Alumni

Leticia Reyes-Nash

Leticia Reyes-Nash
Location: North Riverside, Illinois Cohort Start Year: 2017 Populations Served: African-American/Black, Hispanic/Latino/Latinx, Low-Income Communities, People with Addictions
Director of Programmatic Services and Innovation
Cook County Health and Hospitals System

FOCUS
I am Director of Programmatic Services and Innovation in the Cook County Health and Hospitals System, serving both Chicago and the suburban Cook County region. My job is to work across the integrated delivery system to expand programs and services through innovative partnerships with public and private partners. To achieve improved health outcomes, health equity, and a Culture of Health, I work to bridge silos by forging collaborations and partnerships between nontraditional partners. My priority areas of work are developing programs to support justice-involved people, creating opportunities to implement the system’s behavioral health strategy, and identifying opportunities to address housing and food insecurity.

STRATEGIC INITIATIVE: Cook County Health & Spectrum Health Centers for Health Equity and Innovation
Both Cook County Health (CCH) (Chicago, Illinois) and Spectrum Health (Grand Rapids, Michigan) are working to develop Centers for Health Equity and Innovation. My strategic initiative aims to develop a community engagement framework to operationalize health equity through innovation. Each of the Centers will provide a space for internal and external partners, funders, and community members to engage with CCH and Spectrum to design programmatic and technological health and wellness innovations that extend into the community and seamlessly integrate within the health systems. My strategic initiative will: 1) learn from existing models and best practices; 2) build a framework for community engagement and community participation for innovation centers; 3) create a framework for the operationalization of health equity; 4) implement the model at Cook County Health and at Spectrum Health; and 4) develop a team of RWJF leaders who can work nationally to promote and expand the model.

MORE ABOUT LETICIA
I am an expert at navigating complexities to successfully work across and bridge silos, and I am innovative in my approach to finding solutions by forging collaborations and partnerships between nontraditional partners. As a systems thinker, I can find linkages across different stakeholders and provide leadership to align and move us all in the same direction. My goal is to build bridges between sectors that are sustained over time.

Click here to watch Leticia’s Legacy Project video.