Foundation Building

Dear Friends,

We’re proud to announce a major milestone: Center for Care Innovations is now an independent nonprofit.

After 25 years as a fiscally sponsored project of Tides Center, we’ve officially become our own legal entity. This next phase for our organization gives us more flexibility to grow our impact, more efficiency in how we operate, and more agency in how we respond to the evolving needs of the field.

What’s not changing? Everything that matters. Our team, initiatives, partnerships, and values are all the same — now with greater energy and freedom to achieve even more. If you’ve teamed up with us before, this “spinout” only improves our day-to-day engagement with you and our work to drive innovation in the health care safety net.

In 2024, we spent the year laying the groundwork for this transition. Along the way, we were reminded that:

  • Health systems transformation takes root in trust and blooms through collaboration.
  • Data governance is what sows the ground for digital transformation, cultivating a more just and equitable health future.

As we move into this new season of growth, we’re guided by our incredible new board of directors — Kirk Holmes, Kedar Mate, Courtney Pladsen, Amy Shin, Monique Smith, and Amy Dirks Stevens. With their leadership and our team’s unwavering commitment to health equity, we are prepared to face the immense pressures that lie ahead. The safety net is under strain, with federal upheaval dismantling trust and critical infrastructure. Workforce shortages, growing demand, and tightening resources are converging while powerful new technologies — like AI — are reshaping healthcare. We believe this tumultuous time may also be a window of opportunity: a chance to reimagine how we can collaborate. The work ahead is pivotal and the stakes are high, but so is our belief in what we can accomplish in community.

We hope you’ll join us in celebrating our 25th anniversary at the 2025 Safety Net Innovation Summit — Wayfinders: Community Innovation for Uncharted Times. This gathering offers space to explore how to turn moments of chaos into catalysts for partnership. Join us to sharpen your skills, expand your network, and lead the charge toward a stronger, more equitable future.

Sofi Bergkvist
CEO
Center for Care Innovations

IN 2024, CENTER FOR CARE INNOVATIONS WORKED ON

17 PROGRAMS & PROJECTS

Collaborating with

174 HEALTHCARE ORGANIZATIONS

Like Federally qualified health centers, public hospitals, clinics, health center controlled networks, HEALTH PLANS, County Health Departments, community-based organizations, and Research Institutions.

OUR Partnerships, WeBinars, EVENTS, And other CCI Experiences Reached and ENGAGed WITH People across the country. 

California • Colorado • Delaware • Georgia • Hawaii • IdahO • Illinois • Massachusetts • North Carolina • Oregon • Virginia • Washington • and more!

98% OF PARTICIPANTS

REPORTed THAT ATTENDance IS A

GOOD USE OF THEIR TIME

2024: A Year of Foundation Building

 

Our move to independence didn’t happen overnight. Throughout 2024, we focused on building the internal infrastructure, partnerships, and clarity needed to carry this work forward with strength. Along the way, we unearthed two important takeaways:

Health systems transformation takes root in trust and blooms through collaboration.

Across our work, we’ve seen this truth hold up again and again: meaningful change starts with trust and grows through collaboration. This takes time. But when relationships between providers, patients, payers, and communities are strong, we can begin to dismantle structural barriers and build more equitable systems.

We saw the power of shared purpose in a CCI program expanding access to medications for addiction treatment (MAT) in primary care. When leadership, clinicians, and care teams aligned with community-based organizations serving as trusted messengers, outcomes improved: thousands of new patients received life-saving treatment — many for the first time — and the number of X-waivered physicians doubled. The six-month MAT continuous care retention rates significantly climbed among underserved communities including Other Pacific Islander, LGBT+, and bisexual peoples. These gains were fueled by the equity-centered mindsets and methods taught in the program, from actor mapping to shared storytelling practices that built trust. Health centers responded by hiring more staff with lived experience, expanding street medicine, and lowering barriers to care — with Central Neighborhood Health Foundation, for example, sending mobile units into schools and homeless encampments to meet people where they are; as their MAT supervisor shared, “We were able to build a strong presence and a rapport with people to know that hey, we’re here to assist you. We’re not here to judge you.”

In a CCI program committed to transforming pediatric care through a trauma- and resilience-informed lens, a powerful insight emerged: supporting staff and provider wellbeing is not a side effort — it’s a central strategy for enduring systems change. During a period of intense pressure on the healthcare workforce, participating teams tested simple but impactful ways to support their colleagues, from all-staff retreats to reflective practices. For instance, Alliance Medical Center revamped its onboarding process to require trauma- and resilience-informed systems (TRIS) training from the start, making a significant investment in building “healing organization” — one that reflects, grows, prevents harm, shares power, and leads with equity and relationships. These approaches helped to reduce secondary trauma, strengthen team-based care, and shift organizational culture. One participant captured it best: “You’ve got to start with your caregivers, resource your caregivers. Because if you want them to be able to pour into your patients you’ve got to pour into them first.”  

In another CCI project focused on bridging health and housing services for people experiencing homelessness, partnerships proved essential. Los Angeles organizations shared that real progress came from working alongside housing authorities, community-based groups, and people with lived experience with homelessness. From showing up consistently at each other’s events, to recognizing that often “it takes three meetings” to build genuine trust, relationships emerged as the foundational. Sustaining those partnerships required a clear-eyed view of shared benefit — “seeing the win-win” — and naming tensions early while normalizing the discomfort and friction that can come with building something together. As one homeless services leader put it, “One of our values is creative collaboration, and that’s the only way you can house somebody. Not one person is housed through just one agency, it just doesn’t work that way.”

Through a California-wide initiative focused on population health management, CCI helped bring together Federally Qualified Health Centers, regional clinic consortia, managed care plans, and local partners to discuss promising practices and emerging challenges. Whether addressing behavioral health integration or rethinking care team workflows, the value was clear: getting diverse perspectives in the same room sparks new ideas, upends assumptions, and lays the groundwork for stronger regional coordination that feels personal, not just procedural. Today, the initiative has helped participants develop new and stronger competencies for population health management. A major focus of 2024 was building a solid foundation — developing a business case for sustainability, improving reporting and monitoring of key quality measures, implementing empanelment methodology, and creating high-functioning care teams — to position themselves for long-term success.

And when challenges are structural, solutions must be collective. That’s why CCI spent 2024 deepening our partnerships with Medi-Cal managed care plans (MCPs), recognizing their growing role in reducing health disparities. We’re building new networks rooted in our shared commitment to dismantling the systemic barriers. It’s about adopting human-centered approaches, strengthening peer connections, creating space for co-creation, and building the case for health equity. Together, we are shaping a future where MCPs advance change at scale — not in isolation, but side by side. “Sometimes you feel stuck when you’re just in your own bubble trying to figure it out. There are so many smart brains here to share ideas, share challenges with,” said one MCP program manager.

We’re excited to be deepening this work at the regional level — where relationships are strongest, disparities are most visible, and the potential for lasting, community-driven change is greatest.

Data governance is what sows the ground for digital transformation, cultivating a more just and equitable health future.

How might we drive more equitable care? Strong data governance — the structures, policies, and practices that ensure data is trustworthy, accessible, and actionable — sets the stage. By making information easier to share and act on, we can uncover disparities, support smarter decisions, and better meet community needs. But resource constraints and fragmentation often hold the safety net back. That’s why we’re focusing on building shared infrastructure and services that make digital transformation — the reorientation of organizations and systems to thrive in a rapidly changing environment — more inclusive. In 2024, we started working more closely with Health Center Controlled Networks and tapped national experts to help ensure that new digital tools serve everyone, not just those with the most resources.

Over the past year, we saw what happens when data stops being overwhelming and starts being empowering. We began developing a new CCI technical assistance offering to help clinics transform data from a compliance burden into a tool for dignity, insight, and action. Our aim is to support staff at all levels to build new habits, new systems, and a shared language around using data to guide smarter decisions and more equitable care. CCI’s focus is not just on tools, but on trust — because for data to drive change, people need to believe in it, understand it, and see how it connects to their mission. Whether improving HEDIS measures, preparing for UDS+, or simply trying to make sense of the numbers, our partners are telling us that a culture of data isn’t just about dashboards — it’s about growing curiosity, shifting power, deepening accountability, and supporting care that truly reflects the needs of the community.

And when CCI’s annual Innovation Summit returned in 2024 after a multi-year hiatus, it pulsed with energy — and momentum. Leaders from across the safety net came together to explore how we can build the trust, transparency, and governance needed to navigate the age of AI. What emerged was clear: the safety net must play a more active role in shaping the future of healthcare technology — and it starts by strengthening the foundation. Without clear data governance and inclusive design, digital tools risk deepening inequities rather than bridging them. Yet with thoughtful stewardship, AI holds transformative potential, from easing workforce strain to improving language access to personalizing care to sharpening decision-making. The summit reinforced a shared understanding: that cultivating a more just and equitable health future depends not just on the technologies we adopt, but on the values and practices that guide them. We’re not just preparing for AI — we’re helping define what ethical, equitable adoption looks like across the safety net. A community health worker reflected, “I had my mind expanded, my assumptions challenged, and my heart filled up!”

Building on the momentum of 2024, we see that our data governance curriculum must now evolve in tandem with AI governance structures — together, they will form the scaffolding the safety net needs to steward technology in service of equity.

 

Thank You

A shout-out to our community! Thank you to all our wonderful participants, partners, coaches, advisers, faculty, and allies — we love working with you and want to keep growing together. To our great alumni — we’ll be thinking of ways we can expand our network and get together more often.

A heartfelt thank you to our funders whose support makes our programming possible — we couldn’t do it without you. We want to express our deepest gratitude to California Health Care Foundation, California Telehealth Resource Center, CalOptima Health, Cedars-Sinai, Figma, Health Plan of San Mateo, Kaiser Permanente, Sierra Health Foundation, The SCAN Foundation, and Tides Center.

Keep Exploring

Check out all the case studies, tools, and evaluations we’ve published in 2024 — plus a couple times we’ve been in the news!