Work - Community Catalyst

Our Work With Partners

From the start, Community Catalyst has understood that durable health system change only happens when it is built with — not for — communities.

Today, we partner with more than 350 local and state organizations across 45+ states, alongside national partners working toward shared goals. Together, we combine community leadership, policy expertise, data, and organizing power to shape health systems that work in practice — not just in theory.

Our partnerships are grounded in trust, shared learning, and coordinated action. By working together across states and sectors, we help translate community priorities into policy, oversight, and system change that responds to real conditions on the ground.

Our System of Advocacy

Community Catalyst works with partners to ground policy and practice change in lived experience, build campaigns that advance shared goals, and grow collective reach and impact.

One way we do this is through our System of Advocacy — an approach developed alongside partners to support collaborative, dynamic, and responsive advocacy. The System of Advocacy emphasizes listening, shared strategy, coordinated learning, and timely action across local, state, and national levels.

This approach allows partners to move together — strengthening access, affordability, and accountability across health systems.

Learn more about the System of Advocacy.

See our highlights from the 2024 Annual Community Catalyst Convening:

What Our Work Looks Like In Action

Our work translates a clear vision — quality, affordable care for everyone — into coordinated action that gives communities real authority over the health systems that affect their lives and economic security. We do this by aligning policy, markets, data, and organizing across states to deliver access, affordability, and accountability in practice.

Here’s how that work comes together:

Community Health Market Watch

Detecting risk early. Creating leverage before harm occurs.

Across the country, hospital closures, consolidation, and service cuts often happen with little warning — destabilizing care access, local economies, and entire communities.

Community Health Market Watch identifies threats early and equips communities with the data, strategy, and leverage they need to intervene before decisions are final. By combining market intelligence, policy expertise, and community insight, we help prevent sudden care disruptions and limit downstream financial and health harm.

State & Federal Agenda for Durable Health Care Reform

Making coverage work in practice, not just on paper.

Coverage gaps, denials, delays, and administrative barriers continue to block access to care — even for people who are insured.

This priority aligns state, federal, and community actors to stabilize coverage, reduce implementation failures, and strengthen financial protections. Community Catalyst translates policy into durable, real-world outcomes by coordinating across systems that too often operate in silos.

Caregiving and Aging

Strengthening access and affordability as demand accelerates.

As the population ages, caregivers and families are navigating fragmented systems, rising costs, and inadequate long-term supports.

Community Catalyst advances policies and financing models that expand access to long-term services and supports, reduce financial strain on caregivers, and embed caregiver leadership into decision-making. Our work helps reshape aging and Medicaid systems around real needs — not assumptions.

Health Justice Intelligence

Turning insight into execution across states.

The health justice field lacks shared, actionable intelligence about what is working, where systems are failing, and how harm shows up in real time.

Health Justice Intelligence serves as national connective infrastructure — integrating lived experience, data, and organizing power to surface access gaps, affordability failures, and accountability breakdowns. This priority ensures decisions are informed early enough to shape outcomes, guide investment, and measure impact at scale.

How These Priorities Work Together

Each strategic priority advances the same core outcomes:

Access: Care is available and usable
Affordability: Coverage does not create financial harm
Accountability: Systems change before harm occurs

Together, they reflect Community Catalyst’s unique role as a national convener, translator, and execution partner — delivering health justice outcomes that would not happen without coordinated action across states, systems, and communities.

Health justice is built together.

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Whether you are a community organization, advocate, policymaker, or individual with lived experience, your voice matters.

Together, we can shape health systems that are responsive, affordable, and accountable to the people they serve.