion into Cherokee and Union counties (2 years)

Diabetes

University of South Carolina – Center for Community Health Alignment – To develop a community health worker (CHW) diabetes prevention and management model and provide ongoing coaching and technical assistance to Federally Qualified Health Centers on best practice implementation of the CHW diabetes model (3 years).

The following Federally Qualified Health Centers received grants to support the integration of two CHWs to build capacity to improve prevention and management of diabetes (3 years):

  • Affinity Health Center
  • Beaufort Jasper Hampton Comprehensive Health Services
  • CareSouth Carolina, Inc.
  • HopeHealth, Inc.
  • Tandem Health SC

Health Sciences South Carolina – To build upon the existing Surgical Quality Collaborative, adding an intensive focus to improve diabetes management for patients before, during and after general surgeries (3 years). 

Social Determinants of Health

SC Department of Veterans Affairs – SCDVA will purchase and launch a referral and case management system to address veteran’s social determinants of health, increasing coordination of veteran-serving organizations across the state (3 years).

Health Technology

Midlands Technical College – To purchase equipment and supplies to expand the Certified Nursing Assistant (CNA) program to the MTC Northeast Campus, increasing training capacity by 50% (1 year).

Presbyterian College School of Pharmacy – To replace the current medication dispensing robot, providing training to pharmacy students and filling an average of 7,000 prescriptions annually for patients of the Good Shepherd Free Medical Clinic (1 year).