Sarah Rafton, MSW
Two weeks ago the WCAAP board, our committee chairs, and staff met to plan for the year ahead at our annual retreat. Our leadership now includes three parent advocates – longtime partner, Shayla Collins, and new board advisors, Taylor Kaminski and Erica Ochoa. Parents helping inform and guide our work has been an important development at WCAAP over the past two years. We also have parent advisors on our First Year Families and Champions for Youth Committees. At the retreat we recommitted to parents helping lead WCAAP’s work.
Our work ahead falls into three key areas:
- improving child, teen and family health and well-being,
- adding value to our membership and,
- sustaining the chapter.
In the area of child health and well-being, we will continue to foster and spread the power of the multidisciplinary team in primary care, including sustaining and growing community health workers and behavioral health integration. We will also work to spread effective resources to our members and community such as strong recommendations and motivational interviewing skills for vaccines, our vaccine learning collaboratives, mental health resources, and how to engage parents to improve care.
At the retreat we also ratified our 2025 Legislative Priorities:
- Improving access to care on Medicaid with Medicaid:Medicare parity for primary care, specialty care, and mental health counseling
- Passing a tobacco flavor ban, and
- Increasing funding for school-based groups to improve students’ mental health and prevent substance use disorders.
In addition to the value we bring you through advancing and advocating for child health equity, in the coming year we will support our members with continued reflective practice groups, an in-person equity summit May 17, 2025, and in-person and virtual conversations to learn your biggest needs and desires from the WCAAP. We will continue to hold our quarterly equity webinars and later in 2025 we will begin an “Ask the Expert” series for our members.
WCAAP’s clinic-facing services and supports have grown significantly in the past decade with thanks to government contracts and philanthropic grants. Today, supporting our core infrastructure and advocacy work remain critical for WCAAP’s success, so our third strategic goal is sustaining WCAAP. You can help by telling your friends about us and ensuring they are members or sharing a 5–10-minute presentation about WCAAP to your clinic, institution or division (we will make it easy for you!). WCAAP also offers a 20% discount to group members of 30 or more physicians and APP’s combined. Please contact me directly srafton@wcaap.org if you would like to help spread the word about WCAAP or consider a group membership. Thank you all for your membership or, if you are a community partner, thank you for your support. You are the key to the measurable differences we are making in child health!