Accountable Communities for Health - Strengthening CHAs and CHIPs Through Community Leadership

This brief explores how Accountable Communities for Health (ACHs) are strengthening Community Health Assessments (CHAs) and Community Health Improvement Plans (CHIPs) through community-led, cross-sector collaboration. It explains how California’s evolving CalAIM and DHCS requirements are strengthening coordination across public health, health care, and social services in CHAs/CHIPs—and why systems alignment alone, without community leadership, risks prioritizing institutional agendas and undermining the legitimacy and effectiveness of health assessment and planning processes. The brief then shows how ACHs are bridging this gap by collaborating with Managed Care Plans (MCPs), Local Health Jurisdictions (LHJs), and community-based organizations (CBOs) to integrate community leadership into CHA/CHIP design, priority-setting, and accountability. Drawing on examples from Ventura and Sonoma Counties, it illustrates how institutional partnership with ACHs is shifting CHA/CHIP processes toward sustained collaboration with communities to improve health and well-being.