The Sonoma State University Community and Campus Initiative on the Health Care Crisis in Sonoma County
Academic Years 2002-present

• The first conference, November 2002, gathered at the SSU Cooperage conference facility for labor and management negotiators working for public school systems across Sonoma County, studying how to do collaborative negotiations in a time of high health care inflation and wide uncertainty — in the months after Health Plan of the Redwoods collapsed leaving 80,000 people at risk. Tom Moore, Ellen Shaffer, and Skip Robinson were the primary consultants and speakers. The afternoon focused on labor-management dialogue using collaborative interest-based negotiation processes.
• A second conference, "Lowering Health Care Costs; Completing Health Care Access" was held at the Cooperage in April 2003. 25 local and regional experts spoke, including our Congresswoman Lynn Woolsey. The Press Democrat ran several columns and an editorial.
• The third conference in May 2004, at the Commons and Cooperage, focused on "What We Can Do Locally". The California Program on Access to Care, University of California Office of the President, tape recorded and transcribed the conference. Those transcripts are on the Initiative website. A draft book/draft working papers, What We Can Do Locally, is in print form and will be edited over the next few months in preparation for being part of a dissemination project.
• This third conference ended with a long Saturday afternoon multi-stakeholder dialogue on what could be done locally. The ending conference session asked for a follow-up meeting to be called for and held in fall 2004 to propose recommendations for future action. (This stakeholder dialogue is available on the Initiative website.). The digital transcriptions of the conference, and essays before the conference, start with the website front page, central column.
• That fall 2004 meeting was called and held with the resulting group recommending that the Initiative raise money for a seed project, which will have Sonoma County stakeholder leaders talk with an experienced health grant writer to develop a collaborative grant for multi-year, multi-stakeholder Sonoma County health care and community public health activities. Now: The seed grant funds are largely raised and the seed grant project activity has begun, leading to hiring two grant writers and gathering twenty community leaders for two dinner meetings/collaborations — toward exploring priorities for collaborative foundation fundraising work here in community public health and health care.
• The Initiative website is www.sonoma.edu/programs/healthcrisis/