Welcome to our Spring issue of the ACCESS Newsletter!

We have some exciting updates for you, the first of which is the launch of our reimagined Strategic Plan. As you may remember, we launched our 2023-2025 Strategic Plan last year with five Bold Steps aimed at steering the organizational direction over those three years. At this year’s CPCA Board retreat in February, it became clear that we needed to consolidate and streamline the vision set out in 2023 to fulfill the goals outlined. As such, we have combined the work related to health center optimization and regulatory equity into one Bold Step, as so much of the work was already aligned.

As you can see, our strategic plan remains rooted in health equity and continues to be the guiding star which leads our work. I am excited to see how this Strategic Plan has evolved and continues to change to meet the objectives outlined by our Board. We continue to be rooted in the work to improve the health of all Californians and driven by the community health center (CHC) mission to increase access and provide high quality care to everyone.

We have also had some exciting organizational changes you will read about, including merging the current Health Center Operations and Legal Affairs and Health Access and Quality departments. Our goal with this change is to create an internal team and infrastructure that reflects the strategic plan and priorities of our Board and members, provides leadership and professional growth opportunities for our staff, and amplifies the inextricable connections between education, advocacy, and policy to advance the mission of CPCA and CHCs.

We are also celebrating CPCA's 30th Anniversary (link to 30th Anniversary Website)! This is an exciting milestone for our organization and for the health center movement in California and we will spend this year celebrating the transformative accomplishments of the past three decades. Yet even as we look back, it is also an opportunity to look to the future – to position community health centers as providers and employers of choice, and to ensure the wellbeing and civic health of our communities. I am excited about what lies ahead for our organization – and our movement – when we focus on the work we are doing to achieve the goals of our strategic plan.

You can read more about our organizational updates – including new staff joining CPCA – as well as exciting updates on our ongoing Medi-Cal Health Navigator work, our 2024 Boutique Conferences and Symposiums, and our ongoing work with our partners at Kaiser on the Population Health Management Initiative (PHMI). We have much to share with all of you and I hope you are as motivated as I am for the work ahead!