Lifting up Oregon’s rural communities
The founding of Columbia Pacific CCO in 2012 marked a pivotal moment in CareOregon’s decades-long drive to improve the health of communities large and small.
Over the last 12 years, Columbia Pacific has worked to expand access to all kinds of care and address health-related issues in some of Oregon’s most underserved rural communities. All along, its work and funding priorities have been guided by community voices.
“We have always listened to the provider as well as the member community and used those insights to prioritize our work and investments,” said Executive Director Mimi Haley, who has led Columbia Pacific since shortly after it was formed.
With offices in Seaside, Columbia Pacific serves more than 36,000 Oregon Health Plan members in Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties. The nonprofit coordinated care organization (CCO) grew out of a partnership between CareOregon and Greater Oregon Behavioral Health Inc. (GOBHI). Both organizations had established relationships with providers in Northwest Oregon when they joined forces to launch Columbia Pacific.
Hyper-local governance
Since its founding, Columbia Pacific has taken to heart the state requirement that coordinated care organizations be locally governed. As was required by the state, Columbia Pacific, in its early days, formed a local Board of Directors and Community Advisory Councils representing each county it serves. But it also went a step further, voluntarily establishing a Clinical Advisory Panel that is a key part of its governance structure. Made up of local health care leaders, the panel guides clinical strategy.
Over the years, Columbia Pacific has also worked to ensure that Oregon Health Plan (OHP) members have strong representation on its three Community Advisory Councils. More than half of the members of each Advisory Council are OHP members or have a family member covered by OHP. (Read Columbia Pacific’s 2022 Report to the Community to learn about the important role advisory council members play.)
Stories highlight local needs
In addition to its hyper-local governance structure, Columbia Pacific engages deeply with its communities in other important ways, chief among them its narrative story collection process.
While narrative story collection has been used by the World Health Organization as a decision-making tool, Columbia Pacific is perhaps the only CCO in the state to use the process for its community health assessments. All CCOs must do a community health assessment at least every five years and use the findings to develop a five-year plan for improving community health.
A closer look at story collection
Columbia Pacific works with its Community Advisory Councils and provider partners to design a survey that asks community members to share stories about experiences that impacted their health.
Then, Columbia Pacific’s Community Engagement Team fans out across Clatsop, Columbia and Tillamook counties to collect stories, with a focus on visiting food pantries, senior centers and other places that are part of the social safety net.
Over a three-month period in 2023, Columbia Pacific collected more than 1,300 story-collection surveys for its latest Regional Health Assessment, which will inform the priority areas of its 2025-2029 Regional Health Improvement Plan. (Read Columbia Pacific’s 2023 Report to the Community to learn more about the Regional Health Assessment and what’s next.)
“Stories offer more context and nuance than traditional survey data. They give us a better understanding of what’s important to people in our communities,” explained Haley.
From feedback to impact
With the insights it gains from extensive community engagement, Columbia Pacific has taken a lead role in addressing some of the most-pressing, health-related issues in its region, from the long-running opioid crisis to today’s affordable housing crisis.
Among other initiatives, Columbia Pacific has supported a major expansion of medication assisted treatment programs for opioid use disorder, which were virtually nonexistent in its service region a decade ago.
Today, there are roughly eight such programs in Northwest Oregon, including CODA Inc.’s 4-year-old Seaside Recovery Center. Columbia Pacific provided more than $1 million to renovate the building that houses the recovery center, a methadone clinic with the capacity to serve up to 300 people.
“Early on, we realized the cost and challenges for people of having to travel for hours every day to Portland or Salem to get their daily dosing of methadone,” said Leslie Ford, a former GOBHI executive who helped launch Columbia Pacific and now serves as its housing strategy advisor.
Many of Columbia Pacific’s initiatives related to substance use disorder are the result of feedback from its Community Health Summit, an annual event that brings together local partners, community members and others to learn and come up with new ideas for improving lives.
Tackling the housing crisis
Columbia Pacific has been at the forefront of CareOregon’s efforts to address the state’s housing crisis. Since 2020, Columbia Pacific, together with some of its largest clinical partners, has invested nearly $6 million to address housing needs in Northwest Oregon, where the proliferation of short-term rentals and a limited amount of developable land have led to a severe affordable-housing shortage.
The investments have added about 350 affordable housing units (apartments) in the region, which has some of the highest per-capita rates of homelessness in the state. Columbia Pacific housing grants are also a critical source of support for many small nonprofits serving community members who are unhoused.
“We really believe that housing is health,” said Ford in an interview to mark the fourth anniversary of Columbia Pacific’s Regional Housing Impact Fund. “Investing in housing is not just the right thing to do, it’s what our communities have said they need.”
The long view
In all, Columbia Pacific invested nearly $44 million between 2020 and 2023 in clinical and social-health priorities, including affordable housing and the other community-identified priorities of its 2020-2024 Regional Health Improvement Plan.
In September 2024, Columbia Pacific’s Regional Community Advisory Council will vote to adopt the organization’s 2025-2029 Regional Health Improvement Plan, setting the stage for continued transformation in Northwest Oregon.
