Penn State has announced a $7.3 million grant from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation in support of an ongoing evaluation of the foundation's Aligning Forces for Quality initiative.

Launched in 2006, the AF4Q initiative aims to help patients, physicians, employers, insurers, and others improve the overall quality of health care in targeted communities, reduce racial/ethnic disparities, and provide models for national reform. The grant will fund, through 2016, the work of Dennis Scanlon, a professor of health policy and administration in Penn State's College of Health and Human Development, who, with his colleagues, is evaluating the impact of the program in sixteen communities. In particular, Scanlon and his team are focusing on whether AF4Q resulted in improvements in the care of patients with chronic illnesses and in the structures and processes that lead to more affordable care and better outcomes.

"While many people think about health reform at the national level, much of the innovation and experimentation is being done at the local level, within communities where different patients, insurers, employers, and healthcare delivery systems interact," said Scanlon. "The AF4Q program has and will continue to provide a robust learning lab to identify changes — in care delivery, in payment, in patient engagement — that can serve as models for improving health care in other communities and the rest of the country. We are privileged to have the opportunity to systematically study this transformation as it unfolds."