vitality signs

vitality signs Overview

Purpose

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  • Catalyze vision of health care centered on needs of the people who seek it

  • Employ whole person approach that fosters an ability to know how people are doing and if they are getting care that aligns with their needs

  • Create a measure and process the focuses on patient voice and patient reported data

Approach

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  • Environmental mapping - to identify and build upon the state of the art

  • Crowdsourcing - to fill gaps in published works

  • Collaborative conference - among leaders, patients, and decision-makers to ensure findings are pragmatic and actionable

  • Question set development - synthesizing findings to design a solution that may be rigorously tested for validity and feasibility

  • Dissemination - sharing of tools that create a space for whole person care delivery

Why It Matters

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  • Current health care delivery is fragmented and impersonal

  • The measure and conversation map generated by this project can create an enable a space for whole person care delivery and determine if whole person care needs are being met

2022 Funding Opportunity

What have we learned

Publications

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Conference - Starfield Summit IX

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Changing Care: A Whole Person Approach was a working conference held September 10-12, 2025, in Washington, DC that brought together a small, powerful collective of experts and multi-sector participants with the goals to:

  • Inform development of a question set according to what patients say they want and need

  • Explore dimensions of implementation that will shape how, when and where the question set is used

  • Understand multi-sector perspectives on information use and find commonalities that point to a common path

  • Identify concrete opportunities and strategies to move the work forward

Resources

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  • … coming in 2026

Learn More

Funding

This work was supported by the US Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (2K2CMS331882). Dr. Etz and Ms. Reves, included in those funded by this work, are co-founders of Smart Measures, LLC, a company that was contracted for service on this project. They have ownership interests in the company and serve as members/advisors.