2024 Day at the Capitol Advocacy Activities
Our first collective state advocacy efforts of the year were at this year’s annual California Primary Care’s Advocates Day at the Capitol. Through these organized efforts, we along with our health center leaders, staff, and other advocates were able to meet with the offices of our Alameda County State Senators and State Assemblymembers. We were joined by other consortiums and health centers from across the state to showcase to our elected officials the many ways in which our member health centers are providing and expanding accessible and equitable healthcare to all in Alameda County.
We also used this opportunity to bring attention to vital issues that included supporting health center sustainability, the importance of recruiting and retaining a healthy healthcare workforce, and other important legislative priorities that help our health centers continue to provide care as well as allowing them to expand innovative programs and services to help improve patient outcomes and overall wellbeing.
Our team of providers and CEOs were joined by other essential staff from our health centers including an Integrated Behavioral Health Care Coordinator (IBH CCs) from Axis Community Health, and Care Coordinators from Native American Health Center. These individuals are frontline staff that work closely with the community, linking them to health resources and support. We felt it was important to showcase the staff who are on the frontlines every day, are community members themselves, and who have established trusted relationships with their patients and as a result, fully understand their needs.
These Care Coordinators, along with our member health centers’ C-Suite staff, were able to share powerful patient stories, emphasizing the impact of workforce shortages on the overall care for patients as well as the internal impact of burnout due to high level of provider and ancillary support staff vacancies across our health centers. This helped us advocate for various Senate and Assembly bills that if passed would help support a healthy workforce across our community health centers.
It was a full day of visits, and we want to give a special thank you to our health center representatives for joining us and elevating patient voices and being such stalwart advocates.
We also want to thank our Alameda County electeds for their ongoing support of community health centers and the work that they do for our communities.
You can view images from our 2024 Day at the Capitol Advocacy activities below:
