Hawaii Primary Care Association

Communications and policy - the objective of the communications and policy component of the hawaii primary care association (hpca) is demonstrating the value of hawaii's community health centers (chc) and the hpca in improving health equity for hawaii's vulnerable populations and bringing to light the impact of social factors on individual and community health. A major strategy we continue to employ to this end is the fostering and sustaining of strong partnerships with healthcare and public health stakeholders external to membership. We are consistently and intentionally investing time and effort to solidify and strengthen our success in this area.the following are major partnerships hpca has successfully nurtured and strengthened during this time period. Hawaii department of health - school health - pediatric behavioral health - chronic disease prevention - food prescription program - communicable disease surveillance hawaii department of education - school health hawaii department of human services - medicaid programming - nutritional support john a. Burns school of medicine - geriatric workforce enhancement program - age friendly health system-institute for health improvement recognition hawaii health information exchange - data interoperability azara - population health tools alaska primary care association - workforce development-medical assistant apprenticeship program alohacare - clinical quality improvement cancer research center of hawaii - cancer research and prevention national academy of chronic disease directors/centers for disease control and prevention - national diabetes prevention program

Special projects -maui county chc media campaign: during the early and more recent surges of the covid pandemic, the maui county chcs (malama ike ola, hana health, molokai community health center, and lanai community health center) felt it was critically important to let their communities know that they were all still fully operational and continuing to provide comprehensive medical, dental, behavioral, drug, vision, and other services to over 18,000 maui county residents. They wanted to assure their communities that they were on the front lines of the covid crisis, and served anyone whether the person had private insurance, medicare, medicaid, or no insurance at all. The maui county chcs turned to the hpca for expertise and technical support to launch their social media campaign through a combination of communication outlets. Other than the maintenance of a website, this project was paused during this fiscal year (2023-2024).national policy advisor: the purpose of this project is to retain strategic expertise to advance the ability of community health centers (chc) and primary care associations (pca) to navigate a rapidly changing and complex policy and regulatory environment. By working collectively to retain this capacity, it was the intention of pcas across the country to supplement efforts with the national association of community health centers (nachc) capacity in these core areas. This project is intended to be supportive of the health center program overall and to maintain a collective approach to these resources to prevent splintering among the states and regions. Hpca continues to participate in this project (2023-2024).