Our 2026 Conference

30 Years of Integration: Innovating in the Pursuit of Healing

Thirty years ago the Collaborative Family Health Care Coalition (CFHCC) was formed to develop, research, teach, and promote family-oriented collaborative approaches to health care. The first CFHCC conference titled Transforming the Practice of Health Care: The Collaborative Solution was held in 1995. Fast forward to the present and we are now celebrating the 30th year of the Collaborative Family Healthcare Association, formerly known as the Collaborative Family Health Care Coalition. 

Over the last three decades, integrated care has leaped toward innovation and responded to the ever-growing needs of our healthcare landscape. The terrain has not always been the most fertile, yet integrated care has flourished along with the evidence supporting integrated care. As we have endured pandemics and the subsequent social isolation, climate crises, gun violence, an awareness of systemic racism, and socio-political changes, healthcare has rebounded into a new hybrid era of digital and relational shifts. Rather than stump the growth of integration, these events have contributed to strengthening our commitment, creativity, and innovation in the pursuit of healing. Our relationships anchor us, and our mission drives us to best meet the needs of the communities we serve regardless of the circumstances encountered.  

Integrated care holds the space for healing. Our annual conference is a perfect opportunity to reflect on our own practices, innovations, and teams and learn about technology, evidence-based care, policy, and funding in the context of socio-political changes and healthcare reform. 

Welcome to San Antonio! The seventh largest city in the USA is a vivacious bicultural city that celebrates its rich diversity year-round through art, heritage, food, and culture. The city is home to unique attractions, historical sites, exceptional gastronomy, and outdoor activities that can be enjoyed by the family.  We are expecting 1,000 attendees at the 2024 CFHA Conference in San Antonio, Texas. Join us as we celebrate 30 years of innovation in the pursuit of healing. 

Resilience is built from adversity. From the pandemic to social unrest to economic downturn, patients, families, and providers are experiencing harrowing adversity. Now more than ever before, there is a desire for strategies to move from coping to thriving. Healthcare leaders are uniquely positioned to meet these ever-growing desires of patients, families, and the individuals who serve them by developing innovative systems and strategies that encompass a biopsychosocial-spiritual lens. Through this approach, families, communities, and future generations will be strengthened.

Building Resilience Through Innovation provides tangible solutions for interdisciplinary healthcare professionals in navigating innovative solutions today leading to a better tomorrow.

Generational Collaboration: Just as healthcare services are multigenerational, so are our interdisciplinary healthcare professionals. It is paramount for all healthcare professionals to embrace generational differences while engaging in future-forward, family-centered care across the lifespan. This approach to healthcare will better ensure health equity for all.

Technology, Research, Policy, & Funding: Interdisciplinary healthcare professionals are on the precipice of synergizing change. With advancements in technology, research, policy, and funding interdisciplinary healthcare professionals are equipped, more than ever, to enhance positive patient and family outcomes. Come network and learn from distinguished leaders in helming these timely enhancements within the integrated behavioral health spectrum.

Welcome to Phoenix: Diverse and culturally rich, Phoenix is located in the central region of the state and is known for its year-round sun, desert beauty, and world-class resorts and golf. It is the fifth-largest city in the U.S., and offers sophisticated urbanscapes, southwest culture, and outdoor adventure.

Arizona is home to advanced integrated healthcare settings vis-à-vis the Arizona Health Care Cost Containment System, private sector collaborative care projects, and Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions.

We are expecting 1,000 attendees at the 2023 CFHA Conference in downtown Phoenix, Arizona. 

The last two years have challenged us like never before as the COVID pandemic swept through communities and institutions across the world.  Frontline healthcare workers bore disproportionate burden and loss in both their professional and personal realms and BIPOC frontline workers faced even greater challenges.  2022 is a time to rebuild. It is a time to acknowledge and declare, “We see you”.  Let’s lean in together and celebrate our strength and resilience.  We will gather stories, data, and models of integrated care that promoted flourishing while we also make space for the ongoing pain and loss that must be acknowledged. 

Because we believe in fostering resilience through community we are co-sponsored this year by two northwestern regional networks* with demonstrated workforce development success. The conference aims to feature examples at the local, regional and national levels that demonstrate the progress that has been made in building and strengthening the integrated care workforce in both rural and urban centers across the country.

* Idaho Integrated Behavioral Health Network & The Interprofessional Primary Care Institute are proud co-sponsors of our 2022 conference

Conference Theme:

In the wake of a global pandemic and increased national awareness of systemic racism, the time is now for sustainable action to address health and social inequities. This year’s conference will focus on acknowledging and addressing the systemic racial and socioeconomic inequities in healthcare and will examine a path forward together. We will focus, not only on research and ideas, but actionable steps to help bring equitable health care to all. We will take a close look at the rapid growth of telehealth as a sustainable part of healthcare and examine ways to leverage virtual care to reduce disparities and enhance access to needed care. Additionally, we will address the need for health care leaders to impress and practice self-care, resiliency and cultural humility to make this journey one that lasts.

Increasing pressures on primary care to screen and respond to social determinants of health (SDoH), manage patients with complex care needs, and to provide opioid use disorder care create a practice environment ripe for provider burnout. As health care teams seek to innovate and respond to these pressures with new practice models, they do so within the landscape of health policy reform heating up during the 2020 presidential election cycle and ongoing aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. This conference will enable implementation of evidence-based practices in IBH, OUD, and SDoH, promote the uptake of training models to enhance provider skills and prevent burnout, and explore solutions to future challenges brought on by proposed health policy reform (M4All) that address care delivery and payment systems. In addition, the impact of telehealth on team-based care will be a major focus in light of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Conference Objectives

• Learn from the early adopters of models of enhanced community-clinical linkages.
• Learn from emerging evidence on the impact of SDoH models of care on clinical and utilization outcomes.
• Learn from first responders to new policy models (AHC, CMMI, CPC+) to address the behavioral and social needs of patient populations.

Our Generation Integration

October 17-19, 2019-Sheraton Downtown Denver, Denver, CO

Training Generations. With decades of growing evidence and enthusiasm, the integrated healthcare family has spread across the United States and is taking root across the globe. Increasingly, the need for a highly trained workforce is the bottleneck that limits the rate of our growth. Our clinics and healthcare systems need talented, strategic, and passionate professionals, including medical and behavioral health providers, nurses, care managers, policy advocates, and more. This conference will meet those needs by preparing early career professionals for team-based care, by assisting mid-career professionals in repurposing their skills for primary care, and by engaging senior leaders in advocacy and mentorship.

Supporting Generations. Clinician and family wellness present dual challenges to healthcare systems. Clinician burnout and suicide have shaken many of our assumptions. The rising generation brings a strong value for balance and autonomy in choosing jobs and a career path. The conference will assist healthcare systems in creating work environments where staff can thrive. Similarly, CFHA was founded on the recognition that healthcare is inherently multigenerational. At CFHA, family is at the heart of health care, and the conference will equip you with skills for providing integrated behavioral health services that embrace individual patients, their families, and their communities.

Denver! Our city is the perfect crossroads for this conference at this time. Colorado is finishing a 3-year federally-funded initiative to ensure that 80% of Coloradans have integrated behavioral health services in their primary care office. We boast several universities and training programs at the vanguard of training for integration. Our city is hopping with the energy of youth.

More than 700 attendees are expected to attend the 2019 CFHA Conference in downtown Denver, Colorado.

Innovations in Integration: Solutions for Healthcare ReformOctober 18-20, 2018

Hyatt Regency and Joseph A. Floreano Riverside Convention Center

Rochester, New York

For the past 20 years, CFHA conference attendees from diverse clinical and professional backgrounds have consistently explored how to achieve the true practice of the biopsychosocial systems model through collaborative care. From integrating behavioral health into primary and specialty care, to enhancing patient and family centered care, and to promoting team functioning, CFHA has led clinical innovations, pioneered cutting edge research, while steering health care policy toward comprehensive care for all people.

Moving forward with healthcare reform, this conference will continue to showcase ways to help healthcare teams successfully implement best practices, improve patient safety and outcomes, and engage systems to achieve these goals. The 2018 conference will celebrate CFHA’s rich history while exploring, and championing, solutions to current health care challenges.

The conference will include programming in innovative areas of collaborative family healthcare, especially highlighting (though not limited to) the following:

1) INTERPROFESSIONAL TEAMS: Helping clinicians of different disciplines work together to achieve better healthcare, such as increased medication compliance, better diabetes management, or decreased depressive symptoms following a heart attack. This year’s CFHA conference will provide a systems lens looking closely at team initiatives that demonstrate best practices, exploring how to teach teams, interprofessional education, communication, and evaluating cutting-edge team development.

2) ACROSS THE LIFESPAN: Integrated teams can effectively help patients of all ages and their family members who take on significant caregiving responsibilities. This emphasis will increase attendees’ discussions on issues prevalent within systems treating children through older adults –from ADHD, caregiving of the disabled or elderly to end of life issues.

3) OPIOID CRISIS & SUBSTANCE USE MANAGEMENT: We want to pay special attention to innovations that can help address the opioid addiction epidemic. Programs that use a systemic or team-based approach are especially encouraged to apply. To achieve these goals, we will bring together clinician, research, administrative and policy innovators across disciplines to think creatively, exchange ideas, problem solve, and inspire change.

More than 500 attendees are expected to attend the 2018 CFHAConference in Rochester, New York.