CIN,

During this time of widespread disruptions that are impacting many of us personally, professionally, and in our communities, it’s important to hold fast to a key touchstone in our lives: our values. While changes in the landscape are natural, our individual and organizational values have not changed. Nor has our mission and vision of how we contribute to improving health care in California. Our core values and commitment to equity and equality remain steadfast.

Please spread the word that Healthforce Center is seeking its next marketing and communications manager, a role that includes support for CIN. See the job posting.

In support,

The California Improvement Network Team 

NEW!

Listening to Community Voices: A Health Plan’s Approach to Reduce Racial Disparities in Maternity Care

Reducing racial disparities in maternal health care is a top priority for many organizations, including CIN partner Molina Healthcare of California, a health plan that in 2023 served 1,579 birthing people in the Inland Empire. With funding from CIN, Molina Healthcare set out to close the gaps in maternal health equity through qualitative analysis aimed at understanding the lived experiences of patients, community-based organizations (CBOs), and doulas with a focus on place-based disparities.

Through structured conversations, interviews, interactions, and observations of in-person activities with providers, health plan members, and CBOs, Molina Healthcare identified three essential learnings that might be helpful to other organizations collaborating with communities on reducing racial disparities in maternal health care. By building meaningful partnerships based on trust, prioritizing the elimination of information gaps that serve as barriers to care, and by committing to acting on learnings from members and providers, Molina Healthcare is optimistic that those efforts will soon translate into more equitable maternal health care.

Creating Equitable Health Outcomes Through Building Internal DEI Practices

Webinar recording now available

The Homeless Prenatal Program (HPP), a nationally recognized family resource center in San Francisco that empowers homeless and low-income families and mothers motivated by pregnancy and parenthood to transform their lives, has been moving the needle on becoming an anti-racist organization for the past 10 years.

Speakers from HPP, a CIN partner organization, discussed the organization’s past, present, and future DEI work (funded in part by CIN) and how improving internal DEI practices can create more equitable health outcomes. This CIN webinar is intended for health care and community-based leaders, managers, and support staff implementing DEI, and individuals interested in understanding interventions to support Black and Latino/x community members.

Strengthening Foundations

Last Call for the Managing to Leading Program

Applications due Friday, March 7

Sponsored by Cedars-Sinai and administered by Healthforce Center at UCSF, Managing to Leading (M2L) is a transformative leadership program for mid-career clinicians and administrative staff at community clinics in Los Angeles. The yearlong program equips participants with the knowledge, resilience, skills, and confidence to effectively lead change within organizations and improve health care delivery across the Los Angeles safety-net field.

See all the program details, including eligibility, requirements, and program elements, and please spread the word about this outstanding opportunity!

Advancing Health Equity

Briefing: CalAIM Housing Community Supports 

Wednesday, March 12, 11:00 AM – 12:30 PM (Pacific)

Attend in Sacramento or online

Three of the CalAIM Community Support programs are crucially important to people experiencing homelessness: housing transition and navigation services, housing deposits, and housing tenancy and sustaining services. Research shows that such support improves the stability of people after they become housed. Other research shows that provision of affordable housing decreases Medicaid expenditures by 12%.

Join in this event by the California Health Care Foundation for a briefing about these supports and an overview of how homelessness impacts a person’s health. Following the presentation, participants will discuss the role Medi-Cal is playing in California’s homelessness response and how that role can be strengthened and improved through critical partnerships across the health, homelessness, and housing sectors.

Evolving Roles and Care Models

Community-Driven Innovation: Shifting Power, Solving Problems

Communities hold the knowledge to effectively and efficiently address the health inequities in their communities. Solutions, approaches, and tools developed by people with lived experience have a greater likelihood of creating meaningful change. But few local organizations have the time and resources to innovate and try something new in how they provide critical support to their communities.

We need to shift our thinking about what counts as community investing and innovation. As CBOs continue to play an increasingly important role providing services and filling inequitable gaps left by education, health and so many other sectors, we need not only more of their work, but new ways of thinking and problem-solving that is for them, by them – and they need the time and resources to do it.

A three-part webinar series from Health Leads offers real-life examples of community-driven innovation and investing.