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THE BRUSH CREEK BULLETIN Volume 5, Issue 10 November/December 2003   SAINT LUKE'S HOSPITAL WINS BALDRIGE NATIONAL QUALITY AWARD The U.S. Department of Commerce has selected Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City as a recipient of the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award for 2003 in the category of health care. It is the first Kansas City based organization ever to win the award. Each year, the U.S. Department of Commerce selects up to three companies in the categories of manufacturing, service, small business, education, and health care for the quality excellence award, which is traditionally presented by the President of the United States. The top honor a U.S. company can receive for quality management and quality achievement, the Baldrige Award recognizes organizations for their achievements in quality and performance, and raises awareness about the importance of performance excellence as a competitive edge. Criteria for the award include leadership, strategic planning, customer and market focus, information and analysis, human resource focus, process management, and business results. Kansas City Mayor Kay Barnes and Jackson County Executive Katheryn Shields respond to Saint Luke’s Health System President and Chief Executive Officer G. Richard Hastings’ comments on Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City winning the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award in 2003. The announcement was made at a November 25 news conference. “We are honored to have achieved this award,” said Saint Luke’s Health System President and Chief Executive Officer G. Richard Hastings. “It caps off an ongoing quest for quality that started more than a decade ago and will continue as we continue to set the standard in quality care.” Saint Luke’s Hospital’s commitment to total quality and continuous improvement accelerated when it adopted the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award Criteria for Performance Excellence as its business model in 1995. The hospital applied for the Baldrige award in May with a comprehensive application and in September was notified that it would receive a site visit in October. The site visit gave the Baldrige team of examiners a chance to clarify and verify information in the application, and speak to hospital employees on all shifts. The U.S. Commerce Department’s National Institute of Standards and Technology manages the Baldrige National Quality Program in close cooperation with the private sector. Saint Luke’s Hospital, a 582-bed tertiary care facility, is a member of Saint Luke's Health System, which consists of nine area hospitals and many primary care practices. Saint Luke’s Hospital’s Senior Vice President George Hayes is a member of Brush Creek Community Partners’ Board of Directors. PARTNERS IN THE FOREFRONT OF COMMUNITY PROGRESS Almost two years ago, The Kansas City Star published the Kansas City CitiStates Report, an examination of the greater community’s strengths and weaknesses and advice for the region on how to reach its potential. Among their findings the report’s authors, Curtis Johnson and Neal Pierce, observed Kansas City was well positioned to: “transform itself into an important national center for research and development in the fast-developing biological sciences field; “build on its already extraordinary base of arts and culture by broadening access to the arts for all population and age groups; and “write a bold new chapter in the story of children by expanding the No. 1 Question Campaign and transforming this already family-friendly set of communities into the best place in America to raise a child.” But for all the area’s potential, Pierce and Johnson pointed out deficiencies hampering realization of these goals including physical, jurisdictional and racial divisions and the real and perceived quality of some public education. Earlier this fall, the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation and the law firm of Shurgart Thomson and Kilroy sponsored a symposium to evaluate the progress of the area in addressing its challenges and established an agenda to realize goals to make Kansas City a better place to live and work. Much of the progress that was highlighted is happening in the Brush Creek Corridor or is being supported by members of Brush Creek Community Partners. Healthy Children, Youth and Families; Improving Urban Education In speaking to advances in the area’s urban core school districts, Community Foundation President and Chief Executive Officer Jan Kreamer highlighted the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s support as essential to the successes experienced in the Kansas City, Missouri and Kansas City, Kansas School Districts. The Kansas City, Missouri School District has collaborated with the Kauffman Foundation to identify and customize an improvement initiative that will work in the district, and have found the resources to complete it. In discussing additional steps to be taken in the next year to realize greater gains in the community, E. Frank Ellis, chairman of Swope Community Enterprises, said urban education will continue to be improved by the University of Missouri-Kansas City’s establishment of an Institute for Urban Education. The institute is being designed to prepare current and urban educators to serve specific needs of urban schools and students as well as enhance the skills of schools’ administrators. UMKC will need $10 million, $2 million of which has been pledged by the Community Foundation, to sustain the first few years of the institute’s operations. This initiative will directly affect 75 percent of the area’s low income children. Vibrant Arts and Culture The expansion of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art was among the many new initiatives identified as contributing to the community’s vibrant arts and culture environment. The CitiStates Report identified a program of arts for kids as a critical connecting link to the entire region’s future quality of life. Support was encouraged at the forum for Kansas City Young Audiences’ Community School of the Arts, located in the St. Teresa’s Academy’s Music and Arts Building at 5601 Wyandotte Street. The Community School of the Arts opens in January to 500 students in its first year. The Community Foundation is providing St. Teresa’s with $1.75 million and Young Audiences a $750,000 matching grant to assist in the building renovation and programming for the new Community School of the Arts. Both organizations have until next June to match this challenge grant, one of the largest ever issued by the Community Foundation, dollar-for-dollar. Strategic Investments in Health and Life Sciences Several of the significant players in the community’s efforts to become a leader in developing and transferring research into business opportunities are in the Brush Creek Corridor. The Stowers Institute for Medical Research is the latest in a growing list of life sciences research facilities that also include UMKC, Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, and Midwest Research Institute. The Kauffman Foundation was again recognized, this time for its work in encouraging entrepreneurship around life sciences in Kansas City. Revitalized Urban Core/Strengthening Neighborhoods Revitalized inner cities and strong neighborhoods are essential to the region’s success. Swope Community Builders (SCB) of Swope Community Enterprises was singled out as entrepreneurial and recognized by the Kansas City Community Development Initiative (KCCDI) as a high performing agency. SCB is a community development corporation that has demonstrated tremendous success in the eastern portion of the Corridor with the revitalization of the Mt. Cleveland Neighborhood, and the construction of the H & R Block Service Center and the FirstGuard Health Plan Building. SCB’s construction of Blue Parkway Town Center commercial and retail center is expected to begin soon. KCCDI is a community-wide effort to identify the strengths and relative weaknesses of area CDCs. It involves measures of accountability coupled with technical expertise to support improvement of CDC performance. It is administered by the Local Initiatives Support Corporation. Observing that “great people make a great community,” Ellis urged the forum’s audience of community leaders to get involved work to “engage our citizens, develop new leaders and stay focused on efforts that have the greatest potential for success and positive changes.” The Greater Kansas City Community Foundation, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Swope Community Enterprises, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art, St. Teresa’s Academy, Stowers Institute for Medical Research, Saint Luke’s Hospital of Kansas City, Midwest Research Institute, and the Local Initiatives Support Corporation are members of Brush Creek Community Partners. STOWERS RESEARCHERS MAKE STEM CELL BREAKTHROUGH A Stowers Institute for Medical Research research team has solved the puzzle of the hematopoietic stem cell (HSC) niche first articulated more than 25 years ago and has defined its essential features in both cellular and molecular terms. According to Stowers Institute Assistant Investigator Linheng Li, Ph.D., who led the study, the niche not only provides a home for the HSCs but also regulates their numbers. Gaining greater understanding of the stem cell’s niche and its regulatory signals is an important advance toward the goal of using stem cells for therapeutic purposes. HSCs are a population of bone marrow cells capable of self-renewal and production of all types of blood cells. Normally these cells cannot function properly outside their exclusive niche. Reported in the October 23 issue of Nature, the team discovered the location in mice where HSCs reside, often called the HSCs’ microenvironment or “niche, ” as well as identified mechanisms involved in controlling the size of the niche and the number of adult HSCs the body produces. Linheng Li Li’s findings are corroborated in studies undertaken independently by a group of scientists working at the University of Rochester and at Harvard Medical School and also published in Nature. “Jim and Virginia Stowers believe that highest quality basic research will point the way to more effective means of preventing and curing disease,” said William Neaves, Stowers Institute president and chief executive officer. “The work published by Dr. Li and his colleagues in the October 23 issue of Nature typifies the results envisioned by them. His findings open new opportunities for research on the stem cell niche and could eventually lead to more effective methods of restoring stem cells in the bone marrow of cancer patients after radiation and chemotherapy.” Joining Stowers Institute scientists in conducting the study were researchers from the University of Missouri-Kansas City School of Dentistry and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences in Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. In addition to his primary appointment at the Stowers Institute, Li holds a faculty appointment at the University of Kansas School of Medicine. Founded in 1994 by Jim and Virginia Stowers, the Stowers Institute for Medical Research conducts research on the fundamental processes of cellular life. PLAN FOR TROOST BRIDGE AND CORRIDOR PROGRESSES Chris Cline speaks with Ruth Ann Cartwright, 49/63 Neighborhood Coalition recording secretary, about design options developed for the Troost Bridge replacement at a recent community meeting. Cline is design director in the Urban Planning and Design group of HNTB Corporation, the design consultants for the new bridge. Participants in the meeting also considered the public art component relating to the bridge and possible streetscape treatments along Troost from 42nd Street to 55th Street. STEVE NEWTON SERVES MANY KANSAS CITY COMMUNITIES IN MANY WAYS Community is one of those words that can mean many things, to many people, in many contexts: neighborhood, work, family, business, church, health, arts. Steve Newton, a new member of the Brush Creek Community Partners Board of Directors, somehow finds a way to serve each of these communities. As President and Chief Executive Officer of Research Medical Center, his days may be filled guiding the 508-bed facility, but his hours and interests extend well outside the hospital walls. Steve Newton “We’re involved in a variety of projects at Research including various Tax Increment Financing (TIF) projects on the campus and in the immediate neighborhood,” he said. “We know partnerships between government and private enterprise can have a very high impact on quality of life.” As can healthy businesses. “Clearly one of the engines for neighborhood improvement is business development.” Through Brush Creek Community Partners, he looks for opportunities to support enterprises. “Any way we can help businesses establish themselves and be successful will help create better neighborhoods in which to work and live.” And with Newton’s leadership, live in good health. The marathon runner is Chairman of the American Heart Association Heart Walk, a Director on the Community Blood Center of Kansas City board, as well as President of the Kansas City Metropolitan Healthcare Council and a Missouri Hospital Association board member. “Health care is a critically important community concern,” he said. “Whenever we can, we take the opportunity to educate the public on health care.” But for communities, healthy means more than blood and business. There is a soul, which Newton supports through the arts. He is a director on the Missouri Repertory Theatre board. But he says he and his wife especially enjoy arts activities as a family with their children, ages 6, 4 and 2. A native of New Haven, Connecticut, Newton moved to Kansas City in 1989 to become assistant administrator of Research Psychiatric Center, and has since become personally and professionally committed to Kansas City communities, including the Brush Creek Corridor. “Research Medical Center cares immensely about all the communities we serve and, as the corridor is part of our immediate service area,” he noted, “the success of Brush Creek Partners is closely bound to the success of Research.” And although new to the Brush Creek board, and just 14 years in the city, Newton appreciates the legacy of his role. “Research Medical Center has been part of our community for more than 100 years; we are deeply committed to improving wellness of the Kansas City community.” Steve Newton is however you define the community. PARTNER UPDATES Dorothy A. Stroud recently received the Kansas City NAACP’s Velma Woodson Outstanding Leadership Award. President of the Sheraton Estates Neighborhood Association for more than 20 years, Stroud has been a member of the Brush Creek Community Partners Board of Directors since 1998. She was also recognized for her work as a volunteer in the development of FOCUS Kansas City, in which she served as co-chair of the Community Infrastructure Committee. Dr. Carl S. Cleveland III, president of the Cleveland Chiropractic College multi-campus system, was chosen as the American Chiropractic Association’s “Humanitarian of the Year.” The award, presented this fall during ACA’s House of Delegates, is one of the association’s two highest honors, presented annually to those who have demonstrated “exceptional service, achievement and/or leadership to the chiropractic profession for current or past accomplishments.” Cleveland has been an active supporter for the National Chiropractic Legal Action Fund. The United States Department of Defense has contracted with Midwest Research Institute to operate laboratories at six military bases as part of the Joint Service Installation Pilot Project. The project, managed by the Defense Threat Reduction Agency and the Joint Program Executive Office for Chemical and Biological Defense, is designed to upgrade nine military installations to be model sites for biological and chemical safety. MRI has one of the top biodefense research capabilities in the country. The contact will be managed by MRI’s National Capital Region Division, which operates an around-the-clock laboratory that is helping the government in the area of homeland security. The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation has teamed up with the Washington, D.C.-based Public Forum Institute to develop the National Dialogue on Entrepreneurship (NDE). The NDE plans to work to "increase the awareness and understanding of entrepreneurship among policymakers" and strive to build a new approach to fostering entrepreneurial growth in communities across the country. The NDE is working on holding a series of public events with federal and Congressional policy leaders focused on stimulating high-growth entrepreneurship. For more information, check out http://www.publicforuminstitute.org/. Beginning next June, Rockhurst University will be offering coursework leading to a master of business administration tailored to physicians. The Rockhurst M.B.A. in health care leadership for physicians is said to be the only program of its kind in the nation fully integrated with physicians’ post-graduate medical education. The university’s Helzberg School of Management is working with the American Academy of Family Physicians to offer the specialized MBA to physicians in three Kansas City family medicine residency programs and practicing physicians are also eligible to apply for admission to the program.