About

The Crimson Care Collaborative (CCC) is a high-impact student-faculty collaborative clinic that provides primary care services to the greater Boston population through several clinical sites, interprofessional education to Harvard Medical School, Harvard College, and Massachusetts General Hospital’s Institute for Health Profession students, and quality research in systems design and working with diverse communities.

The Crimson Care Collaborative is composed of several sites. Each of these sites collaborate and execute centralized functions through the Umbrella Board. Such functions include CCC-wide research and educational projects, quality improvement measurement, staffing, social media outreach, and community building activities.

Mission Statement

The mission of CCC is to provide an enriching clinical, research and inter professional educational environment for health professional students to meet the primary care needs of our communities in the Greater Boston area.

Operations

CCC represents HMS’ largest student organization and only student-faculty clinic network. Across our five sites, we deliver over 2000 annual student-driver patient encounters. Our volunteer base consists of over 100 students per year from HMS, HSDM, MGH IHP, and Harvard College, and our acceptance rates (<3% for undergraduates and 50% for graduates) demonstrate overwhelming student demand.

Impact

A core tenet of the CCC mission is to provide care to vulnerable members of our community. The vast majority of our clinics focus on offering care to un- or under-insured patients throughout medically underserved regions of Greater Boston. Research conducted at our Chelsea site from 2013-2019 showed that of 229 patients surveyed, 41% reported an annual income of less than $15,000 a year, and 36% reported an annual income of $15,000–30,000. Of the surveyed patients, 76% identified as Hispanic/Latinx, 10% identified as Caucasian, 7% identified as Black or African American, and approximately 1% identified as Asian/Pacific Islander.

Early data from CCC showed that the percentage of our patients with controlled hypertension was well above the national average of traditional primary care practices (76% versus 48.4%). Additional research efforts in our system found that engagement with CCC statistically decreases emergency department utilization, alleviating both individual and systemic financial burden. Engagement with CCC was shown to significantly enhance patient consultation of trustworthy medical information. Significant efforts have been taken to deliver evidence-based, high-quality care to our community, including delivering dental screening and care during CCC clinics. These select examples serve to highlight CCC’s robust and tangible impact on the health of HMS’ surrounding communities.

CCC also has tangible educational impact. Following the opening on CCC, primary care-affiliated specialties experienced a rise in applications from 51 before the system opened to 70 during the first year of our operation.

History

CCC was founded in 2009 as a collaboration between Harvard Medical School students, the John D. Stoeckle Center for Primary Care Innovation, and the Internal Medicine Associates (IMA) at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, MA. As the first student-faculty collaborative practice at HMS, the clinic was created to address the challenges that many patients face while trying to find long-term primary care.

These challenges include both accessing clinical care and being connected to social services to help them overcome social barriers to health. Since its founding, the clinic has grown to a variety of sites, each serving a unique patient population: IMA, Revere, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Cambridge Health Alliance, and Boston Health Care for the Homeless Program. CCC provides educational opportunities to hundreds of volunteers across Harvard’s undergraduate and graduate populations, including Harvard College, Harvard Medical School, Harvard Dental School, and the MGH Institute of Health Professions.