In December 2021, our team's ICN Coordinator/Data Analyst - Ashley Kiel - shared her experience as an essential, but non-clinical team member involved in the challenge we undertook to educate our local IBD community about the ImproveCareNow CIRCLE and how patient and family engagement can positively impact overall care and treatment of IBD. Now, I'd like to add my perspective, as a pediatric GI doc, on why engaging with patients and families is so important, how we have been pursuing engagement efforts over the past year, and what others can steal shamelessly from our experience.

My name is Ashley and I am the ImproveCareNow Coordinator/Data Analyst for the IBD Team at Nationwide Children's Hospital. My team was challenged by the Engagement Trailblazers to educate our patient population about ImproveCareNow's CIRCLE and how patient and family engagement can positively impact overall care and treatment of IBD. 

ImproveCareNow Learning Labs are small groups of care centers with key characteristics in common or who are working on similar issues. This structure enables care centers to work more closely together to catalyze improvement and to maintain personal connections as our Network grows. Engagement Trailblazers is a Learning Lab focused on finding ways to connect with all patients and families across ImproveCareNow and to help them access and utilize the IBD resources we create together.