Our Work
Leading a better way.
How we work
Our blend of building on what’s already working to accelerate progress and applying our practical, grounded solutions and innovative expertise allows us to guide organizations toward a better way forward.
Calibrate the approach
Your existing assets are the right place to begin. We start where you are as the foundation for success.
Design restorative and mutually beneficial engagement
We believe in creating value for the consumer and the organization.
Use creative ways to engage and listen
We continually innovate approaches to hear voices that often aren’t at the table.
Integrate consumer expertise
Maximum value happens when these voices guide existing operations, strategic decisions, and priorities.
Services
CACP provides five key services to support you where you are in your journey to engage people with lived experience.
Program Design
Develop or enhance engagement efforts to spark real impact.
The best solutions happen when consumer voices inform and shape your strategy, existing operations, and priorities, creating value for both organizations and the people they serve.
- Map and analyze the current organizational ecosystem to understand how culture, technology, people, processes, external factors, and policy impact the pace and scope for change.
- Set engagement goals that clearly align with and support the business strategy and day-to-day operations.
- Offer solutions designed to build on your existing organizational structures, processes, and assets for immediate progress and sustainable change.
- Involve consumer insight from the beginning, rather than seeking feedback after decisions are made.
Implementation Support
Build the foundation for enduring success.
Strong and sustainable practices ensure overall effectiveness and meaningful change that lasts.
- Design dynamic, accessible engagement methods, whether in-person or technology-driven.
- Set inclusion and diversity criteria to ensure a broad range of representative perspectives.
- Recruit people with lived experience using intentional and genuine approaches.
- Create a safe, supportive environment that encourages people with lived experience to openly share their experiences, needs, and emotions.
- Establish a compensation plan that meets participant and organizational needs.
- Build tools to capture insights and measure impact.
Learning and Insight
Elevate every voice to drive meaningful progress.
Consumers are experts by experience who complement organizational experts by training in driving better solutions. Our practices, tools and skills equip people with lived experience to identify issues and generate creative and innovative opportunities for improvement. We continually innovate our approaches to uncover every voice, especially those that often aren’t at the table.
- Facilitate learning conversations, including approaches such as journey mapping, focus groups, and workshops that highlight pain points and moments that matter.
- Design and guide consumer interactions that respect different learning styles, cultural norms, and experiences.
- Interview staff and stakeholders, gathering ideas, potential solutions, and ways to put them into action.
- Co-develop solutions that are grounded in both consumer needs and organizational constraints.
On the Ground Coaching
Strengthen skills for long-term, sustainable change.
Embedding CACP staff as short-term coaches within organizations empowers teams as they launch, learn, and adapt their engagement and outreach abilities to better reflect the realities on the ground.
- Train and develop staff in effective consumer engagement methods and approaches.
- Equip staff with the tools and resources necessary to understand the next steps and path to achieve meaningful outcomes.
- Provide mentorship and advisory support and address challenges.
- Instill practices to empower people with lived experience, enabling them to confidently identify issues and explore new avenues for solutions.
- Establish communication, feedback, and accountability systems for transparency into how the organization is responding to consumer insights.
Guidance for Organizations Influencing Policy and Practices
Put lived experience at the heart of every decision.
People who experience a problem firsthand are often best equipped to solve it, yet they are often disconnected from where and how decisions are made. Organizations shaping the larger field have unique opportunities to address these issues and create long-lasting impact.
- Inventory your organization’s strengths, opportunities, and potential challenges in creating capabilities for centering your work around the needs and expectations of people with lived experience.
- Develop pathways that establish a clear connection between your organization and the individuals and communities impacted by your work.
- Pinpoint key opportunities where your influence should drive the organizations you collaborate with to meaningfully engage people with lived experience and prioritize their insights in shaping policies and practices.
- Instill practices to empower people with lived experience, enabling them to confidently identify issues and explore new avenues for solutions.
- Enable you to assess and measure your impact, allowing for adjustments in strategy and implementation efforts.
Advancing the field
In addition to partnering with clients across the health sector, CACP collaborates with like-minded organizations to define and promote best practices. Together, we are amplifying the national conversation on involving those directly affected by fragmented and flawed systems in shaping solutions.
INSPIRE
We are a proud member of the INSPIRE (Initiating National Strategies for Partnership, Inclusion, and Real Engagement) core team. INSPIRE is a collaborative team comprised of organizations and individuals with lived experience committed to driving stronger authentic community engagement (CE) practices in the US health care system.
We recently released a report that provides a roadmap for how health care organizations and people with lived experience can realize the full potential of authentic community engagement. Check it out here.
SNP Alliance
We partnered with the SNP Alliance to elevate consumer voice in Special Needs Plan design and operations and to ensure lived experience is incorporated into plan strategic planning. The SNP Alliance and CACP are working together on best practice and policies to advance consumer voices and lived experiences where decisions are made at policy and organizational levels.
Alliance for Person-Centered Care
We are a part of a group of health care sector stakeholders who are committed to ensuring our health care system measures quality care based on people’s voices and experiences. Together, we are working toward a future where quality measurement drives better communications between health care providers and the people they serve, promotes shared decision-making, reduces costs, and focuses on what matters most to the individuals receiving care.
Contact us
Address
1167 Massachusetts Avenue,
Arlington, MA 02476