Health Improvement Partnership of Santa Cruz County’s 2024 Community Forum: Celebrating 20 Years of Collaboration

Santa Cruz County: The Health Improvement Partnership of Santa Cruz County (HIP) invites our community to its 2024 Community Forum, Celebrating 20 Years of Collaboration. The Forum will be held in person on Thursday, September 12th, 9:30 am – 12:00 pm at Seascape Golf Club in Aptos and is open to the public, register here.

HIP’s Community Forum engages the greater Santa Cruz County community in meaningful conversations that increase access to healthcare and build stronger local healthcare systems. The event will be a journey through HIP’s past, present, and future, featuring community awards, a panel of HIP’s founding members, Eleanor Rittman, Alan McKay, and Donna Ramos, facilitated by Keisha Bowder, Chief Executive Officer of United Way Santa Cruz and Maritza Lara, Executive Director of HIP. 

Michelle Arevalo-Carpenter, Executive Director of  Strategy and Content at SOCAP Global, systems change catalyzer, and expert convener from South America will deliver a keynote speech highlighting the role reciprocity plays in creating shared possibilities for a healthier community.

Michelle, is a social impact investor, with rich expertise in movement building. Throughout her career, Michelle has enabled grassroots organizations to scale their impact. She served as the founding Country Director of Asylum Access Ecuador, a legal clinic for refugees that later scaled to Asia, and Africa, and did direct advocacy at the United Nations in Geneva. Michelle has also supported the association of families of disappeared children in El Salvador, and communities at risk of development-induced displacement in Thailand, Cambodia, and India.

The community forum’s focus aims to celebrate HIP’s 20th anniversary while also connecting local collaboration with a global context in which weaving healthy communities as an embodied practice takes place.“Our partners and community input are integral to maintaining the flame our founders ignited in 2004 when HIP was envisioned to foster collaboration over competition. Join us in celebrating HIP! Together, we will revisit the organization's past, explore its present state, and reflect on how we might continue to weave a healthy community,” says Maritza Lara, Executive Director at HIP.

For more information about the Community Forum, please visit:  https://www.hipscc.org/hip-community-forum-2024 

###

This event is sponsored by the following healthcare and training partners: Cabrillo College, Central California Alliance for Health, Dientes Community Dental Care, Hospital Council of Northern California, Kaiser Permanente, Rotary Club of Santa Cruz Sunrise, Santa Cruz Community Health Centers, United Way of Santa Cruz County, University of California Santa Cruz, and Workforce Santa Cruz County.