Apply Now to Become a CIN Partner Organization!

CIN Partner Interest Survey Due September 16

As a learning and action network, CIN’s programming is led by a cohort of partner organizations that engage in shared governance, define priority areas for learning and action, collaborate on network activities, and advance the network’s aim across the health care ecosystem.

We are halfway through the initial phase of recruitment, and the CIN program office team has been enjoying hearing from organizations new and old about their interest in CIN and goals for network participation. We are also hearing great feedback about CIN’s possible new priority areas through these one-on-one conversations. It’s an exciting time! To be considered as a CIN partner, be sure to complete the interest survey by September 16.

The upcoming 2023-24 CIN cycle supports the future state of person-centered health care by bringing together health care organizations (HCOs) and community-based organizations (CBOs) committed to achieving equitable health care experiences and outcomes for Californians. We are recruiting:

• Eligible HCOs work directly with Medi-Cal providers or patients to improve care delivery approaches from the following organizational categories: health care providers, health care payers/plans, state regulators of health care services, and health care membership organizations for the previous categories. 
• Eligible CBOs provide direct services that require partnership with HCOs (e.g., food, housing, behavioral health, legal services). CBOs are eligible for $40,000 stipends.
• Eligible emeritus HCO partners are past CIN partners who meet current eligibility requirements and have tenures of six or more years with CIN.

See details on eligibility requirements, commitment expectations, and financial support for partner organizations, as well as on the recruitment process, which requires a short interest survey followed by an invitation-only application. The interest survey closes September 16.

Register Now for Implementation Huddles for CIN Toolkit

Are you wondering how to start working with the new Toolkit to Advance Racial Health Equity in Primary Care Improvement at your organization? We can help!

To support toolkit users, CIN will host two implementation huddles — facilitated discussions for those applying the opportunities discussed in the toolkit. The toolkit was created to help organizations that provide, pay for, or support primary care to increase the care improvement efforts that center racial health equity. It was developed in partnership with HealthBegins and a workgroup of CIN health care leaders.

• Register: Tuesday, Sept. 13 from 12:10 – 1:00 PM
• Register: Tuesday, Oct. 11 from 12:10 – 1:00 PM

Please share this information with others on your team and in your network.

Looking for Better Visits with Patients? Consider Revamping Your Patient Portal

Can a more advanced patient portal improve face-to-face visits? Appointments are increasingly so jampacked with questions, screenings, and copious note-taking that it’s difficult to analyze patient data and provide thoughtful, in-the-moment guidance. Shasta Community Health Center revamped its patient portal to enable patients to take a more active role in their care while also improving provider workflows.

In this episode of the Health Pilots podcast from CIN partner Center for Care Innovations, Shasta Community Health Center discusses how clinicians, patients, nurses, medical assistants, and other key stakeholders collaborated on a successful retooling and expansion of this crucial platform. With much of the paperwork out of the way, providers have more time to focus on patients and their needs.

Advancing Health Equity

Tools for Anti-Racist Communication with Black Patients

In the clinical setting, Black patients frequently face overt racism, as well as unconscious biases that negatively impact care. Effective communication that mitigates racism can help providers deliver better quality and more equitable care for Black patients.

Learn five communication practices to use to address racism experienced by Black patients. To be effective, these practices hinge on clinician self-reflection, personal commitment, and institutional support for the necessary time and resources to elicit a patient's story and to address patient needs.

Social Needs That Impact Health

How to Share Data: A Practical Guide for Health and Homeless Systems of Care

This practical guide is for communities at any stage of engagement in cross-sector data sharing between health and homeless systems of care to ensure that people with complex care needs can become stably housed and remain healthy. Data sharing across sectors is happening slowly due to different legal, technological, historical, cultural, and disciplinary approaches to how each sector collects and analyzes data. This new guide from CIN funder the California Health Care Foundation supports agencies and organizations that work in the health and homeless systems of care to break down the silos and collaborate to better serve their clients and patients.

Providing Care Differently

A Playbook for New Rural Health Care Partnership Models of Investment

Rural communities wrestle with meeting community needs around health, workforce development, financial stability, infrastructure, and more. Health care organizations impact these communities through their roles as service providers, employers, and conveners.

A new playbook from the Public Health Institute’s Build Healthy Places Network is an action-oriented guide designed for health care organizations who want to pursue partnerships with rural communities, economic development, and other sectors, to create the community conditions that support better health. It includes over a dozen case studies from across the country and four core strategies used by health care entities. The five-step path offers resources to guide the partnership process.

Dominant Power and the Concept of Caste: Implications for Dentistry and Oral Health Inequality

In her 2020 book Caste: The Origin of Our Discontents, Isabel Wilkerson argues that a caste system not only exists in the US, but also operates as a hidden force affecting social inequality. In this new paper, the authors explore Wilkerson's view of how caste and casteism differ from racism and the eight pillars of a caste system, and then apply the concept of caste to understanding dominant power structures, dentistry, and oral health inequality.

This short read offers an important opportunity to reflect on how the work we do exists within dominant power structures that are often maintained by unquestioning participation. As members of the CIN learning and action community, our efforts to dismantle structural racism and advance health equity begin with examining our own individual biases. The concept of caste and its relationship to health inequality must be understood it if we want to create real social change.