GHDonline, part of the Global Health Delivery Project, recently opened the US Communities Initiative to create opportunities for health care professionals across the United States to share resources, ideas, and information in virtual communities. The new communities went public on June 3, 2013, at the Health Datapalooza conference in Washington, D.C. At the conference, Amol Navathe, MD, PhD, co-director of the Foundation for Healthcare Innovation, co-Editor-in-Chief of Healthcare: The Journal of Delivery Science and Innovation, and a physician at Brigham & Women's Hospital, announced the first virtual community that is part of this initiative [video]: the Innovating Health Care Delivery Community.

A grant to the Division of Global Health Equity at Brigham and Women’s Hospital from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality at the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services enables the GHD Project to host six professional virtual communities and 36 virtual expert panels on http://www.GHDonline.org over the next three years, in addition to the communities already hosted there. New topics will range from the Affordable Care Act to mental health integration with a goal of sharing innovative ways to deliver evidence-based health care to underserved communities in the United States. Interested health care professionals are invited to join GHDonline and shape the US Communities Initiative by suggesting future discussions.

The Global Health Delivery Project is dedicated to improving the health of populations by creating and sharing a comprehensive knowledge base on effective design and implementation of health care programs and systems in resource-poor settings worldwide. Rebecca Weintraub, MD, directs the GHD Project.