"What We Can Do Locally"
A Brief Case Study of a More Systemic Approach
to the Health Care Crisis in Sonoma County

This website, including essays and transcriptions below, show SSU Initiative community-campus collaborative studies done from late summer 2002 until the present.

One of the first things done was to study identification of health care crisis stakeholder clusters, that is, primary kinds of organizations and individuals most impacted by these local health care problems. Over the first year, the group identified 22 main stakeholder clusters. Stakeholders have a large interest in the successful development of health care crisis solutions. The term "clusters" is used to suggest that each category of stakeholder may have 10, 20, or even 100 organizations of that kind. (Please see the graph below to identify stakeholder groups.)

Another primary activity was the identification of main crises in local health care. In fact, there are dozens of problem areas, woven together so tightly, in many cases, that from a distance the phenomena may appear to be "whole cloth".

Some of the main achievements in recent years have been to attack one problem at a time. (See the transcript below describing a number of collaborative successes in treating individual health care problems.) By outlining together a whole host of local health care problems, the SSU Initiative has focused on collaborative study of complexes of related and intertwined problems which can find solutions in tandem. Over 40 potential ameliorations have been identified. In a number of cases, collaborative multi-institutional attention to these potential improvements can provide positive synergy toward solutions.

The SSU Initiative's work has encouraged multi-stakeholder dialogue - across disciplines, such as government, business, health care industry, citizen groups, schools and universities, and non-profits, engaging meetings, conferences, print, and the continuing development of this website - all with the idea of increasing cross-stakeholder dialogue and collaborative planning and action.

The first Initiative conference in November 2002, brought together Sonoma County public school district labor and management negotiators and leaders to study health plan renewal negotiation under the unusual pressures of this time of crisis.

The second Initiative conference, Spring 2003, brought together local leaders focused on how we got here, where we are, and where we could go from here.

The third conference, Spring 2004, was titled "What We Can Do Locally" and explored nearly 50 remedial actions which could be done collaboratively. The conclusion of the Spring 2004 conference called for a sub-group to meet through the summer to study the dozens of ideas and conclusions and present the most critical in a Fall 2004 meeting for Spring conference attendees to recommend next steps.

That fall meeting recommended several specific actions (a data project, a prevention project, a humane cost-containment project, and a process for increasing dialogue and planning among stakeholders) and going for "Seed Grant" funding, to raise money with which to seek significant foundation funding to carry out the recommendations.

Seed grant fundraising took spring and fall 2005 and was successful. (California Program on Access to Care, University of California Office of the President, The California Endowment, the SSU Office of the President, the North Bay Labor Council, and the Integrative Medical Clinic of Santa Rosa provided the funding.)

The dual focus of this funding was and is to use these funds, first, to organize more significant fund-raising which could allow action in priority areas and, second, to develop and disseminate primary recommendations to the Sonoma County public (and beyond).

In October 2005, two dinner meetings were held among 20 senior local stakeholder group leaders to focus on priority-making for specific plans for the coming period. Now we are sending you this report.