Washington Health Alliance Executive Director Nancy Giunto has served on the board of the Network for Regional Health Improvement for several years. On October 1st, NRHI became affiliated with SHEIC, Strategic Health Information Exchange Collaborative, to create Civitas Networks for Health, a national collaborative representing 95% of the United States and comprised of member organizations working to use health information exchange, health data, and multi-stakeholder, cross-sector approaches to improve health.

The collaboration combines the efforts of Regional Health Improvement Collaboratives and Health Information Exchanges to support action at the local, state, and national levels and achieve policy goals for healthcare quality, cost, and equity through data driven, collaborative, and transformative strategies. The new name represents the mission of the affiliation. “Civitas” is Latin for “community,” a fellowship with others and “Networks” captures the essence of the partnerships and exchange of health data to build and sustain healthy communities.

We look forward to the opportunity to share more about Civitas Networks in the future, in part from Nancy’s leadership role on the Civitas Transition Board of Directors.