OUR MISSION

The mission of the health care council is to promote access to improved health care for all orange county residents through unified efforts to identify and address areas of need through research, collaboration, education and advocacy.

OUR DEFINITION OF HEALTH CARE

This organization subscribes to the broadest definition of health. This includes: 

-Individual, family and community health;

-not only health education, disease prevention, medical treatment and rehabilitation;

-but also transportation to access health care,

-alleviating the effects of poverty, unemployment and illiteracy, and a lack of affordable, decent housing.

It was the Health Care Council which brought members and groups together to resolve the successive health care crises in the country from 1986 on, and it is the Council which can still bring them together in this time of enormous change and upheaval in health care. There is no other, comparable organization with a similar mission in this country of almost 3 million people. No other organization has the scope, the trust, the knowledge and skills, the broad range of member organizations, nor the track record, to bring people and organizations together to work in unison to resolve health care problems.

AMONG OUR SUCCESSES:

• Built a coalition to foster educational opportunities for minority health professional students
• Mobilized employers of low-paid workers to promote Healthy Families health insurance for children
• Participated in development of the Orange County Health Needs Assessment
• Campaigned for Measure ‘H’ to dedicate the tobacco settlement to fund health care programs
• Brought the community together to develop an Action Plan to repair the safety net of health care services
• Helped to save the Nursing Education Program at California State University, Fullerton from closure
• Raised the issues around the proposed privatization of UCI Medical Center before the public and the media
• Obtained federal funding for county programs as Orange County’s Area Health Education Center,
• Developed Caring Connections, a friendly home visitation program, now conducted by the Council on Aging