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What is an ACH?

An Accountable Community for Health (ACH) is a structured, cross-sectoral alliance of healthcare, public health and other organizations that plans and implements strategies to improve population health and health equity for all residents in a geographic area. ACHs are dedicated to making lasting and transformational change in the health of a community and forwarding the goal of health equity through community-driven collaboration. Designed to strategically leverage resources across sectors, the ACH model presents tremendous opportunities to reduce costs, enhance quality of care, and improve population health. ACHs provide an infrastructure to elevate community voices, make cross-sector connections, and align different organizations and systems to advance equity and build stronger and more cohesive communities. 

  • ACHs are flexible - they can be altered and tailored to address a number of different issues such as food security, housing, non-medical transportation -- and for the Los Angeles Reentry Collaborative ACH, recidivism 

  • The ACH approach provides an enhanced ability to focus on and prioritize equity and align goals and efforts across public health, health care, and social services at large

  • ACHs are inclusive by nature and engage community residents and organizations, giving the community they serve a greater sense of ownership and control over - ACHs therefore provide a particularly personalized and focused form of support

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You can read more about the 37 ACHs funded by CACHI here.

What is a
Multi-Sector
Collaboration?

A Multi-Sector Collaboration (MSC) is the partnership that results when government, non-profit, private and public organizations, community groups and individual community members come together to solve problems that affect the whole community.

  • MSCs can solve "systemic" problems such as a failing educational or health care systems, community-wide economic problems, environmental problems, or a number of interrelated problems as they draw on the resources of all sectors: business, government and nonprofit. 

  • MSCs can wield more power than one organization or even a group of similar organizations. When addressing a systemic problem, solving one part of the issue often requires understanding and engaging the impact the issue is having on the whole system. 

  • MSCs are flexible: they can be altered and specifically tailored to address a number of different issues

  • MSCs provide opportunities to hold equity as a core principle; they are inclusive by nature and engage community residents and organizations, giving the community a greater sense of ownership and control.

Why an ACH?

ACHs are built to bring people and organizations to the table to solve complex health problems in their communities. ACHs are able to combine experience from clinical providers and community-based organizations to share information and be better informed for the future. ACHs capacitate referrals within the network and enable organizations to access other organizations and resources that might not otherwise have been apparent or available.

  • By bringing together multiple sectors and analyzing a broad set of data and sources, ACHs are well equipped to truly identify and address community needs and create a comprehensive plan to address certain issues 

  • By centering and prioritizing transparency and community engagement, ACHs help develop new approaches to building accountability within communities 

  • ACHs are able to take into account a wide range of different sources and data, and are able to operate with a more complete picture of what is happening in the community 

  • ACHs can transform the health system at large - they can drive reform and significantly improve how health is approached in individual communities 

  • ACHs are better equipped to address community needs because they bring together experts from different sectors and thus utilize a broad set of data and sources

  • ACHs can contribute to building new cross-sector relationships between communities and organizations that had previously worked independently of each other 

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