TranslatePortfolio of Interventions
Sonoma County is seeking to become an Accountable Community of Health, a national model for linking and coordinating prevention-focused strategies across different sectors and organizations to form a coherent, creative, and reinforcing portfolio of activities designed to improve health outcomes, reduce disparities, and lower healthcare costs.
On behalf of Health Action, the Sonoma County Department of Health Services is seeking to become one of several communities participating in the California Accountable Communities for Health Initiative (CACHI), offered through a partnership of The California Endowment, Community Partners, California Health and Human Services Agency, the Blue Shield of California Foundation, and Kaiser Permanente.
This as an incredible opportunity to advance the work of Health Action and its subcommittees, particularly Hearts of Sonoma County and the Sustainability Financing Catalyst Team. Participation in the CACHI will support pilot testing the ACH concept by focusing on preventing cardiovascular disease and reducing heart attacks and strokes—both in terms of incidence and impact on our community—among a specific population, linking interventions, measuring outcomes, and quantifying impact. Ultimately, this amounts to building infrastructure that will enable Health Action partners to expand the Accountable Communities of Health approach to community health issues more broadly throughout the county.
The work of Health Action to date already aligns with many key elements of an Accountable Community of Health. Funding and technical assistance through CACHI will expedite this work through dedicated planning to connect various community health efforts and address ongoing challenges, such as data sharing to measure the impact of health improvement efforts across multiple organizations, as well as quantifying return on investment to capture potential cost savings.
Ultimately, the goal of piloting Accountable Communities of Health is to transform how we, as a community, think about and address health issues. To truly improve our community’s health and lower healthcare costs, we need to coordinate efforts beyond the traditional boundaries of our healthcare system in a collective manner that links healthcare services to other social factors that affect health, such as education, social services, and business, as well as environmental and policy planning.
