A Busy Birthday

CEO Michele Lueck celebrates her birthday this week with a full plate, and we’re talking about way more than birthday cake.

Michele heads to Nashville with Policy Analyst Allie Morgan to talk with lawmakers and health policy administrators from 13 states gathered by the Milbank Memorial Fund, a New York-based foundation dedicated to bringing together leaders and decision-makers to improve health.

Michele and Allie will present “On a LARC? A Case Study in Implementing Policy Innovations,” examining the lessons in policy-making suggested by Colorado’s experience with Long-Acting Reversible Contraception (LARC).

CHI has made this presentation to two other Milbank national gatherings, with Michele and Allie appearing in Salt Lake City and Senior Director for Policy and Analysis Amy Downs and Senior Communications Expert Joe Hanel traveling to Minneapolis.

Michele will hurry back from Nashville on Friday to present findings from the 2015 Colorado Health Access Survey (CHAS) to the board of the Caring for Colorado Foundation.

This work comes on top of a big breakfast meeting that Michele led last week with former U.S. Sen. Bill Frist and Colorado public health and health care delivery system leaders. The breakfast get-together, co-hosted by CHI and Denver Health, featured a discussion about how to work together to improve health in Colorado.

As Michele said to Sen. Frist and the state health care leaders: “In Colorado, we are at an intersection with public health and delivery systems. We have energy, momentum and interest. What are our next steps?”

Sen. Frist, a surgeon and two-term Republican senator from Tennessee who served as Majority Leader from 2003 through 2007 and has started a new initiative in his home state called NashvilleHealth, offered his advice to the group.

CHI team members continue to fan out across the state to explain the findings of the 2015 CHAS. We’ve logged more than a thousand miles in the past month or so. Tomorrow, Director of Research on Coverage and Access Jeff Bontrager and Research Analyst Tamara Keeney will be speaking at the Jefferson Center for Mental Health. Upcoming trips are planned to Colorado Springs and Grand Junction. Amy will present to the Colorado Business Group on Health on Thursday in Lone Tree, and to ClinicNET on Friday in Denver. If your group would like a presentation, please fill out the form available here.

This week sees the publication of the Colorado Children’s Access to Care Index by Jeff and Research Analyst Nina Roumell. It follows publication last month of the Colorado Access to Care Index. The indexes are intended to help guide a discussion about ensuring that the increase in health insurance coverage translates to an increase in health care.

Policy Analyst Jessica Fern represented CHI at a two-day meeting hosted by the Colorado Department of Public Health and the Environment dedicated to a discussion around ideas to support the patient navigator workforce.

Finally, we hope you read Joe Hanel’s insightful blog on the health policy implications of Gov. Hickenlooper’s proposed budget.