California Advancing and Innovating Medi-Cal (CalAIM), a multi-year plan to transform the California’s Medicaid program, went live on January 1 of this year. While CalAIM’s broad reach is intended to help all Medi-Cal enrollees, many of its reforms focus on improving care for specific populations. One of them is the estimated 161,000 Californians who are experiencing homelessness, especially those who have complex physical or behavioral health needs. CalAIM’s goal for people at risk of or experiencing homelessness is to provide a whole-person approach to care and to better address the social factors that affect their health.
A new episode of the health policy podcast Tradeoffs sheds light on CalAIM’s origin story through the experiences of Medi-Cal’s director, Jacey Cooper. It also profiles two Medi-Cal enrollees, one unhoused and one with temporary housing provided through CalAIM, to illustrate why CalAIM is needed, what it can deliver, and some of the challenges that lie ahead.
Listen to the full 33-minute episode of Tradeoffs or read the transcript.
Authors & Contributors
Steven Birenbaum
Steven Birenbaum is a former senior communications officer who supported CHCF’s work to improve care for patients with complex chronic conditions, including older adults and people experiencing homelessness. As a grantmaker, he set strategy to strengthen and support nonprofit journalism in California, overseeing grants to public media outlets, a data fellowship program, and the daily news digest California Heathline.
Prior to joining the foundation, Steven was executive writer at Blue Shield of California. As a writer, his work has been published in The New York Times, Newsday, the Stanford Social Innovation Review and KQED Radio, among other outlets. Steven received a bachelor’s degree in political science and history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a master’s of public affairs from the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, Austin.
José Luis Villegas
José Luis Villegas is a freelance photojournalist based in Sacramento, California, where he does editorial and commercial work. He has coauthored three books on Latino/x baseball. His work appears in the Ken Burns documentary The 10th Inning and in the ¡Pleibol! exhibition that debuted at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of American History and has been appearing at museums around the country.
Villegas’s work has been exhibited at the Museum of Fine Arts-Houston; the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York; and at the Oakland Museum of California. Villegas also works as a medical photographer at Shriners Hospital in Sacramento.
