CHCS is valued by health care stakeholders across the country for its personal, hands-on approach and ability to make critical connections between innovative ideas and current policies and between states and delivery systems.

For a compass, we follow a set of Core Tenets that guide our day-to-day work.

For a compass, we follow a set of Core Tenets that guide our day-to-day work — both internally and externally.

  1. We invest in people, relationships, and teamwork. We are a trusted, responsive, and astute partner – our receptiveness to funders, clients, and internal colleagues builds strong relationships, reinforces teamwork, and enables our success.
  2. We strive to achieve equity. Across our work and in our workplace, we seek to reflect the values of diversity, equity, and inclusion — doing so is core to our mission in making the health care system work for more people, particularly those who have been marginalized by systemic inequities.
  3. We innovate like social entrepreneurs. Our work seeks to identify gaps and improve health care for the millions of people in the U.S. enrolled in Medicaid.
  4. We think nationally but act locally. We see the big policy picture but tailor ideas and programs to unique state and community-level politics, delivery systems, and organizations.
  5. We create opportunities for collaboration and shared learning. We are a catalyst for brokering new relationships, ideas, and best practices across county, state, and federal agencies, delivery systems, providers, and consumer groups.
  6. We encourage dialectic. We challenge the status quo and consider the full range of possibilities before reaching conclusions. Our ideas evolve accordingly.
  7. We attend to nuance and embrace ambiguity. There is no one map for getting our work done; we listen carefully and improvise to find the path that will succeed in a particular place and time.
  8. We set a high bar. We are committed to building our expertise, staying ahead of the curve, and achieving excellence across all our work.
  9. We take the long view. We see past obstacles and stay focused on promoting the best care for people served by Medicaid, now and into the future.