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Adam Kruggel, Executive Director, Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization (CCISCO) and Tanir Ami, Executive Director, Community Clinic Consortium, Contra Costa & Solano Counties
Contra Costa Health Access Campaign
"Increasing access to health care is not the end all be all, but it’s a fantastic start to improving health outcomes…. The whole purpose here is to create change in a way that benefits low-income families."
- Tanir Ami, Executive Director, Community Clinic Consortium
In Brief: A coalition of organizations with deep experience in health care delivery and community organizing will create a multi-year action plan to improve access to health insurance and high quality health care for the county’s low-income residents.
The Health Issue: Many of Contra Costa’s low-income residents have no health insurance and struggle to find access to high quality health care. Providers and community-based organizations have understood this anecdotally for years. To gather some local numbers, a quick survey by the Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization of 500 low-income households in east county found that over 40% have no form of health insurance, 60% have never heard of the county’s temporary coverage called Basic Health Care, and 25% have not sought treatment for a serious medical condition because they could not pay for it. Many struggle to navigate the sometimes confusing connections between community clinics and the county health system.
The Health Improvement Strategy: Four organizations – The Community Clinic Consortium, Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization, La Clínica de la Raza, and Planned Parenthood Shasta-Diablo -- are engaged in a planning process to create a multi-year Contra Costa Health Access Campaign. That campaign would have three primary goals:
- Increase enrollment of uninsured residents in existing health coverage programs.
- Help residents throughout the county develop the leadership skills needed to advocate for policies to improve access.
- Facilitate a dialogue among the county health system and the community clinics that serve these lower income communities to promote a more collaborative and seamless system for delivering primary and specialty care.
The partners will use a facilitated planning process to devise the most effective way to achieve their goals. “We are determining the roles of each of the partners, who else we need to engage, what types of conversations we need to have, and what types of benchmarks we need to set,” says Tanir Ami, executive director of the Community Clinic Consortium. The group expects to have a plan-of-action in place and ready to roll out early in 2009.
"We believe there is the potential to have one of the most effective models for coverage in the country. Basic Health Care is a strong beginning; now we need to finish the job." - Adam Kruggel, Executive Director, Contra Costa Interfaith Supporting Community Organization