Camden Coalition. The Jury’s In. Long-term Partnerships Rule
Kathleen Noonan’s quest to build bridges between communities & researchers with long-term relationships & respect for experience & expertise, just like juries. Summary Kathleen Noonan, the CEO, catalyzed the transformation of the Camden Coalition into a national platform for complex care. She focused on capacity building, bridging healthcare research with community organizations, and emphasizing the power of diverse partnerships. Noonan is a staunch advocate for community-driven healthcare, pushing institutions to incorporate local insights and foster long-term relationships that shape better research and policy outcomes. Click here to view the printable newsletter with images. More readable than a transcript, which can also be found below. Two five-minute clips on YouTube. Contents Episode Proem In 2020, early in the COVID pandemic, I joined with several colleagues asking the questions: How can the research industry help laypeople and communities find evidence-based guidance on how to live safely? Guidance that answers their questions when needed? Guidance that feels familiar and helpful. Guidance they trust. How can we be inclusive of our communities’ awesome diversity? See the podcast episode here . We spent several years exploring those questions, informing my passion for community-research partnerships. I highlight such partnerships as often as possible in my podcast. One of my primary advocacy goals is to promote research that answers questions the public and communities ask. My guest today, Kathleen Noonan, is CEO of the Camden Coalition , a multidisciplinary, community-based nonprofit working to improve care for people with complex health and social needs in Camden, across New Jersey, and nationwide. They develop and test care management models and redesign systems in partnership with consumers, community members, health systems, community-based organizations, government agencies, payers, and more to achieve person-centered, equitable care. Podcast intro Welcome to Health Hats, the Podcast. I’m Danny van Leeuwen, a two-legged cisgender old white man of privilege who knows a little bit about a lot of healthcare and a lot about very little. We will listen and learn about what it takes to adjust to life’s realities in the awesome circus of healthcare. Let’s make some sense of all of this. The fragility of health Health Hats: Kathleen, thank you so much for joining us. I’ve been looking forward to this. When did you first realize health was fragile? Kathleen Noonan: That’s a great question. There are so many different answers to that. At some point as a kid, you realize that your parents aren’t just older than you, but older adults don’t stay around. When I was a kid, there was a girl on my block who passed away from pneumonia. It was an early developmental moment. But then, when did you realize that health is fragile because the healthcare system is so fragmented? It is another whole thing. When did I realize that we make our health more fragile because of the system we’ve built? Journey to healthcare advocacy Health Hats: Tell us about the Camden Coalition and your path to becoming CEO of the Camden Coalition. Kathleen Noonan: I didn’t expect to find myself in healthcare as a 20-year-old or even a 30-year-old. I started out doing children’s advocacy work after college. I was a lobbyist for a children’s advocacy organization in New York City and greatly cared about economic benefits. Some might call it economic justice now, but it was things like earned income tax credits and better wages back then. Those were not the issues I worked on. You get what you get In the children’s advocacy organization. I worked on early childhood and issues of the crack and AIDS epidemic in New York City. I learned much about government and governance, state and local roles, and the federal government’s roles. Insights from the legal and corporate worlds Kathleen Noonan: I went to law school and paid off my debt by working as a corporate lawy