About the Center

Mission

The Center’s mission is to bring the consumer experience to the forefront of health innovation in order to deliver better care, better value and better health for every community, particularly vulnerable and historically underserved populations.

Our Approach

Our health care system is changing quickly, and the people with most at stake — consumers and their families — often have no say in the process. This is especially true of the most vulnerable groups in our society. The Center’s long-standing relationships with consumer advocates, and our collaborations with forward-thinking leaders in the health sector and government, keep us continually on the frontline of new approaches to health care that can best meet the needs, goals and preferences of consumers. We work to ensure meaningful consumer engagement in multiple ways:

  • We educate consumer advocates on the intricacies of health system change. But we don’t stop there. We move beyond education by implementing our tested advocacy models to build the skills and power consumers have to establish an effective voice at all levels of the health care system.
  • We serve as a translator between consumers and industry, integrating what we learn from health sector leaders with knowledge and insights from consumer advocates on the ground. We collaborate with innovative health plans, hospitals, doctors, nurses, social workers and other providers to incorporate the goals and needs of consumers into their systems of care to achieve the mutual goals of increasing quality outcomes, improving coordination among providers, and reducing costs.
  • We build on established relationships with federal and state policymakers to spur change. We work with them to make systems more responsive to consumers by expanding best practices that have shown positive impact in communities and advancing policies that reduce inequities and improve health.

An initiative of Community Catalyst, the Center builds upon the organization's many years of success working on the ground in more than 40 states and across the stakeholder spectrum — advocates, academics, state and federal policymakers and industry — to examine problems and identify practical solutions to improve the consumer health care experience. The Center’s team members have honed their expertise as leaders in state and federal health innovations, from the creation of the Commonwealth Care Alliance, a groundbreaking delivery system in Massachusetts, to helping shape the design of demonstration projects for people dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid in more than a dozen states.

We bring the experience, skills and tools needed to create a health care system that delivers better health care for everyone.

The creation of the Center for Consumer Engagement in Health Innovation was made possible by a generous $14.8 million legacy grant awarded in 2015 by The Atlantic Philanthropies to Community Catalyst to develop a sustainable entity to rigorously promote a consumer-centered agenda to help guide the systemic changes that are reshaping the delivery of health care for all Americans. The Center's efforts in areas related to enhancing the quality of care for older adults is further supported by a grant from the John A. Hartford Foundation.