HIP Policy Forums
HIP hosts annual forums that bring state and national experts on health care policy and practice to Santa Cruz County to raise awareness, engage local leaders, and mobilize our community to work together to improve our local health care system.
HIP also partners with other coalitions on community health care forums, including the Regional Diabetes Collaborative's Annual Diabetes Forum, the American Cancer Society's Access to Care Initiatives, and a series of community meetings designed to examine how socioeconomic factors such as poverty, educational attainment and discrimination can significantly affect health outcomes.
2009 Healthy Kids Coalition celebration with Ezra Klein
In January, 2009, at Cabrillo College's Sesnon House, Healthy Kids hosted a celebration of local efforts to cover all Santa Cruz County children. Ezra Klein, Washington Post columnist, provided an irreverent presentation on the political prospects for national health care reform, noting that all eyes will be on the Senate in the coming year. Alan McKay, co-chair of the Healthy Kids Steering Committee and HIP's Board president, also presented the 2009 Champion for Children award to Dr. Larry deGhetaldi and Ric Nichols of the Palo Alto Medical Foundation, Santa Cruz Region and Sutter Maternity and Surgery Center, for their leadership donations to the Healthy Kids program, giving over $1 million to Healthy Kids and Healthy Families programs to date. Our audience also viewed the premiere of the Voices of Healthy Kids video, featuring the personal stories of children and families whose lives have been touched by Healthy Kids. Ezra Klein continues to be an excellent source of health care policy information, visit his on-line blog.
The 2008 Policy Forum focused on Santa Cruz County's "bootstrap initiatives" - solutions that are already making a difference locally, including Healthy Kids, Make Your Wishes Known, and the 52-10 Campaign. In the absence of state or federal solutions, HIP is committed to taking local action now, to improve health outcomes for all residents.
A 2008 Town Hall Meeting on Health Care Reform hosted by Dominican Hospital and HIP was designed to provide President Obama's transition team with input on health care reform from our local community. Over 100 participants convened, broke out into groups, and came to unexpected consensus on the challenges and priorities for reform. Click here to view a video of the meeting.
The 2007 Policy Forum inspired discussions of the challenges faced by a host of community constituents, including health care, government, business, labor, consumers and others. The forum provided presentations on California health care reform proposals from tax incentives to a single payer system to Governor Schwarzenegger's "shared responsibility" approach. Peter Long of the Kaiser Family Foundation and Robert Phillips of The California Endowment facilitated discussions about health care financing, and what solutions might be found at the local level, while Linda Bergthold provided a picture of the uninsured in Santa Cruz County.