The Common Health Coalition is delivering a set of bold commitments to strengthen health care’s partnership with public health.
The Coalition brings together America’s leading health organizations in pursuit of a reimagined health system: one in which the nation’s health care and public health systems no longer work in parallel, but hand in hand – with better health for all as the common goal.
Health care and public health institutions responded to the COVID-19 pandemic by forging novel, impactful partnerships. We established formal agreements for information and resource sharing, developed and deployed emergency response plans, shared data more readily, and demonstrated the lifesaving function of infectious disease detection systems.
The Common Health Coalition was formed to cement these types of crisis-driven strategies into existing infrastructure and strengthen the partnership between the health care and public health systems, particularly to advance health equity.
Who we are
Our founding members, AHIP, the Alliance of Community Health Plans (ACHP), American Hospital Association (AHA), American Medical Association (AMA), and Kaiser Permanente, are using lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic to strengthen the relationships between health care organizations and public health systems to help ensure that our health system is ready today to confront the public health emergencies of tomorrow.
Former New York City Commissioner of Health Dave A. Chokshi, MD, MSc, chairs the Coalition and Chelsea Cipriano, MPH, serves as its Managing Director. Our work is informed by an advisory council of public health leaders chaired by Georges C. Benjamin, MD, Executive Director of the American Public Health Association, and J. Nadine Gracia, MD, MSCE, President and CEO of Trust for America’s Health. ChangeLab Solutions, a national nonprofit that uses the tools of law and policy to advance health equity, is serving as a host of the Coalition with initial funding provided by Kaiser Permanente.
Our focus
Informed by expert analysis and real-world examples, the Coalition is leading a bold new set of commitments and actions to advance the vision of better collaboration with — and support for — public health across the following four initial focus areas.
Coordination between health care and public health with clearly delineated goals, roles, and responsibilities.
Always-on emergency preparedness, meaning the creation of shared, well-maintained emergency preparedness plans between health care institutions and public health entities so there will be a reliable infrastructure that can be scaled up quickly during a crisis.
Real-time disease detection so that threats are assessed and response can be mobilized more swiftly.
Exchange of data in a way that is swift, consistent, and actionable, particularly for identifying and addressing health inequities.
Our approach
Our advisory council of health leaders helps ensure the Coalition’s work is accountable to public health — and provides input grounded in deep implementation experience spanning local, state, and federal levels. Technical Advisory Groups of experts — facilitated by ChangeLab Solutions and led by the Duke-Margolis Center for Health Policy, MITRE, Melissa Harvey (independent consultant), and the National Association of State Health Policy — stewarded an iterative process to craft recommendations to the Coalition’s founding organizations (AHA, AMA, AHIP, ACHP, and Kaiser Permanente). Each founding organization then signed on to shared commitments and specific actions under the four focus areas described above.
The Common Health Coalition acknowledges that public health colleagues have long been at the forefront of much of the work described here. We aim to bring forward the skills and assets of health care organizations to further bolster these efforts. The purpose of the commitments and actions described below is to model the spirit of partnership needed at the intersection of health care and public health. For too long, these fields have operated in parallel. Therefore, our strongest commitment is to change that — to work hand-in-hand across sectors and organizations, toward the common goal of health.
The commitments
The Common Health Coalition is committing to taking action on the following:
1. Establish and codify collaboration.
2. More easily get staff where and when they are needed.
3. Share data in real time to advance equitable outcomes.
4. Expand electronic disease reporting.
5. Standardize readiness across the health care system.
6. Advance existing federal efforts at the intersection of health care and public health.
Our goal is to identify, amplify, and replicate the innovations already happening across the country and to create a movement of organizations committed to doing away with existing siloes that hinder progress and expanding effective work happening at the intersection of health care and public health.
Join us
Health care and public health organizations nationwide – join us!
The Coalition’s founding members are calling on health care and public health organizations across the country to join us in this effort.
The Common Health Coalition is advancing concrete, achievable actions that are replicable across the country. While each of our founding organizations and their public health partners have always sought to improve health, we can go further, faster through a collective effort focused on action.
Contact us if you have questions about the Coalition. We look forward to hearing from you.