While 2023 brought challenges for our health center community, it was also a momentous year for the Association of Clinicians for the Underserved (ACU) and our network, bearing new opportunities, innovations, and growth. We are proud to release the ACU 2023 Annual Report: Growing the Workforce, Bringing Our Vision to Reality showcasing our work to support the healthcare workforce and advance health equity in our 27th year. As our community evolved this year, so, too, did ACU: we were privileged to celebrate several incredible milestones as we grew strategically and programmatically to support the work of our members and stakeholder network.
The ACU 2023 Annual Report highlights those milestones, including the beginning of two new workforce initiatives to support health care workforce well-being and to create a National Health Workforce Institute, as well as new programmatic partnerships with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine and National Center for Medical-Legal Partnership. It also spotlights continuing strides in our work to strengthen the CHC workforce, to expand eye health and vision care at health centers, to help our community incorporate suicide prevention in primary care, to foster justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion, to advocate for and support clinicians in the National Health Service Corps, and more.
As our Executive Director Amanda Pears Kelly notes, “None of this work would have been possible without the leadership, vision, and dedication of our members, stakeholders, and partners. And as we grow in staff, in programs, and in advocacy, we do so with a strategic plan shaped at every step by the invaluable input of stakeholders like you . . . We’ve never been more inspired to grow, to do more to collaborate with our community, and to make an even bigger impact in the year to come—until the day when health equity is achieved for every community in the United States.”
