Boston Medical Center has been presented with one of the American Hospital Association’s (AHA’s) most prestigious awards – the Foster G. McGaw Prize for Excellence in Community Service. BMC was also awarded the top prize from the American Society for Health Care Engineering (ASHE).

The prize, created in 1986, recognizes a healthcare organization that is “committed to community service through a range of programs that demonstrate a passion and continuous commitment to making communities healthier and more vital.”

Among the initiatives cited in the award was BMC’s implementation of a social determinants of health screener for primary care patients in 2017 after a six-month study period of new patients. BMC’s THRIVE model screens patients for unmet social needs, such as food and housing insecurity, and helps clinicians to automatically provide referral information for resources both at the hospital and within the community.

In 2020, BMC devoted more than a year to investigate racial health disparities observed across the organization, which resulted in the launching of the Health Equity Accelerator (HEA), a system-wide approach to holistically address the root causes of health inequities. Through the HEA, BMC identified five clinical areas as having the most pressing racial health inequities: maternal and child health, infectious disease, behavioral health, chronic conditions, and oncology and end-stage renal disease. Multidisciplinary teams were then created to address the issues.

“Boston Medical Center is a national leader in going outside the four walls of the hospital and into the community to advance healthcare access and outcomes, especially for the most underserved,” said Rick Pollack, AHA president and CEO. “By working diligently with a wide range of community partners — including nontraditional ones — Boston Medical Center serves as a model to the hospital field in efforts to reduce health and social inequities.”

“Our approach to healthcare holistically addresses issues such as housing and food insecurity, environmental sustainability, and economic mobility,” said Alastair Bell, M.D., president & CEO of Boston Medical Center Health System. “By working upstream, we are able to understand the root causes of health disparities and implement innovative solutions that improve health and wellbeing.” The American Society for Health Care Engineering’s Excellence in Health Care Facility Management Award recognizes BMC for its establishment of the Brockton Behavioral Health Center, which opened in October 2022. BMC converted an out-of-service nursing home built in the 1960s into an 80-bed, state-of-the-art behavioral health facility. The Brockton center was the first net-zero behavioral health facility in the United States.