Healthcare Executive - September/October 2013 - 88

Chapter News
Take Note
Perspectives

Engaging Early
Careerists Creatively
Chapter takes advantage of grant program to involve
early careerists.
ACHE established the annual
Grant Program for Chapter
Innovation in 2008 to encourage
chapter innovation in the delivery
of new programs, products and services. The program is designed to
add value for ACHE members by
funding demonstration or pilot
projects that can be replicated by
other chapters. The intent is that
the grant money will encourage a
chapter to try a new service or offer
a program in a new geographic area
without incurring financial risk. A
total of three grants were awarded
in 2011. One chapter, Health Care
Executives of Southern California
(HCE), was awarded a grant in
2011 to launch its Leaders in Policy
and Practice Series for early
careerists in 2012.
HCE’s board was brainstorming
program ideas when Ellen Zaman,
FACHE, director, community
affairs, Children’s Hospital Los
Angeles, and current HCE president-elect, conceptualized a program
that would provide early careerists
(healthcare executives under the age
of 40) with a greater understanding
of healthcare policy. The program
would also link its focus to ACHE’s
policy initiatives. The chapter used
ACHE’s innovation grant program
to help fund what would later
become the Leaders in Policy and
Practice Series.

Healthcare Executive
SEPT/OCT 2013

The education sessions through
LIPPS offered a toolkit of relevant
healthcare and ACHE policies while
building networking and collaboration among the group. The purpose
was to enhance leadership development and help participants gain
a better understanding of the
broader picture through policy
discussions.
“We wanted to offer early
careerists a framework to understand policy and be able to integrate this in their practice in their
organizations,” says Zaman.
The participants were nominated
or recommended by the CEOs and
COOs of their organizations or by
HCE board members. They came
from a variety of workplace settings such as hospitals, health systems, health plans and other
healthcare organizations. Thirty
participants comprised the cohort
and represented diverse backgrounds, levels of experience and
job settings.
Zaman recruited a health policy
graduate student to assist with program development and to design the
toolkit of ACHE policy summaries
and online health policy resources
relevant to each session. Specific
ACHE policy initiatives covered in
the LIPPS sessions included

workforce diversity, access to care
and healthcare executives’ responsibility to their communities.
The sessions also focused on why
policy matters (the overall theme of
the program); the top 10 healthcare
policy influencers of 2012; putting
policy into practice; and shaping
healthcare policy through advocacy.
Local experts from the Hospital
Association of Southern California,
physicians, healthcare and academic
leaders, and others served as faculty
for the series.

“We wanted to offer early
careerists a framework to
understand policy and be
able to integrate this in
their practice in their
organizations.”
—Ellen Zaman
Health Care
Executives of
Southern California
In addition to learning from the
speakers, another key feature of
these sessions was the opportunity
for participants to learn from each
other, says Zaman. For example,
a long-term care administrator
and a chief information officer who
were part of the cohort provided
their viewpoints on key issues.
“I hope this series gave the group the
leadership perspective that they can

Healthcare Executive - September/October 2013

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