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“At ChristianaCare, we are committed to improving health for everyone—in all of the communities we serve,” said Bettina Tweardy Riveros, chief health equity officer at ChristianaCare.

When Bettina Tweardy Riveros joined ChristianaCare as chief health equity officer in 2016, she assumed responsibility for engaging community stakeholders in partnerships that advance ChristianaCare’s vision for a healthy Delaware. According to Riveros, the guiding principles of building strong community partnerships can be summed up in the phrase “nothing about us, without us.” This method of engaging community partners entails active listening. “We reached out to community partners, actively listened to them, and spent time assuring them that we understood their community needs, and that we planned to include that in our framework,” she says. In 2019, ChristianaCare ushered in its first “community investment fund,” a unique strategic initiative based on collaboration with community partners to solve the social, behavioral, and environmental factors that amplify adverse health outcomes. Using its “bio-psycho-social” model of care, ChristianaCare works to address the conditions people grow, live, and play in, known as the social determinants of health.

Bettina Tweardy Riveros is Christiana Care's chief health equity officer and senior vice president for government affairs and community engagement. She is working with the clinical team on the new initiative. She says the team does not include experts on prison health care, but will concentrate on the clinical arena. “We’ll be looking at care delivery structure and methods, some clinical workflow, how people are transferred for acute care, how medical staff take advantage of clinical data and analytics and clinical health records,” said Riveros.

“At Christiana Care, we serve our neighbors as respectful, expert, caring partners in their health. We are especially focused on working with partners throughout our community to meet the physical and behavioral health needs of our most vulnerable populations,” said Bettina Tweardy Riveros, Christiana Care chief health equity officer and senior vice president, government affairs and community engagement. “We are glad to provide our health care expertise to the Department of Correction, and we hope that our recommendations will enable the DOC to ensure the delivery of quality care in its facilities and make a positive impact on the health of our community.”...

“We want the ASPIRA students to have the tools they need to learn and stay healthy, and we are looking forward to what we hope will be a lasting partnership,” said Bettina Tweardy Riveros, chief health equity officer and senior vice president of government affairs and community engagement at Christiana Care.