The session begins with a federal legislative update discussion specific to the current status of various priority health center issues. It will then transition to a discussion about the need for a more coordinated national strategy on various state-based issues - using 340B discriminatory contracting as a case study. Third, NACHC staff will introduce several timely and emerging policy issues and solicit feedback on the relative importance and direction that should be pursued. Policy issues include: maternal health, behavioral health, and non-clinical workforce development. Lastly, the session will close with a focus on advocacy. Attendees will be asked to provide feedback on advocacy tools and strategies that they are incorporating to achieve results.

As PRAPARE is increasingly used by care teams nationally to assess patient social determinants of health needs, it is critical to have a standardized system to track the social interventions provided in response. Such systems can promote cross-sector collaboration to assess and address social factors to facilitate comprehensive care coordination to “close the loop” for patients. Use of the national standardized social interventions protocol would also promote collaborative data collection, aggregation, reporting, exchange, and communication by cross-sector partners to comprehensively address systems and policies that negatively impact the social determinants of health.

This session will walk through the PRAPARE Social Interventions Protocol that integrates stakeholder best practices and lessons learned collected through an iterative process of development with a national Social Interventions Technical Expert Panel (TEP) of diverse cross-sector partners. Attendees will hear from organizations that have implemented the PRAPARE Social Interventions Protocol as well as PCA & HCCN staff on how they have supported health centers with SDOH needs assessment. The session will conclude with a discussion amongst guest speakers centered on considerations for social interventions coding.

Pro Bono engagement refers to the voluntary engagement of professionals who share unique skills for free or nearly free with organizations that may not be able to house these skills on a daily basis. These engagements are often in pursuit of a common social goal or helping to advance a non-profit’s strategic goals. For the health center community, including PCAs and HCCNs, pro bono engagements can offer an opportunity to work with corporate partners who bring strategic planning, high-level marketing/branding, evaluation, and change management coordination expertise to projects that would often be too expensive or out of reach. Additionally, it offers an opportunity to work with partners in a way that extends beyond a traditional conference sponsorship or one-off engagement. This session will discuss the primary components of pro-bono engagements, experiences from the field, and offer a forum for questions of national experts.