Our Story

The board of the Atlas Health Foundation (AHF) is comprised of colleagues who are deeply engaged in health policy, service delivery and workforce consulting, teaching, and research. We were founded in 2011 with the mission of identifying and addressing underlying causes of barriers to improving health services performance.
 

Our vision is to use our expertise, networks, and resources to clarify the problem, draw together the best advice to develop innovative solutions, and make them happen.

Our perspectives led to addressing two significant and overlooked barriers to performance improvement. The first barrier was the lack of professional health competence in the management of correctional health services and the second barrier is rural health services’ need for personnel with rural veterans’ competencies. After working on both projects for several years, we concluded that we had made progress on the corrections health improvement agenda and that the Rural Veterans Rural Health Services Employment project is of vital importance requiring all our energies.

We succeeded in calling attention to the lack of health care professionalism in corrections systems as a fundamental barrier to improving quality of care that has implications for inmates, families, and communities. The message was that health managers should represent the health needs of the inmates and have appropriate health services training. We brought the need to the attention of federal, state, and many local hiring authorities, suggesting appropriate job descriptions and preferred or required credentials. We encouraged and supported the development of masters degrees in health corrections management.

AHF is the only national effort to expand employment for rural veterans that focuses on the health services sector. Rural communities are aging, and many are losing population. To attract and hold employers, rural communities require good education and health services. Health services require more than doctors and nurses. They require many employees with the skills and characteristics of veterans. We aim to bring them together and establish 3,000 proactive programs to recruit rural veterans and spouses to jobs and careers in rural health services.