We used our (virtual) annual retreat to reflect and celebrate what CCHE's culture and approach means to us on a personal level

Over the past 30 years, one theme that has emerged is the importance of dedicating time for reflection to drive learning and improvement. Reflection is important at CCHE not only for our personal health and wellbeing, but also for sparking insights for improving our work with each other, with you, and communities. 

For CCHE’s annual retreat in September, we reflected on our 30-year anniversary. We examined themes from interviews with CCHE founders and harvested additional reflections from current staff about our evolution, culture, approach, and impact. We reflected on such questions as: What projects or moments would you call out as being significant to CCHE’s learning? What lessons would you highlight about our approach, community orientation, or commitment to social justice? What stories would you highlight about how CCHE’s work has an impact?

Here are a few quotes from staff: “In one initiative, we provided individualized evaluation coaching to the grantees to build a logic model and evaluation plan. In my first meeting with one organization, the Executive Director was dismissive, referring to “illogic models.” I continued to work with others on the staff for several years and watched their capacity and comfort with evaluation planning increase significantly. At the end, they noted that they had greater success when their grant proposals included a well thought out logic model and evaluation plan. Through this I learned the importance of long-term partnerships to build sustainable evaluation capacity.” “We partnered with a community health foundation to develop criteria for and award $1 million to several organizations to improve access to care for kids in our state. After the grants were awarded, we worked with the grantees to develop simple evaluation plans and helped them document their progress and impact. It was a fun project and I got to meet some wonderful people across the state, and learned a lot about working with communities.” “Early in my career at CCHE, I was so encouraged to be enabled by CCHE leadership to spend significant time in communities, just visiting people. This emphasized the importance of relationship building and trust, and illustrated what shared decision making and a truly participatory evaluation looks like.” 

CCHE’s culture and our work is shaped by our people. This year, we welcomed four new staff to our team: Tia Vue, Crystal Dinh, Abbie Lee, and Natasha Arora.