PA Navigate | Connecting Healthcare & Community Resources
In this episode of Thinking CAAP, Beck Moore is joined by PA Navigate’s lead champions, Kat Royer and Matt Moser, for a deep dive into how community-based organizations (CBOs) and healthcare providers are working together to address social determinants of health across Pennsylvania.
Through stories, real-time data, and practical insights, they unpack the promise of PA Navigate—a shared platform transforming how individuals and families connect with essential services like housing, food, and healthcare. Together, they explore the power of closed-loop referrals, screening tools, and local champions in building trust and expanding access statewide.
Whether you're a nonprofit just learning about PA Navigate or a seasoned user refining your program listings, this episode offers clear strategies and real-life success stories to help you strengthen relationships, improve outcomes, and lead with purpose.
For more about PA Navigate: https://www.panavigatehelp.org/
Send us questions at info@thecaap.org
Thinking CAAP Episode 28 Highlights
[00:00] - Introduction to PA Navigate and Guest Introductions
Host Beck Moore welcomes listeners to the Thinking CAAP Podcast and introduces guests Kat Royer and Matt Moser.
They share their roles at CAAP and their experience, setting the stage for a deep dive into PA Navigate, a platform connecting community resources across Pennsylvania.
[02:32] - What is PA Navigate? Purpose and Function Explained
Matthew Moser and Kat Royer explain PA Navigate as a statewide network of community-based resources designed to connect individuals and healthcare providers to nonprofits addressing social needs like food and housing.
The platform uses a centralized directory and closed-loop referral system.
[05:10] - The Intersection of Healthcare and Social Determinants with PA Navigate
The guests discuss how PA Navigate supports healthcare providers in addressing social determinants of health by facilitating referrals to community organizations.
This improves patient outcomes and highlights the critical role CBOs play in holistic health beyond traditional medical care.
[09:36] - CAAP’s Role in Supporting Nonprofits Using PA Navigate
Matthew and Kat describe CAAP’s responsibilities in onboarding nonprofits onto PA Navigate.
This includes setting up programs, building screening tools, troubleshooting, and advocating for nonprofit needs within the platform’s ecosystem to enhance resource accessibility and effectiveness.
[12:27] - Importance of a Unified Platform for Community Resource Coordination
The conversation emphasizes the value of having one comprehensive platform like PA Navigate to unify diverse community resources and referrals.
This makes it easier for organizations and individuals to find and access support.
[13:50] - Introduction to PA Navigate and Community Engagement
Beck Moore introduces PA Navigate and how users can search resources by zip code.
Kat Royer and Matthew Moser explain community engagement efforts, including initial demos and working sessions aimed at tailoring the platform to meet CBOs’ specific needs for long-term success.
[17:55] - Addressing CBO Concerns and Building Trust in New Technology
Kat and Matthew discuss common hesitations from nonprofits about adopting new technology, emphasizing PA Navigate’s user-friendly design and ongoing support.
They share examples of successful onboarding, highlighting the team’s commitment to alleviating the training burden for community-based organizations.
[20:30] - Understanding Closed Loop Referrals and Their Impact
The hosts explain the concept of closed loop referrals using a food pantry example.
Matthew describes how organizations update referral statuses in the platform, ensuring transparency and accountability in client service delivery and improving referral outcomes.
[22:35] - Using Screeners to Manage Eligibility and Referral Quality
Kat details how organizations can create customized screening forms to filter referrals based on eligibility like income or location.
This ensures high-quality referrals that match program capacity and reduce unnecessary workload for CBOs.
[25:45] - Setting Up Effective Program Cards to Maximize Visibility and Reach
Matthew explains the importance of accurately setting program coverage areas and service tags on PA Navigate.
Proper configuration improves searchability, eligibility filtering, and connection efficiency.
This helps organizations manage multiple programs and attract suitable client referrals.
[27:42] - Optimizing Program Cards for Accurate Referrals in Social Services
Kat Royer and Matthew Moser discuss the importance of specificity in program cards to ensure high-quality referrals.
Clear, detailed descriptions help healthcare workers and case managers refer clients accurately.
This avoids repeated or unsuitable referrals and simplifies the process for all involved.
[33:12] - Navigating PA Navigate: First Steps for Community-Based Organizations
The hosts recommend that CBOs explore PA Navigate from a user perspective to understand how individuals find services.
This familiarity helps organizations better configure their program listings, improving accessibility and clarity for seekers and referrers alike.
[34:21] - Identifying Trusted and Responsive Programs on PA Navigate
Beck Moore emphasizes the importance of recognizing claimed programs and the PA Navigate trusted network tag.
These indicators show that a program is actively managed and responsive, increasing confidence that referrals will be handled efficiently and updates communicated appropriately.
[35:45] - Understanding Multiple Access Points into One Unified Resource System
The conversation clarifies that various platforms like Find Help, PA Navigate, and other white-labeled portals are different entry points into the same resource database.
This interconnectedness ensures seamless referral communication despite the use of different systems across organizations.
[39:08] - The Value of Integrated Social Care Referrals in Healthcare Outcomes
The guests highlight the significance of tracking referral outcomes in healthcare.
Addressing social determinants like housing and food insecurity improves patient health.
Integrating social care into medical records reduces healthcare costs.
[42:00] - Connecting Community Action with PA Navigate to Reduce Healthcare Costs
Kat Royer discusses how aligning community action agencies with PA Navigate helps reduce healthcare system costs by addressing social determinants and promoting economic mobility.
This ultimately moves individuals toward self-sufficiency and reduces reliance on costly support systems.
[44:00] - Emergence of Local Champions and Community Engagement Success with PA Navigate
The guests highlight early successes with PA Navigate.
They spotlight local champions like Erin Muldowney and Kim Permar who drive platform adoption, facilitate demos, and foster partnerships that enhance community engagement and warm handoffs between organizations.
[46:00] - Impact of PA Navigate During Crisis and Food Pantry Demand Surge
Matthew Moser shares data revealing a spike from 500 to over 3,200 daily food pantry searches on PA Navigate during the SNAP benefit pause.
This underscores the platform’s critical role as a reliable resource during unprecedented community needs.
[48:00] - Addressing SNAP Volunteer Requirements Through PA Navigate’s Flexibility
The conversation covers how PA Navigate adapts to evolving community needs by listing local volunteer opportunities that satisfy SNAP work requirements.
This showcases the platform’s versatility in supporting benefit retention and volunteer management.
[51:30] - Future Opportunities: Leveraging Data, Funding, and Healthcare Partnerships with PA Navigate
Discussion focuses on PA Navigate’s potential to drive funding and deepen healthcare and community-based organization collaborations through data analytics.
This enables smaller organizations to demonstrate impact, identify unmet needs, and improve referral processes for better community outcomes.
Episode 29 Transcript
00:00:00
What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Thinking CAAP Podcast. I'm Beck Moore, CEO of Community Action Association of Pennsylvania and your host of the Thinking CAAP podcast. Thank you for joining us today. I feel like this next episode that you're about to listen to has been well overdue.
00:00:14
It's a topic that we've spoken about on a regular basis all of the time, and we've mentioned a couple times on the Thinking CAAP, but we've not really dug into it. So today is the deep dive, specifically on PA Navigate, which is an amazing platform. And with me today are two of my colleagues that are teammates at CAAP, Kat Royer and Matthew Moser. So I'm going to have them both introduce themselves and share a little bit about who they are and how they came to join the CAAP team. So, Kat, if we can start with you and then we'll go over to you, Matthew.
00:00:47
Sure. Hi, everyone. My name is Kat. I'm the director of community engagement at CAAP. So I get to oversee our amazing team of community engagement managers that are really tasked with promoting awareness, supporting onboarding of organizations to PA Navigate.
00:01:02
So super excited to be here and chat more. And then prior to CAAP, spent a lot of time at various nonprofits in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. So just really excited to be in a position now where I get to support organizations across the state that are doing really critical work. So, yeah, thanks again. Thank you.
00:01:23
And Matthew, who's been on the podcast before, but it was a smaller episode, so welcome back. Thank you. Thank you. So, Matthew Moser, I'm a community engagement manager, one of four community engagement managers here at CAAP, work in the western part of the state helping organizations with PA Navigate, which we'll talk about a little more today. And yeah, I was on the podcast once before, which I think I was here for like a month at that point.
00:01:49
So I know what I'm doing a little more now, which is. Which is good. But prior to this, I spent some time at an amazing community action agency, South Central Community Action Agency. Community Action Agency, for about three years, and then spending about a year at the Central Pennsylvania Food Bank. Really interested specifically in food security programming, but get to work in a little bit of all of it through this PA Navigate project.
00:02:14
So, yeah, thanks for having me. Of course. Happy to have you both. So let's start kind of at the beginning because I know that in our reCAAP episode about our conference, Amanda and I, I think, talked a little bit about PA Navigate, but let's kind of just like, level set for our listeners who might be hearing this term for the first time. Hopefully not.
00:02:32
But let's just kind of start at the very beginning. So for folks who are just for the first time understanding what PA Navigate is, can one of you start by just explaining a little bit about what it is and why it exists? Sure. Do you want me to go ahead Matthew, and then you can fill in again? Yeah, go for it.
00:02:52
Yeah. So PA Navigate the way that I like to describe it is it's a statewide network of community resources, all of those local resources and organizations in Pennsylvania that are doing really critical work. It's that kind of go to directory of all of those resources across the state. Then at a higher level, why it exists is for individuals across the state, but I think also more importantly health care providers to be able to have access to those really critical organizations in community and then be able to connect the patients that they're seeing in the hospital, in their well visit to those food services, housing services that can help meet the need of that patient that they're seeing. Matthew, anything you want to add?
00:03:40
Yeah, no, that pretty much covered it. I always say when we'll talk about this more when we're talking to CBOs, I always say there's kind of two sides to it. There's a side where it is just a place you can find resources. It's kind of that community bulletin board where you can just see what's available in your community. But then there's that other side that connects to healthcare, really focuses on being able to send referrals, being able to see outcomes of the referrals.
00:04:05
So there's those two pieces of it. So for our member agencies, we've been talking about this since my… So I just celebrated my four year anniversary here at CAAP. I can't believe that it's been four years. But that very first conference in October, after I sort of started to settle in a little bit, one of our keynotes, Dr. Nicholson, Dr. Jeffrey Nicholson, who's at Wellspan, started talking about how the platform was starting to sort of get a resurgence of energy again.
00:04:31
So for those of you who are listening who've been in Pennsylvania for a long time, there was a project pre-Covid called Rise PA that then Covid hit, right? And it sort of paused for a little bit. And then right around October 2021 I want to say it started to get legs again. And so DHS, the Department of Human Services, decided to invest in creation of this platform really with what I like to say is intentionality of creating closed loop referrals for healthcare to provide referrals to nonprofits, CBOs, which we'll talk about what a CBO is for in a minute because I don't know that everybody always uses that word. But also for CBOs, community health workers.
00:05:10
Right. To provide referrals to individuals as well. And sort of it's this interesting ecosystem of helping create care for people. And so if you've ever been to the doctor's office and you've gotten a social determinants of health screening, right. When your doctor says in the last month, how many times have you had to worry about food or paying the rent, you're being screened for social determinant of health.
00:05:32
And so when you screen positive for those things, this platform now allows your doctor, your provider, a caseworker at your hospital or your doctor's office to then provide a referral to a nonprofit who serves that need. Right? So that you can get help. Because we know. And if you go back to episode two of the Thinking CAAP, where we had Karen Van Zant, who talks about social determinants of health, she works at Clearlink Partners, a great partner organization of CAAPs.
00:05:59
She talks about. We talk about all the time, right. How health is not just dictated by our genetic code, it's also dictated by our zip code and the resources that we have available to us. And so whole health is addressed by all of those things and our health cannot be simply addressed by healthcare alone. And so this is just another layer of how Pennsylvania in particular is navigating.
00:06:24
See what I did there? PA Navigate. Yeah, Insert dad joke to helping solve all of these needs.
00:06:34
So I kind of went into question, the next question that I was going to ask both of you, but is there anything else that you feel like within kind of the solution piece about why PA Navigate was created and that you feel like it's important to lift up and kind of this relationship between healthcare and nonprofit community based organizations or community benefit organizations, which is what ultimately a CBO is. Yeah. I think two things for me, the first thing I'll say, not so related to the connection, but just in general, when I think about the mission of find help and you know, find help there, the technology back end that's powering the platform, their mission is connecting people to resources with dignity and ease. And I love that. I think it really sums up what the platform is designed to do to make it easy for people, but also provide individuals that need help with the.
00:07:28
With a response. So I just wanted to call that out because I think that's really critical to the mission and what the platform is designed to do. And then I think secondly what's really great about PA Navigate is that there is this huge potential to showcase the value of community based organizations and what they're doing and how they are addressing those social determinant health needs of individuals and continue to lift up the critical role that organizations play and ultimately how they are reducing costs of the health care system as a whole. And so if we think of. Were you going to say something else there, Matthew?
00:08:06
Go ahead. So I think when we think about something like housing for instance, right? We know that if somebody is housing insecure and trying to navigate finding a place to live, they're what is it like 50% less likely to go to a follow up appointment. So let's say that they go to the doctor and they have high cholesterol or they're high risk for heart disease or high risk for a heart attack or diabetes or asthma or insert any major health issue. The likelihood that I'm going to go to a follow up visit when I don't even know where I'm going to rest my head at night seems pretty obvious to those of us who work in the field.
00:08:44
But if you don't. Right? If you've never struggled with that as a need, it just may not be something that's on your radar. And so to me. Right?
00:08:53
And if you. Some of the case studies that we know exist around why this is so important, it hopefully crystallizes to people, right. Like why this is such an important platform to use. So let's back up for a second. So DHS, Department of Human Services in the state of Pennsylvania, they sponsored this project Find Help as you mentioned, Kat is the technology provider.
00:09:14
One of the things I also like to point out is that formerly that company was called Aunt Bertha. Yes, you heard me right. Aunt Bertha now is called Find Help. Find Help is a technology that powers PA Navigate and then CAAP. Our role is to onboard nonprofits, CBOs.
00:09:36
So gonna kind of flip the script a little bit and the questions I provided. Can. Can you all just talk a little bit about what we are really tasked with, what that means?
00:09:46
Go ahead Matthew. Yeah, so a lot of our. It's exactly what you said. So we, we do everything in our power to help people use PA Navigate. So that's organizations, we get them set up on the platform, we get their programs listed on the platform, we help them set up, we help them build screener applications, we help them build data collection forms.
00:10:08
That's a lot of words that you might not be familiar with. If you're interested in learning about them, you can reach out to us, but essentially we help them with every piece of the platform, even if you know, and it's not just that onboarding piece. So we get them set up, we get them using the platform. You can send us an email three months down the road, six months down the road and say, hey, I'm having an issue with this or this isn't working exactly the way we hope it would or anything like that. And we will get back to you, we'll help out.
00:10:35
We help out with anything it related, anything that you might have to update or change. We can help with all that.
00:10:43
And so what is. Go ahead, Kat, Were you going to say something else? I was just going to add, in addition to working with the organizations themselves, just mentioning that we have really strong partnerships with Find Help and the four health information exchanges across the state to really understand who are those important organizations in local communities across the state that we should be engaging with. So very much like part of the strategy as well. Yeah, absolutely.
00:11:11
And so we, I think at CAAP, we also get to be kind of the voice of the nonprofit community in our regular discussions with all of the players who help to manage this project. And that's an important role for us. And so if you're listening and you're a nonprofit out there, CBO out there, and you have a frustration point or something that's been a really strong success, you need to let us know because that's also the part that we play to help lift up those types of items and make sure that you're featured in the really good things and the frustration points. And so if we don't know about those things, we can't, as I say all the time, we can't do anything about it. And or we can't make sure you're recognized for the great successes that you've had.
00:11:44
So want to make sure to just say that out loud. And you can find we have a website that we manage called panavigatehelp.org where you can get connected with us. We'll mention that a couple times. So sorry if you get tired of listening to it or hearing it, but check that website out because that's where we sort of put all of our resources where you can connect with our team. So again, that website is panavigatehelp.org org anything else that either one of you wants to mention before we kind of get into more of that community engagement and trust building and talking A little bit about the CBO experience in this project around kind of Pennsylvania's broader approach to whole person care and addressing social, social drivers of health.
00:12:27
Anything in particular that you can think of other examples or things that are really important within why this platform exists and a little bit about that kind of value proposition? Back to, you know, all the players in general. I think one thing I wanted to add, kind of related to one of your previous questions, but the importance of having one place to do all of this. Because over the, over, you know, the years, there's been many amazing people who've tried to do this stuff at the community level and so create community resources, create community referral methods and things like that. But it's really hard to coordinate at a large scale when you have 15 different community based resources that are happening.
00:13:11
And trying to coordinate that at the state level or even beyond that is really difficult. So having one place to do all of this work is really important. Important. And not only for the organizations to have one place, but for people in the community looking for resources, knowing that one place they can kind of find everything that they're looking for, I think is really important and I think is a big problem that's being solved with PA Navigate. Yeah, I think it's a good point.
00:13:35
And for those who are listening, individuals can also look for resources. To Matthew's point, right? It's not just healthcare referrals. It's not just a nonprofit providing a referral to another nonprofit. It's also people seekers, right, who need help and support.
00:13:50
And if you're, you know, while you're listening to us, if you're sitting at your computer, you can Simply go to panavigate.org and search by zip code, search by resource, and you can see the plethora of organizations that are on, on the platform. And we'll talk a little bit about. Somebody remind me, please, let's make sure we talk about some things you want to look for when you're searching so that we can point some of those critical pieces out so that we can make sure people get a response. So when you're working with CBOs, let's get into some kind of the weedy pieces. What is that?
00:14:24
Community engagement. Really, really like, Truly, truly look like. What are some of the tactical things that you all are doing? So let's say I'm a CBO. I reach out to you for the first time, I say I want to understand what this whole PA navigating thing is about.
00:14:37
What does that look like? Right? Like what are the things you're going to take me through, what are the things you're going to teach me and talk to me about on a. However long it takes. And remember, I'm not very good at technology.
00:14:47
So.
00:14:52
You want to go Kat or you want me to take this one? Because you, you're doing a lot more than I am these days. Yeah. So I think there's, there's kind of two parts to this. There's the initial part where we have, we have three, what we call demos.
00:15:05
We have a 101, a 201 and a 301, which is where we go through essentially the basics of PA Navigate, what it is, why it's important, how to use it. And then obviously as you get up into the 201 and the 301, you get into the weeds. A little bit of everything PA Navigate has to offer. So we go through all that, you know, how to set up your profile, how to set up referrals, how to set up screeners, all that, how to pull analytics, which is really important on the platform. But then beyond that, we do what we call working sessions, which is exactly what it sounds like.
00:15:40
We sit there with your organization and we find out what's important to you, what do you need out of this platform because it's a two way street. You know, Navigate is really beneficial for health care in terms of being able to make referrals and see outcomes on the referrals. But if it's not beneficial to the community based organizations, they're not going to use it. So we need to find out why it's important to them, how it can be useful to them. And there are many different ways it's useful in different ways for every organization we talk to.
00:16:09
So we really need to dig up what's going to be most useful for you, how can this benefit you and your community in the best way possible. We go through those demos and those working sessions and we really get down to help you. Navigate is going to be most beneficial. I would say too what I love about the team is that they're always willing to be a source of support. Onboarding is not a once and done conversation.
00:16:33
We're in it for the long haul, really having all of the conversations that are needed to have, making sure that we're training all levels of staff across the organization, from the leadership to the frontline staff that might be using the platform every single day. So I know the whole team is really invested in providing that long, long term support and those check ins to make sure. Organizations are successful. I appreciate that. And so as you're meeting with folks, and I know the last few months in particular have been difficult because we did have a state budget impasse, we had a government shutdown.
00:17:06
And so it was a little, our work was a little bit more complicated on the day to day because nonprofits, CBOs, they're already stretched thin. And so on top of. Right that and not necessarily knowing how and when you're going to be funded is a lot to deal with on a day to day basis. And we respect that, understand that we're a CBO also at CAAP and so we also get it. We are also in the same boat.
00:17:27
We're not direct clients. So a little bit different, but still a worrisome time. Besides that big gigantic honking thing that we were dealing with in the day to day, now that the state budget has sort of settled and you know, to some respect, calm has been restored. We know that being a leader at a nonprofit is still difficult and challenging and there's a lot to balance. And there are.
00:17:55
Our folks are stretched thin, we know in community action. And so we know that there's all kinds of different issues that are raised. But what are the, some of the concerns and hesitations that you hear most often when you're meeting with folks maybe for the first time or even it could be, you know, a couple, a couple meetings down the road that a CBO or nonprofit brings up. And how are you addressing those concerns? Yeah, I think sometimes some of the concerns that we have is I think a hesitation around to new technology.
00:18:26
If they've been using different systems in the past that didn't maybe pan out. And I think a lot of times when we facilitate demos and really walk organizations through the process, a lot of the feedback that we get is that it is very user friendly, it is kind of intuitive to go through and how to manage and edit information as a community based organization. But I think the other piece of that too, going back to the question before, is that we are here to support them so that organization, their staff doesn't have to take on the burden of training other staff at the organization. Like we'll very much be there to support them to be able to take that off their plate.
00:19:04
Yeah. And I'll add kind of just a personal story to that. I met with this organization out of Lancaster and we had a few meetings just about PA navigate and if it was going to work for them, they're a fully volunteer run organization. They don't have any paid staff. Most of their volunteers are not tech savvy and they were really concerned about it for exactly the reasons Kat was kind of saying, like, we don't know if it's fully web based, which is scary for a lot of people.
00:19:32
And we just don't know if it's going to work for us because, you know, we don't have the technology understanding to support this. We had two or three meetings, got them set up, got them on board, got their volunteers trained. They now have referrals turned on for two of their programs and are sitting at about a 90% closed loop rate on their referrals, which we can talk about what that means a little later. But sorry, headphone fell out. But yeah, it's super user friendly.
00:20:03
It takes a few meetings to kind of work out the pain points, but it's really easy to use and typically a conversation can get through a lot. Yeah, absolutely. So let's talk about some of the pain points and let's talk about really what closed loop referral means for people because they might be sitting here saying, I'm still kind of lost. So let's start there. Let's talk about really like, you know, in its intent, in, you know, first pass, sort of priority intended use.
00:20:32
A referral is made from a doctor's office to a nonprofit to a cbo. And let's use an example, Matthew, that I know you're familiar with, you know, something around food, right? Like I screamed that I don't get enough food on a day to day basis. I'm, you know, I'm hungry. The referral goes to a local food pantry.
00:20:52
What ultimately, like, what does it look like? What do I do with it? Or let's say Kats working at the food pantry at this point, right. In this scenario, what happens? What's a closed loop?
00:21:04
What's a closed loop referral really mean?
00:21:08
Yeah. So if that would be the case. So a referral would come in for a food pantry. It depends on the food pantry. If the food pantry is an appointment based food pantry, maybe that staff or that volunteer would call the individual and set up their appointment.
00:21:21
If that food pantry is one where they just kind of come through when the food pantry is open, they might call the individual and say, hey, we're open this week from this time to this time, stop on by and we can get you some food. And so if that individual would schedule an appointment or come through the food pantry, the staff or the volunteer would go into pa. Navigate, click a little button, nice color coded button. Just update that from whatever it is not updated to got help. And so that is what, what we would call a closed loop referral is when the staff or volunteer of the organization goes into PA navigate and clicks that little dropdown button to say this individual that you sent a referral on was able to receive services. Awesome.
00:22:07
And what if, you know, the program that I'm needing help with, what if there's an income requirement that I have to meet or something like that? What, what are the things that as an organization that I can do so that I kind of can help to manage that on the front end or the back end, however you want to describe it? I think for programs at organizations where there is certain criteria or there is a lot of eligibility criteria, that's where a screener, as Matthew mentioned, can come in really handy. So the organization is able to create a customer screening form, eligibility form. I think you can.
00:22:46
Organizations for a specific program can create 20 different questions and they can, you know, ask maybe where, where someone resides, if only maybe a service is available to different neighborhoods or they can assess income or ask those other questions that are going to assess eligibility. And I think what's nice is that going back to some of the hesitation with organizations is I think sometimes there can be this perception that if they put their program on PA Navigate and open up referrals, that kind of the floodgates will open and they'll get, you know, a ton of these referrals they don't have capacity for. And I think that definitely is a valid concern. But I do think with setting up your program card in the right way, with having that screener, it's not necessarily going to increase the volume of referrals. You know, it may, but it's really about creating more high quality referrals for your organization.
00:23:35
So you're really getting the clients referred to you that you can actually, you know, support and address their needs. Yeah, I think one of the pain points we hear pretty often, right when we, and even when we started introducing this platform just to our members before we're the community engagement partner on the platform was, look, Beck, we don't need any more referrals. We've got plenty of referrals. What are you trying to do to us? We already have more people than we can help on a day to day basis.
00:24:00
But I think to your point, Kat, right. What you just said is really important there that I think in a lot of ways this platform can create a streamlining of process even for organizations that maybe haven't had the time to think around Right. How else they're receiving referrals and potentially utilize this as a way to manage referrals from other locations and other places. That is my two cents. I don't know.
00:24:24
You can tell me I'm crazy. You're not crazy. Thank you. That was. I was hoping that that would prompt.
00:24:30
You to say that. I mean, I might be a little bit, you know, with all due respect, but that's okay. So I think one of the other pain points that you started to kind of tackle there, Kat, that I want to peel back a couple layers to is the point about more high quality referrals and the program card. And so if I'm an organization that maybe has. Let's just, let's be kind and say like 20 programs that I'm managing so I could have food, I could have early learning resource centers, I could have.
00:25:03
Maybe I help to connect people to resources through service navigation. Maybe I am a weatherization provider. If I'm a community action agency, maybe I also do utility assistance work. Right. Like I'm a myriad of services as an organization.
00:25:20
There's sort of a decision point there about how I list my programs, in what way I list my programs. Do I list all my programs? Do I not list all my programs? And so if I'm an organization that's listening right now and I haven't really done anything with the platform, and I go and I search for my own organization on the platform and I see that some of my programs are listed and some aren't. There's some work that you kind of spoke to Matthew about working through the program card piece.
00:25:45
Can you talk a little bit about kind of some of what an organization should be looking for and things to be mindful of? I think as they're doing that. Yeah. And honestly, setting up your program on PA Navigate is probably one of the most important aspects of it because of the way PA Navigate searches. So it's.
00:26:06
You search via your zip code on PA Navigate, but when you're an organization setting up your program card, you select a coverage area. So you select essentially who do you serve and where do you serve. And so if you select that you serve an entire county, you'll populate in every zip code in that county. And same thing, if you say you serve the entire state, you'll populate in every zip code in the state. And so that's kind of the first piece of it.
00:26:32
But your program card has everything about your organization. So it has your eligibility, your survey, who you serve and what you do. And so the what you do categories is essentially how you get filtered into the categories of care on PA Navigate. So an organization selects those service tags and when they select those service tags, they'll get filtered into categories on PA Navigate. And that's how people are going to find you.
00:27:01
And we always say the more service tags you can add that make sense that fall on in line with your program, the better because the more categories you're going to fall under, the easily, more easily people can find you. So that's another important one. And just like you said, eligibility requirements, if there is any income eligibility or, or things like that, you want to let people know. That way they don't have to fill out an application or call you or email you to figure out if they're elig eligible or not. And PA Navigate actually makes that really easy too, because you can filter via income eligibility to where it won't even show you programs that you're not eligible for based on the income that you put in, which is really great.
00:27:42
And so there are ways that you can set up your program card to get very specific. And if you do get very specific with what you do, who you serve and where you serve, you'll really get those top tier referrals in terms of the people who are going to be contacting you are people who qualify for your program and are kind of the right fit for your program. And I think, you know, we talked about this a bit, Kat, when we presented at the Homes Within Reach conference a couple weeks ago with Kesha and Marianne Smith from one of our healthcare partners in this work is there were some folks that were in the room that were talking about not getting the best referrals sometimes or like the same person was often referred for the same program over and over and over. And so we said, right, give us those examples, not the client information, right, the patient information. We don't need that.
00:28:35
But give us some of the details so we have some context so that we can understand what's happening. Because there could be some program card work that needs to happen, right? Or there could just be some education on the healthcare side that we could reach out to someone, right, to help them understand what's happening. Because I think that's an important component here. Because what you said there, Matthew, around, right, like getting the specificity is that you think about a caseworker at a hospital, just like on the CBO side, right?
00:29:02
Like they're having to churn out patients quickly, effectively, accurately. There's only so much data you can look at in any given day and in moment. And so they're trying to help solve challenges for patients. They are not going to necessarily know your organization. And so the more specific you are, the easier it makes for them to provide the best referral.
00:29:25
And we had an agency who said this once and I will never forget this comparison. It's right, like the healthcare side isn't ever going to refer someone who has a heart condition over to write the podiatrist. And they're not going to not provide context for why the person needs to be seen for follow up. But the only way for that to really happen accurately and effectively is for the service to be described in the right way. Because if it just says general services.
00:29:53
Well, general services could mean all kinds of different things. If I just say child care, is it early child care? Early, early child care. Early child care. What's the word I'm looking for?
00:30:04
Dear God, help me somebody. Early education, child care, is it right. Early learning resource center, is it Head Start, is it reduced cost childcare center? Right. Like there's all kinds of different things that those things could be.
00:30:16
And so you gotta try to figure out how to simplify the process for everybody. Yeah. And I'll add to that. And I can say this because I don't work there anymore. When I worked at a community action agency, I didn't, like, I didn't even know all of the stuff that the different departments did.
00:30:34
So as somebody, as an employee of that organization, understanding that I didn't know all the services that were provided under the roof that I worked in, just understanding that when, if it's individuals or healthcare workers, they're not going to know all the services that your organization's providing. So being able to get as specific as possible and really just assuming that people are going in with fresh eyes to your organization is really important. And I think I was just going to add, I think to adding the lens of like the individual, the seeker perspective. Like if I'm someone looking for services, how would this program card look to me? Would I understand it?
00:31:12
Would I know like what this service provides? I just wanted to add that too, that I think that sometimes, sometimes a lens or perspective we can forget. But definitely important when reviewing program cards. Yeah, I describe that as curse of knowledge. Right.
00:31:23
I mean even as we're having this conversation and we're, the three of us are in this work all the time, I keep thinking of different points and I'm like, oh, if somebody's not heard this, they need to understand this and so we have to try to anytime, you know, from a management perspective, from a leadership perspective, from just a process perspective, asking somebody else who may not know, you know, even about what you do at an organization and say, can you look at this and tell me, right? Like if you were looking for something around this topic, would it, would it tell you really what this is? And I think there are some programs, for instance, like Veteran Services. Veteran Services could be. I mean, you name.
00:32:04
My dad's a vet, my brothers are vets, right. Like half most of my family is a vet one way, shape, form or another. This, each one of the different services that they may need at any given day is vastly different from each other. So just saying Veteran Services isn't enough because you could just address, not just, but you could address this one thing. And that's.
00:32:24
It's complicated. And I think the other thing here is that a lot of times, right, the manner in which those services come to be are complicated. And so, yes, be specific, but also, right, get so specific that now you've confused people through acronyms and other things that you're like, where's my decoder ring? I got to figure this out.
00:32:52
Anything else that if you're a CBO listening that you, either one of you would suggest as a first step? So we mentioned about panavigatehelp.org, contacting of course, one of our amazing team members to kind of walk through the process. But maybe it's a first pass, right? Like what's something that you would suggest for somebody that's listening right now?
00:33:12
What I always suggest for people and usually when I give demos, I throw the PA Navigate like the live site link in the chat is just to go on it and search as if you're searching for a resource. Just look through it, see how it works. See how an individual or somebody searching for another individual would find services. Because if you understand how people are finding programs, you can better set up your programs on the back end. So that's what I always recommend as kind of a first step is just get familiar with what it looks like on the front end before you try and set up that back end piece.
00:33:49
Yeah, that's a great suggestion. And so if I'm someone, and we'll get into this a little bit when we talk about the healthcare side. And so if I'm somebody that's looking for a service or a resource, so I'm seeking services, what's something important that I want to look for as maybe I know that this is an organization that's going to be responsive to me. What's something that's super critical that you might point somebody to to keep an eye out for? Yes, definitely claimed that a program is claimed first and foremost.
00:34:21
So that's when you get to your list of programs or your program cards. There's a little gray circle and a check mark in the top right hand corner. So that indicates that the the program is claimed. So someone at the organization has an account, they've claimed ownership of the listing. Really just showing that more than likely that program card is up to date.
00:34:41
You know, being looked at, being managed by someone will be responsive to referrals coming in. Then the extra layer to that is looking for the PA Navigate trusted network tag that just shows up right under the program listing. And that indicates that at CAAP, we have engaged with that organization, we've trained the staff and they also have referrals turned on. And so again, that just means there's that trust factor there that again, we've trained them, they're engaged, they know how to use the platform, they're going to be responsive and close the loop on a referral that's coming in. Awesome.
00:35:15
Anything else that you all want to say from like a pain point perspective of CBO or anything else that you want to elevate before we kind of transition over into the healthcare side a little bit and it's okay if there's. Not, I would just maybe elevate the. No, wrong door. Because I think, yeah, this is a good point, maybe not a hesitation, but just a point of confusion because we do have, you know, Aunt Bertha that is now Find Help. We do have PA Navgate and we do have these other, what we call white labels or customers of Find Help.
00:35:45
So other maybe coalition groups or health systems that have their own version of P Navigate. And what we like to say, I know Matthew made this really awesome visual that we continue to send out because I think it really just easily kind of just visualizes it very well that no matter what door you go through, whether it's Find Help, whether it's PA Navigate, whether you are a staff member at Geisinger or using Neighborly, which is their version, it's a different door all into the same system of resources. All of the different doors talk to one another. If you are a staff member that uses PA Navigate and you make a referral to a CBO that uses Neighborly, again, that referral information is still going to flow through. That update will flow through from one system to the other.
00:36:30
So it's Just, again, I think a point of confusion that we oftentimes hear, but just wanted to clarify. Again, different doors, but same system on the back end. Yeah. So if you're not sure, I think ask. Reach out to us.
00:36:45
Right. We're happy to tell you whether or not it is a product of Find Help or not. And I think as we transition over to the healthcare piece of this conversation, this is a good place to start, is that, you know, just like the nonprofit world, we use tons and tons of different technologies in businesses, and the more that we can make the marriage of that technology and our processes and our people line up, the less administrative burden that we have. And so within, you know, going to a hospital, if you think about the patient experience, you know, there's the computer that your doctor is typing in and, you know, a system of record to note that you've arrived at your appointment. Then there's, you know, your actual health record and all of the components that live within your health record.
00:37:29
And then there's referral platform, and then there's, you know, the system in which you order medication. And I don't know because I'm not a doctor, so I'm just making things up that I'm assuming live within different systems. But in this hypothetical world that I'm living in right now, right. There's all these different systems. And so there are other products out there for people to provide referrals.
00:37:50
And so what Find Help has done is create additional technologies outside of PA navigate, Because Navigate was not, you know, their original technology that they created. They created a referral platform, and so they've created technologies that integrate into hospital systems so that those referrals can be made without someone leaving one system of record to go to another. Right. Which becomes burdensome for the staff member. And so these other platforms have existed in order to do that.
00:38:23
And each health system may have a different system of record. To your point, Kat. Right. And so that's part of why this gets a little confusing. So when in doubt, ask.
00:38:31
I try to keep up on all the names, but sometimes they get lost in this chaos of a brain of mine. So as we think about kind of the Healthcare piece a little bit more, why Healthcare? Why should they engage with us? We talked a little bit about kind of the social determinants health screener, but you mentioned about reduction of healthcare costs. But anything you all want to kind of point to in terms of the value proposition from a healthcare perspective.
00:39:08
Yeah, I can just. I can say that I think that the. The important thing about PA Navigate is being able to see the outcomes of the referral. So you're not just sending it into the ether and hoping for the best for your patient is that these healthcare agencies are seeing the feedback and ideally they will see health outcomes in relation to that. So if somebody goes to their general practitioner and they do screen for food insecurity, they're referred to a food pantry.
00:39:40
You see the outcome that they were able to get resources from the food pantry and then they have a follow up visit. Ideally they'll see positive health outcomes from that referral. And so you're seeing these positive health outcomes for your patients through this platform. That's what we're hoping to see. And that expands goes for all elements of social care, you know, housing, security, all things that are covered under PA Navigate.
00:40:06
But I know that's the big value proposition is that you are seeing real health outcomes from these referrals. I think too it also similar to what Matthew said, just adding, you know, the social care like as part of a patient's medical record, like it's not just their medical record but it's their social care history. And that just becomes part of the conversation at a well visit. Just like you're checking up on someone's maybe blood pressure and how that's coming along, you know, month to month or year to year. It's also again making those social determinants of health part of the conversation on a regular basis.
00:40:43
Yeah. And so I think again for people who are listening, we use the example of housing. You know, if I'm worried about food for my kids, if I'm worried about if I'm cold every night when I go to bed, if I don't have warm water, all of these things that start to impact our health literally. And then the stress factors start to impact my health. And so we know that people who are in those living situations have a higher propensity for healthcare challenges.
00:41:13
Heart disease, gastro issues, mental health issues, on and on and on and on. From an anxiety based perspective, there's lots and lots of things, things we know that there is this correlation. And so I think that's, that's really kind of the key part of this because if we think about this from a cash rate like cost perspective, my health really isn't going to get any better if I keep going back to that same living condition. And so I'm going to continue to go back to the doctor's office, I'm going to continue to have worsening health conditions potentially. I'm going to continue to be a patient that costs health systems and my insurance.
00:42:00
Right. All of those systems, more and more money. If we can help to offset that stress, those types of risks, my patient cost comes back down to the healthcare system. Right. And my basic needs are being met.
00:42:14
And hopefully, particularly when connected with a community action agency, we know because of our, you know, core work in trying to help people become economically mobile and self sufficient, our goal is to get people. Right. Further and further away from being reliant on those systems and so ultimately to become self sufficient and beyond. Right. So that future them and their, you know, children and families in the future don't screen for those types of needs.
00:42:44
So for community action, for me, it's a no brainer in our work in this space and doing the community engagement work and helping to educate our agencies on it because we've already been doing this work for a long time since our existence.
00:42:59
We should also go back for just a second and say that if you're a nonprofit or an organization that provides a free or reduced cost program, that that's how you get your program on the platform. So if you are an organization that offers free or reduced programming of any kind, that's when you can be put on this platform. If not, then you're not eligible for the platform. And for a CBO, this is free to use. Right.
00:43:26
And or anybody who's looking to provide a referral, it is free to just use PA Navigate in its truest form. I think that's one of the other questions that we get. And again, go back to that curse of knowledge. We should have started with that, but it slipped my mind because we're so close to it all the time. Are there any other, as we kind of get to the end of our discussion here, are there any other examples that either one of you want to elevate or to showcase in terms of kind of like early insight on how PA Navigate was working, how it was strengthening local communities or partnerships that have formed.
00:44:00
Anything in particular that you want to make sure to say, like, this is something that has been really kind of of best in class. Best practice.
00:44:09
Yeah, just maybe not necessarily a best practice, but just something that I feel like we're starting to see more and more of. As you know, we have some history and time with the project and our community engagement strategy. We're starting to see, I would say, these PA Navigate local champions emerge, which is really exciting. So I know Aaron at school Community Action, Erin Muldowney, just want to give her a huge shout out because She's, I think, really, they've been an early adopter of PA Navigate. And just recently she actually facilitated a demo on her own with the Hive, which is a group in Schuylkill county, along with the Schuylkill County United Way, and is really doing engagement work on her own just to showcase the value of the platform, kind of show a baseline understanding to other local organizations, organizations.
00:44:57
And I think we're starting to see more and more of that of these organizations that have had a really positive experience just spreading the word locally, which I think is really huge, and really, again, really helping us make have those warm handoffs to organizations that we can support even more. Yeah, I think same. Shout out to Bucks County Health Improvement Plan. Kim Permar, I think, is your last name New last name Kim? I hopefully didn't butcher that.
00:45:21
Too bad. But they've been championing, championing, championing. Champion. Championing. Champ.
00:45:27
Say the word. Championing. Championing. Championing. Cool.
00:45:30
That was. I'm clearly not had enough caffeine today. Championing PA Navigate for a long time. And we've had a really great conversations with Kim and her team about this as well. And they're sort of working across multiple facets in their work, but they've been a really important partner for us as well.
00:45:48
And just, honestly, just some of the conversations have been really helpful and insightful. What about you, Matthew? Any examples or insights or. Yeah, so this isn't necessarily about a specific organization, but just about how PA Navigate is kind of affecting the community in the state. And so I'm a data person, and I was looking through the data because we're coming to a year and everybody likes to do like the year in review type of thing.
00:46:13
So I was looking at the PA Navigate data and I was like, just looking for anything that stands out. And not necessarily a good standout, but an important standout is I was looking through the data and, you know, food pantries are the number one search term on PA Navigate. In almost every locale in the state. We usually see about 500 searches a day for food pantries. But I just wanted to point out that on Tuesday, October 28th of this year, which was a few days before SNAP got paused because of the government shutdown that we usually see about 500 searches a day.
00:46:54
We saw 3,200 searches for food pantries in one day on PA Navigate. Just to show the impact that this platform is having. Obviously, we don't want that to be happening. We don't want that many people to need a food pantry. But when things like that do happen, this is a resource that exists that people can come to, and it does have food pantries.
00:47:18
It has the resources that they're looking for. So I just think that's really important to shout out that when things like that do happen, kind of unprecedented things like that happen, this is a resource that's available for people to come to, and it's a resource that they can rely on. And I think that's really important. Absolutely. No, I appreciate that.
00:47:37
I appreciate that elevation of that. I think it's important and. Well, and to that end, I think with respect to the SNAP benefit changes and the work requirement, volunteer requirement, can one of you share a little bit about kind of the volunteer opportunity piece and how that new requirement is being addressed? Yeah, I think, again, I, you know, definitely unfortunate that P Navigate has to be used in this way, but I'm just, I'm excited that PA Navigate is again serving as a resource in a different way, so really being used to promote local volunteer opportunities. So organizations that have a volunteer opportunity using Pay Navigate to post that as a program to say, like this program is actively accepting volunteers so that individuals can go to PA Navigate, put volunteer in the search bar, and they'll see a list of search results that have those volunteer opportunities at local organizations that they can.
00:48:33
Can connect with and be able to satisfy that work requirement those hours every month so that they can maintain, you know, those critical benefits like food in the future will be medical assistance. So again, just really, really proud that. And just, you know, excited that PA Navigate is being leveraged in that way to just, again, support. Support individuals in maintaining really important benefits. Absolutely.
00:49:00
Yeah. And I can add to that, I think that aspect, the fact that we were able to add that, I would say, pretty seamlessly, I think we did a pretty good job. Just shows the flexibility of the platform and how it can adapt and change to what's needed in the community. Actually, I was just at a. Did a presentation where we were talking about the volunteer requirements and they were talking about the changes, and then they were talking just generally about how to manage volunteers kind of in this new age.
00:49:29
And, and in the presentation, I was kind of thinking about it. PA Navigate wasn't necessarily set up to manage volunteers, but you can set up applications for your volunteer opportunities. You can track who volunteered, you can track how many hours they volunteered. There's no reason it can't be used for that. So PA Navigate is very flexible in that way to kind of meet the need of whatever organization what the.
00:49:52
Whatever the organization's looking for, which is really great. Yeah, absolutely. No, I think that that's, I think that that's a really important thing to lift up. Now if you're a youth serving organization, you want to make sure to look up the direct care and supervision volunteers of children because we have some pretty stringent rules here in Pennsylvania about what that needs to look like. It's one of the soapboxes I talk about pretty often, mainly because I worked in youth education for the majority of my career and always something that I had to manage very tightly.
00:50:18
So I think that's an important caveat. But yeah, absolutely. And I think we also have heard in the very beginning of the launch of this platform that DHS wants to be able to use this as a way to see where there are needs that aren't being met. Where are there organizations that are doing a really remarkable job. And we know that with that funding opportunities will be identified in the future.
00:50:44
That's kind of the next layer of this after we get a large number of CBOs onboarded and utilizing the platform on a regular basis. And at the same time, I would also say that healthcare, they're also identifying right where there are big solutions being found to help patients and hopefully right there are discussions and contractual opportunities that will emerge from that data as it continues to evolve. And we see real true examples of right healthcare costs coming down when there's really intentional relationships being formed.
00:51:23
Any other examples that you want to share or kind of when you think about looking ahead, anything you want to elevate around that we haven't talked about yet, around the way that PA Navigate may evolve or change kind of the work between healthcare and CBOs at all.
00:51:43
I think to your point back, I think funding is going to be huge for organizations, especially now. You know, I think there is more need, there will continue to be more need, CBOs will continue to just not have the capacity necessarily meet that need. So I think the, I think just funding opportunities with PA Navigate is huge. I think as it ties to that just for community based organizations, the data and analytics that they have access to on the back end is also amazing. And I know, you know, any of our communication managers would be happy to dive into that with anyone.
00:52:21
But I think it's a really great way for organizations, especially smaller ones who may not have, you know, a team dedicated to data, to be able to really showcase your impact of how many people you're helping, what are the needs locally in your community and how you're going about addressing them through the platform. And so I think that's a really, really huge sell for organizations as well to just have access to that kind of data for free. Yeah, absolutely. And we oftentimes will talk about this, right, like utilizing it for a case for support, to prove proof of concept for an agency and the work that they're doing. It's a really simple way to use the platform to help showcase what you're already doing really well.
00:53:05
And if you set up your program cards right, can give you really deep, deep insight about what people are searching for. Yep. Matthew, anything else that you want to elevate? Yeah, I mean, similarly to what Kat was saying, just about really leveraging existing relationships with healthcare partners as a community based organization. So one great thing about PA Navigate is you can see where your referrals are coming from.
00:53:30
So if you have referrals set up and you see that your local healthcare system is sending you a ton of referrals, it doesn't hurt to send an email or make a phone call and just say, hey, you're making a ton of referrals to us. Let's just talk and see. Can we do anything better? Is there, is there a way that this can work better for both of us? So using PA Navigate to leverage those existing relationships is super important.
00:53:53
I love that. Yes, 1,000%, Amanda.
00:53:58
Well, I want to say to both of you, I really appreciate the work that you're doing on a regular basis. Kat, the job that you're doing, managing the team and helping to lead this project on the engagement side. And Matthew, your role in just helping to guide in some of the analytics pieces and onboarding organizations. The work is really important. Shout out to our other community engagement managers on the team, Christy Kilmer, Keisha Stewart, and Christina Tanisha.
00:54:22
Also members of our group and for action item, kind of for everybody who's listening again, panavigatehelp.org you can check us out there, connect with one of your local community engagement managers or make sure somebody fact check me here. panavigatecaap.org yeah. Okay, good. I always. I can never remember if it's PA Navigate help or PA Navigate info.
00:54:50
And you can connect also just with your questions and one of our amazing team members will follow up with you directly. Thank you all for spending some time hanging out on the thinking CAAP. I appreciate you. Thank you. Yes, thank you.
00:55:04
I'm leaning forward because the sun is starting to go across my face. Yeah, no, no, I see that. I see that. That's okay. It means it's time for us to wrap up, but thank you to our listeners.
00:55:13
We appreciate you. Thanks for putting on your Thinking CAAP and we'll check you the next time on the Thinking CAAP. Bye everybody.
00:55:22
Thank you for being a part of this episode of the Thinking CAAP. Check the show notes for resources and links to other episodes, and don't forget to subscribe and follow to be notified when new episodes are released. If you have any Community Action questions you'd like Beck or one of our local experts to answer in a future episode. Please email your questions about community action to info@theCAAP.org, subject line ThinkingCAAP.
If you have any Community Action questions you’d like Beck or one of our local experts to answer in a future episode, please email your questions about Community Action to info@thecaap.org — subject line: Thinking CAAP.