Indiana Medical Foundation

ISMA SDOH Grant Request

The Indiana Medical Foundation (IMF) operates under the control of the Indiana State Medical Association (ISMA). For more than 165 years the ISMA has been helping physicians become leaders in settings such as hospitals, health systems, at the Indiana Statehouse and in regulatory agencies. The mission of the IMF is to provide professional, practical, continuing, or other educational and leadership programs for Indiana physicians to support ISMA’s mission of helping those physicians provide the best possible health care for their patients. The primary focus areas for the past several years has been around developing physician leaders through IMF’s Physician Leadership Program and providing Indiana physicians and other health care providers access to the most up‐to‐date medical knowledge and best practices on controlled substance prescribing and management, through enhanced delivery mechanisms such as webinars, podcasts, and our interactive mobile app, ISMA Online.

ISMA’s strategic priorities are what drive the work that the ISMA staff conducts on a daily basis. It has already committed time, staff and resources to carry out the tasks assigned to this priority over a three year period to convene the Chief Medical Officers and physician group leaders to identify ways to address social drivers of health, develop a pilot program to begin helping physicians address social drivers of health, develop and implement an education and/or communication plan to inform physicians of resources available to their patients, and develop a plan to scale the pilot program. In addition to this, the organization will be able to leverage relationships with the IDOH, FSSA and others such as the Indiana Public Health Association (IPHA), Hoosier Health and Wellness Alliance, CMO’s from hospitals and health systems, ISMA district and county physician leaders, and local health department officers to expedite these goals.