The New Jersey Hospital Association's Quality Institute has been awarded a $507,000 grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) to help reduce disparities in cardiac care for African American and Latino patients.

In 2005, the RWJF partnered with George Washington University to establish a national program, "Expecting Success: Excellence in Cardiac Care." The program is now under way in 10 sites nationwide, with organizations working to address disparities in care for African American and Latino patients with heart failure. This new grant will allow NJHA's Quality Institute to bring the effort to New Jersey's hospitals.

"This initiative will support hospital projects that reduce health disparities and improve the quality of healthcare provided to minority populations in selected New Jersey communities," said Aline Holmes, senior vice president of clinical affairs for NJHA.


NJHA's Expecting Success initiative will partner with the RWJF to share best practices. The program has four goals:

To improve heart failure care for African Americans and Latinos in New Jersey;

To develop effective and replicable quality improvement strategies, models and resources;

To encourage the spread of such strategies and models to additional clinical areas;

To disseminate relevant lessons to policy and provider audiences.

"The Quality Institute will provide training in quality improvement techniques and will help the participating hospitals plan and establish strategic initiatives. We will collect data and report back to each hospital, and to all the hospitals in the learning network, so that barriers can be identified, lessons learned and successes shared," stated Holmes.

Based in Princeton, NJHA has been providing its 115 members with advocacy, information, research and education since 1918.

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