One of the Collaborative Action Network’s strategies for creating change is through advocacy, specifically by using our individual and collective voices and power to influence local, regional, and state policies, investments, and organizational practices.

North Sound partners engaged in Care Coordination are at the front end of helping community members navigate a complex, disconnected, and disorganized system of care and services. Members are committed to finding ways to meet the needs of those most challenged by the current systems – ranging from emergency responders, health systems, community clinics, social service agencies, and public health.

Network members continue to identify emerging priorities for learning and action. Current efforts are connected with language access, climate disasters, and youth and emerging leadership development.

All Network members are engaged in work to advance equitable well-being across the North Sound region. Our equity work is guided by a set of shared beliefs: -We believe that inherited legacies of systemic racism have perpetuated trauma and exclusion, particularly among Indigenous populations and communities of color. -We believe in honoring tribal sovereignty and learning from the experiences of Tribal and Indigenous populations. -We believe in holistic, intergenerational approaches to well-being. -We believe in healing and stewardship.

Network members engaged in Practice Transformation aim to transform how health care (medical, oral, behavioral health, and all other spheres) can result in better relationships between patients and providers, optimize health outcomes, and work to be the most efficient in health care costs. Practice Transformation brings together providers from across practices and settings, including those who provide frontline care and those who work behind the scenes.

Network members center the Vital Conditions for Health and Well-being Framework. This framework is useful for conceptualizing holistic well-being and the Conditions that give rise to it, as well as identifying levers for community change and improvement. It brings together major determinants of health, exposing how parts of a multi-faceted whole work as a system to produce population well-being. This framework helps users consider the properties of places and institutions that all people need all the time to be healthy and well. This framework advances a collaborative, cross-sector approach to improving community health and well-being and helps identify where and how to invest in communities to yield better results over time. Vital conditions are properties of places and institutions that all people need for health and well-being. They include a thriving natural world, basic needs for health and safety, humane housing, meaningful work and wealth, lifelong learning, reliable transportation, and, central to all of these, belonging and civic muscle.