CPCA Education Programs:
News & Updates
CPCA’s successful HealthManagement+ Program continues to welcome new participants and train the next generation of health center leaders. Cohort 11 will graduate in June 2019 when Cohort 12 launches. In addition, we have developed a new collaboration with program partner We Will and the Alameda Health Consortium to create an Alameda cohort that will begin in May of this year.
HM+ Alumni Network
To date, more than 200 health center, consortia, and CPCA staff have graduated from HM+. Based on the success of the program and the desire to continue learning and professional development among the alumni, CPCA launched a pilot program for alumni in 2018 to create stronger links among all of the past, present, and future participants of HM+. The multi-modal program included several 45-minute “lunch & learn” webinars presented by CPCA staff subject matter experts and culminated with an in-person workshop focused on strengths-based management and leadership. CPCA is now partnering with We Will to develop a more robust and structured Alumni Network, which we anticipate launching in late 2019.
HM+ Scholarships
In April 2018, CPCA was awarded a discretionary grant from The California Wellness Foundation to provide 20 scholarships for participants from Orange, San Bernardino, and Riverside counties. We were thrilled to receive this philanthropic investment and recognition of the value of HM+, and we have been able to support 15 participants so far thanks to this funding.
New Program Launching Soon: MedicalAssistant+ (MA+)
CPCA members often struggle to recruit and retain highly-qualified Medical Assistants (MAs) who are able to thrive in the unique world of community health centers. To address this gap in training and education, CPCA has contracted with Macman Management Health Care Services to develop a new MedicalAssistant+ Program (MA+). CPCA and Macman recruited an expert advisory group of CPCA members to provide input and guidance on curriculum content, delivery modalities, program structure, and pricing.
MA+ is designed as a cohort program that includes self-paced online learning, active discussion forums, live webinars, and in-person workshops. The program will take advantage of CPCA’s new Learning Management System, Top Class, so that students can access all of their material through a single portal and also track their progress through the program. Currently, we are in the final phases of program development, and we eagerly anticipate launching our first cohort in June.
Planning for the Future: New Leadership Initiative
The CHC movement that started in the 1960s produced dynamic and visionary leaders who were committed to achieving social justice. The movement has benefitted tremendously from having these leaders involved and at the helm of their institutions for decades, but today, we are seeing many of those leaders step down and retire from their organizations. This leadership turnover emphasizes the importance of ongoing and sustainable leadership development for CHCs.
In addition, an instrumental leadership development program specific to the healthcare industry, the Clinic Leadership Institute’s Emerging Leaders Program, graduated its tenth and final cohort in 2018. CPCA and other stakeholders recognized that we need to ensure a health center leadership pipeline that continues to be robust, diverse, and prepared to lead well into the future. For these reasons, CPCA has embarked on a project to assess the current status of diversity within health center leadership, analyze successes and challenges of health center leadership programs in order to identify needs and gaps, and develop a framework for a self-sustaining program to provide a pathway for future health center leaders.
We are very grateful to the California Health Care Foundation and Blue Shield of California Foundation for making philanthropic investments in this work. We look forward to sharing the results of our research with a wide audience and to helping pave the way for development of more health center leaders in the future.