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About Us

Since 1992, the Collaborative has utilized distinctive, innovative approaches to create a healthier community. We bring diverse community stakeholders together in a neutral forum – at times enabling competitors to become collaborators – in generating measurable, sustainable health improvement initiatives. The Collaborative’s projects are designed to address identified community needs, and to ultimately be “handed off” to community sponsors.

Since its inception, the Collaborative has launched initiatives to address such critical health issues as diabetes, obesity, depression and low birth weight. The Collaborative also regularly conducts community health assessments and provides consultation to organizations interested in adopting its unique process.


Defining the Process

The Collaborative’s unique process defines and distinguishes us. It’s a cyclical process that enables us to leverage our distinctive ability to generate solutions while engaging growing numbers of our community in efforts to improve community health.

Click here for the graphic that illustrates the process by which the Collaborative:
  • Identifies critical health improvement opportunities
  • Aligns diverse community stakeholders in a neutral forum around focused health needs
  • Nurtures innovative community-based approaches to improve health
  • Transfers established initiatives to community ownership

    • Evaluating Our Work

    The Collaborative’s newly created “scorecard” provides measures of our progress, and documents our accomplishments toward engaging our community in enhancing individual and collective health. Formal tracking of Collaborative progress was initiated in 2005. However, a comparison of the most recent measures to more preliminary measures from past years is an effective indicator of just how far we have progressed.

    As we continue with our work, we are guided by a detailed strategic plan with an overall objective to be the preeminent entity in the community for measuring health status, identifying health improvement priorities, and providing the neutral forum for collaborative health improvement initiatives.

    Specific mission strategies through 2008 are to:
  • Lead ongoing research efforts to measure health status and identify improvement opportunities and emerging issues that are particularly “leverageable” through collaboration.
  • Promote the Collaborative as the primary go-to organization that creates a neutral forum to address health care issues that emerge from research or from a critical need requiring rapid, collaborative response; build a strong local, regional and national reputation for our accomplishments and the collaborative process.
  • Provide an effective incubator for specific health improvement initiatives (low birth weight, obesity, physician supply, diabetes); identify the people and develop the scope, process, measures and timetable to refine ideas; design and implement initiatives which are then handed back to the community for ongoing operation.

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