Fast Company recognized Intermountain Healthcare’s Primary Promise, which aims to create the nation’s model health system for children, with World Changing Ideas Award.

Fast Company magazine recognized Intermountain Healthcare’s Primary Promise, which aims to create the nation’s model health system for children, for its 2022 World Changing Ideas Awards.

Intermountain’s Primary Promise is a multi-faceted initiative to create the nation’s model health system for children with a more than $500 million investment in children’s health.

The groundbreaking investment will be shared by Intermountain Healthcare and community philanthropic support through an emerging campaign organized by the Intermountain Foundation.

“We are entering a new era in pediatric health that will shape the next century of care for children served by Intermountain Healthcare and Primary Children’s Hospital,” said David Flood,  Intermountain Foundation president and chief development officer for Intermountain Healthcare. “With generous investment from our communities, the Primary Promise initiative will help us to innovatively meet children’s increasingly complex health needs in the generations to come, simultaneously increasing access to care today without burdensome costs passed along to patients and families.”

Primary Promise represents a meaningful collaboration with our communities, said Katy Welkie, RN, MBA, chief executive officer of Primary Children’s Hospital and vice president of Intermountain Children’s Health.

“We believe this recognition is attributed to that community bond, which allows us to focus on all aspects of a child’s physical and mental wellbeing even when they’re outside the walls of our hospital,” Welkie said.

Fast Company named the Intermountain Primary Promise a finalist in the magazine’s Health category and an honorable mention in the General Excellence category. This is Intermountain’s third consecutive World Changing Ideas honor. The health system’s HerediGene Population Study was recognized in 2020, and the community COVID masking initiative – ProjectProtect – received an honor in 2021.

“One of our top priorities at Intermountain is innovation because it allows us to adapt to the rapidly changing landscape of healthcare and better serve our patients and communities,” said Marc Harrison, MD, president and chief executive of Intermountain Healthcare. “When our biggest projects continue to be recognized it shows we are heading in the right direction to provide better care.”

A panel of Fast Company editors and reporters select winners, finalists, and honorable mentions for the magazine’s annual World Changing Ideas Awards from a pool of nearly three thousand entries from around the globe, based on the project’s feasibility and the potential for impact.

World Changing Ideas is one of Fast Company’s major annual awards programs and is focused on social good, seeking to elevate finished products and brave concepts that make the world better.

“We are consistently inspired by the novelty and creativity that people are applying to solve some of our society’s most pressing problems, from shelter to the climate crisis. Fast Company relishes its role in amplifying important, innovative work to address big challenges,” said David Lidsky, interim editor-in-chief of Fast Company. “Our journalists have identified some of the most ingenious initiatives to launch since the start of 2021, which we hope will both have a meaningful impact and lead others to join in being part of the solution.”

With the goals of awarding ingenuity and fostering innovation, Fast Company draws attention to ideas with great potential and helps them expand their reach to inspire more people to start working on solving the problems that affect everyone.

About Intermountain Healthcare

Based in Utah with locations in seven states and additional operations across the western U.S., Intermountain Healthcare is a nonprofit system of 33 hospitals, 385 clinics, medical groups with some 3,800 employed physicians and advanced practice providers, a health plans division with more than one million members called SelectHealth, and other health services. Helping people live the healthiest lives possible, Intermountain is committed to improving community health and is widely recognized as a leader in transforming healthcare by using evidence-based best practices to consistently deliver high-quality outcomes at sustainable costs. For more information, see Intermountain Healthcare.