Celebrating One Year as Civitas Networks for Health

We are excited to share some of our progress since we officially began operations as Civitas Networks for Health in October 2021. We started with the support of our 2022 Transition Board and the development of our strategic plan. Through this exercise, we set goals around three key pillars: strong organization, thriving network, and influential voice. The highlights below fit into our vision for our opening year, and though this is only a fraction of our accomplishments together with our members, we hope you will join us in celebrating!

Strong Organization

We formed a Nominating Committee, opened nominations for the new 2023 Board of Directors, announced a slate of highly qualified candidates from full member organizations, managed voting, and announced our new Board at the September Network News event.

Our team grew, and we secured talented leaders and staff:

• Lisa Bari was officially named Chief Executive Officer of Civitas Networks for Health after successfully leading us through the affiliation of SHIEC and NRHI.
• Jolie Ritzo and Jessica Little, each formerly with the Network for Regional Healthcare Improvement for six years, were promoted to Senior Director roles overseeing Network Engagement and Business Development and Programs, respectively.
• Heidi Penix joined us in January as our Grants and Program Manager and has since helped lead us to successfully manage new and existing grant deliverables and identify new funding opportunities.
• Niurka Lluveras-Hernandez (Nikki) joined us in June as the Operations Manager and hit the ground running to effectively manage member operations and aid us in further growing our team.
• Cora Bauman continued her role as Project Coordinator, supporting management of the Annual Conference, membership operations, and program planning.

We secured grant funding for programs to support COVID-19 response through partnerships with The Rockefeller Foundation and Institute for Healthcare Improvement. With support from the Maryland Health Care Commission, we are currently developing a Health Data Utility Framework.

Additionally, the team has supported ongoing grant programs in partnership with The Association for State and Territorial Health Officials, Institute for Health Improvement, and The Rockefeller Foundation.

Thriving Network 

We have loyal and highly engaged members. Thank you to our many members who stayed with us through the transition to become one leading national network. We retained 99% of our full members!

Our network of members continues to grow! We have 21 new members: 3 Full, 8 Affiliate, and 10 Strategic Business and Technology Partners. Welcome to our new members, and please check out the member section of the website for more information.

We built our knowledge base of our member’s work by collecting important information from members about areas of focus, designations, governance, and more. 79% of full and affiliate members have completed their member information form, and 55% of SB&T members have completed their member information form.

We hosted 39 virtual events, with a reach of over 800 unique individuals.

• 11 Network News All-Member Meetings
• 8 Member Roundtables
• 4 Collaboratives in Action
• 3 Public Policy Briefings
• 7 Member-Led Webinars
• 6 events in partnership with The Rockefeller Foundation to support school reopening with COVID-19 testing

We continued to support five existing workgroups and councils and stood up four new ones.
We had our first Annual Conference in partnership with the DirectTrust Summit. The hybrid event was fantastic!

• We had 847 people register for our event! 210 registered for virtual attendance and 637 registered to attend onsite.
• We sold over 90% of available sponsorship opportunities.
• We heard from 158 speakers through both on-demand and live sessions.
• 96% of attendees were satisfied with this year’s event.

Influential Voice 

Our government relations team secured 50 meetings with congressional staffers to introduce Civitas and to further discuss our policy priorities. We also formed a Government Relations and Advocacy Council with named Council members and new Co-Chairs.

Civitas presented on the national stage 12 times, both virtually and in-person. We have had six national media mentions.

We hosted events with leaders from the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation (the CMS Innovation Center), the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and CDC Foundation, and the Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology, and many partners and members.

We want to thank our members and partners again for contributing to our success. Your engagement makes our work possible, and we are honored to support you at the national level. With Civitas Networks for Health, we continue to focus on Regional Innovation, National Impact.