About the League

ABOUT THE LEAGUE

Mission: To provide leadership to its membership in achieving their goals and to promote accessible, quality, community-responsive health care.

For a Staff listing, please click here.

For a Board of Directors listing, please click here.

For a comprehensive listing of the League's Programs/Initiatives, please click here.

Established in 1972, the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers (the League) provides a wide range of assistance to community health centers and serves as an information source on community-based health care to policymakers, opinion leaders and the media. The League works to strengthen the Massachusetts community health center network through:

o    Comprehensive Technical Assistance: The League provides technical assistance leadership to health center administrators, clinicians and board members, and to other agencies that support or work in community-based health care. League staff render support to health centers on both an individual and group basis, focusing on state and federal health regulatory and policy issues. Technical assistance is provided in a range of administrative areas that include financial and personnel management, capital development, grant writing and managed care systems. In addition, the League collects demographic information by community to build the case for federal funding for communities that have limited access to health services and to primary care providers.

o    Training & Education: As part of its Training and Education program, the League develops seminars, workshops, and conferences designed to provide useful and timely health care operations, management, and clinical information to senior managers, board members, physicians, mid-level providers, administrators, and support staff.

o   Workforce Development: Targeting physician and mid-level clinicians, the League's Clinical Recruitment and Retention program serves as a role model for primary care associations across the country. In addition, the League is working to address the recruitment and retention of non-clinical health center staff through new workforce initiatives that include publication of a monthly personnel referral bulletin and a certificate program to advance the skills of health center middle managers.

o   Information Dissemination: The League works to keep health center staff and patients up-to-date on the economic and political changes within the primary health care system through newsletters, bulletins and general information notices. Information on the issues affecting community health centers also is provided to policymakers, the media, potential clinical staff, and the public. The League has developed a series of technical publications that address issues such as the roles and responsibilities of boards of directors, credit and collection policies and wage and compensation levels for health center employees.

o   Community Development: Focused on expanding health access to new communities and new patient populations, the League participates in statewide health planning activities. In addition, the League renders assistance to locally based health committees and organizations seeking to open health centers in their communities.

o    Advocacy: The League works to promote the improvement and expansion of primary health care access by providing information to policy makers, public and private agencies, and the media on the key issues that affect uninsured and underinsured populations across the state. League activities that focus on the promotion of health access include community health center education days at the Massachusetts State House; participation on commissions and committees charged with developing effective health policy strategies; and the annual distribution of a facts and issues paper on the role community health centers play in the Massachusetts health care system.

o       Connecticut River Valley Farmworker Health Program: Working to improve primary health care access for medically underserved populations, in 1998 the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers helped develop and continues to manage the Connecticut River Valley Farmworker Health Program (CRVFHP). The CRVFHP is a unique two-state contracted services program that provides outreach and primary health services to migrant and seasonal farmworkers through a partnership of health centers and other community-based organizations in Massachusetts and Connecticut.

o    Affiliations: The League has several affiliate organizations that include the health-center based HMO, Neighborhood Health Plan, founded by the League, health centers and the Boston business community in 1986. The League also is a founder and corporate partner of the Community Health Center Capital Fund, established in 1994 to assist Massachusetts health centers in developing and funding capital projects, and Capital Link, established in 1998 to provide similar assistance to health centers nationally. Also in 1998, the League helped to create what is now known as CommonWealth Purchasing Group, a wholly owned subsidiary that provides group purchasing, shared services and strategic sourcing solutions for more than 100 community health centers and related non-profit organizations in Massachusetts and across the country.