People working to improve population health have been collaborating for quite some time. Lessons from this work have been hard-won. Sometimes collaboratives fade away without ever making the intended improvements. Observing this, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation built on its experience supporting health collaboratives and created the Aligning Systems for Health project. As part of the project, the foundation worked with the Georgia Health Policy Center and many other partners to create the Framework for Aligning Sectors as a way of thinking about how collaborating organizations might become more effective together and move beyond short-term efforts to create lasting improvements in community well-being. An important part of the Georgia Health Policy Center’s work on the Aligning Systems for Health project has been to help translate the Framework for Aligning Sectors into concrete actions in a way that helps practitioners in health care, public health, and social services better serve members of the communities around them. One way that the Georgia Health Policy Center has done this is to create the TEAM.
The TEAM is a set of tools designed to help collaboratives and the communities they serve reflect on their collaborative work. To understand the potential uses of the TEAM, see the sections Who Should Use the TEAM? and Why Was the TEAM Created?